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Skullgirls. A small game, made out of sheer enthusiasm,
in an unusual setting and unique visual style
from a brand new developer studio among big competitors,
where any game made not by Capcom would be forgotten after a few months.
Despite all this, Skullgirls have found their place under the sun,
attracted enough players and press attention,
gathered strong, creative and loyal fan base
and finally became one of the notable IPs in the genre.
The game achieved these things not instantly, but due to its developers' enormous efforts.
Now is the high time to meet the people behind this fighting game.
Alex "0_8" Ahad а creative director, a person behind Skullgirls universe.
He's responsible for unique visual style, character design, their appearance, and behavior.
He also takes an active part in designing special moves.
Before making his own game he used to work at
Gaia Interactive, Playdom and, especially, Wayforward Technologies
A great artist, who nurtured his game ideas
about monster-girls since college
but the concept' realization was difficult until he met Mike Zaimont.
Mike "Z" Zaimont а Design Director and Main Programmer
avid Blazblue and Marvel vs Capcom 2 player
a well-known member of FGC
Since young age was interested in programming
began his career as a game tester at Pandemic Studios
where he worked on Star Wars Battlefront 2 and Lord of the Rings Conquest.
Since 1999 he was making his own 3-D Engine called Z-Engine,
which he wanted to use for his own fighting game.
This particular engine, Mike's love for fighting games
and acquaintance with Alex Ahad led to the emergence of Skullgirls.
Together with Alex, Mike revised a lot of game components
and finally, in 2010 joined the newly formed Reverge Labs,
whose publishers became Autumn Games and Konami.
Mariel Cartwright а this beautiful woman is the Lead Animator at Lab Zero Games.
She's responsible for remarkable character design and animation.
Her ways of animating coupled with her own distinctive style
greatly complement Alex Ahad's ideas,
whom she knew before the development began.
A hard-working person, took part in many projects,
including Silent Hill games, Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game and Shantae Half-Genie Hero.
By the way, she is Randy Cartwright's daughter
Disney animator who worked on numerous cartoons:
Beauty and the Beast, Lion King, Alladin, to name a few.
He's also one of the creators of CAPS:
a specialized piece of software used for digital animation
Peter Bartholow а CEO, designer and community manager.
A part of videogame industry for more than 20 years.
Aside from game journalism, he used to work on a several projects as a designer.
A man responsible for the foundation of Lab Zero Games.
Runs the show, communicates with people, promotes the game to the masses.
Of course, these aren't the only people that worked on the game.
The bulk of the team includes
Richard Suh а Lead Clean-Up Artist
Jonathan Kim а Senior Animator
Earl Gertwagen - Designer
Brian Jun а Clean-up Assistant / Associate Art Producer
Vincent Diamante а Audio Director
and Brady Hartel а UI designer
You'd probably think that with such talented people the game should do perfectly fine.
However, not everything is as bright as it seems.
Few people know what the developers had to go through to reach their goal.
Since the very first days when the game appeared on consoles in 2012,
misfortunes fell upon Reverge Labs one after another.
Skullgirls were getting a lot of attention from the press,
new character trailers, beta gameplay videos,
developers' monologues about different aspects of
game development and animation were appearing constantly.
Of course, back in 2011 the game was still in development
and some videos looked downright awful.
However, with every new video,
Skullgirls became looking better and better.
It was playable before the launch at
New York Comic Con 2011, LA Anime Expo 2011,
SoCal Regionals 2011 and EVO 2011 tournaments
where Mike Z also made a presentation, talking about gameplay nuances.
Potential buyers were attracted by high-quality animation, unique lighting system
balanced gameplay, infinite combo prevention system
which is a major aspect of the game,
and by returning to the roots of Marvel vs Capcom 2 gameplay.
In other words, the game was popular enough,
it wasn't some unknown indie project anymore.
Plenty of people waited impatiently for the release,
but in September 2011 developers told that
they have to delay the game until the first quarter of 2012.
Peter Bartholow told that extra time will be spent to
polish the gameplay and add new features based on players' feedback,
such as game speedup, new special effects,
more complex 3D backgrounds extra character palettes,
macro buttons, gameplay rebalance. the list goes on.
Without a doubt, the delay only made the game better.
Finally, the game came out in April 2012
on Xbox360 and Playstation 3 in North America
and in May 2012 in Europe and Australia
First critic reviews were positive
everyone praised the visuals, good tutorials,
nice music and simplicity.
However, there was plenty of criticism.
The absence of movelist was mentioned by everyone and their mother
and was a big reason to lower the scores.
Unfortunately, people didn't understand
that game was already in development for quite some time
and the inclusion of the movelist could take up to two weeks.
Movelist is a part of an interface which must be correctly displayed
depending on character, console, localization,
screen resolution and future miscellaneous additions.
In short, Mike has decided to spend his efforts
on aspects of the game more important than
a list of moves which you could either learn by yourself
or look up on the internet.
A PDF-file made specifically for this reason
could be downloaded from the official website.
The developers promised to add the movelist with the first patch,
but the damage has already been done.
Another shortcoming was a small character roster,
8 characters during the initial release,
which is a very small number,
especially since Skullgirls takes its roots from Marvel vs Capcom series,
famous for the big roster (56 in MvC2)
and gameplay suited for 3v3 fights.
On top of that, even though (in)famous IPS got rid of infinite combos,
it didn't quite work as intended.
The system considered crouching normals, standing normals
and command normals as different types of attacks.
Different specials were treated as different attacks too.
Tag-ins, one frame links and DHC weren't treated correctly either,
so everything mentioned above led to
long, monotonous and boring combos.
And, of course, how can we forget Alex's and Mariel's signature unique visual style
that was branded sexist before the game was even out.
Well, of course, so much pantyshots, T&A and bare skin.
Unfortunately, not everyone can appreciate the efforts of Alex and Mariel,
who are responsible for such display of gentle sex in the game.
Despite the fact that it is their trademark style,
flashy sexuality was never the point of the visual style.
Not a single one of the heroines uses her body in ostensibly fanservice way,
unlike other fighting games.
Just remember Mai, Jury, Ivy, Shermie, Dead or Alive series.
Developers specifically avoided such things.
Peter Bartholow said in Eurogamer interview:
Alex's views on his own visuals are as simple as it gets:
he just draws what he thinks is cool and interesting.
Everything mentioned above is just a small talk.
Skullgirls found its audience and sold very well at first.
For a niche game to sell 50 000 copies in 10 days is a great result.
Critics were happy, gamers were happy. What could possibly go wrong?
Here, the tale about the Skullgirls Curse begins.
After the game's release and promises about patch
came a period of suspicious silence:
there was no news from developers nor publishers.
No DLC announcement, no patch, no info about expanding the franchise.
That is, until in November 2012,
right after the long-awaited Slightly Different Edition patch came out for PS3
news came in that whole Skullgirls development team was laid off
because of the financial situation at Konami and Autumn Games.
What happened? Let's start from the very beginning.
Def Jam Rapstar.
A rhythm game, made by 4mm Games released in 2010,
oriented on hip-hop enthusiasts.
Karaoke-type game with features like recording your performance and uploading it on a website.
At first, it was supposed to be a small project for Nintendo Wii,
but soon it grew into a full-fledged game
for Xbox360, Wii and PS3 with lots of licensed music tracks.
What do Skullgirls and karaoke have in common?
The publishers. Konami and Autumn Games.
Def Jam Rapstar turn out to be a costly ordeal for the developers.
In xbox360achievents.org interview Jamie King,
4mm games CEO and one of the founders of Rockstar Games
told that the game collapsed under the weight of its own ambitions,
hopes and incorrect evaluation of target audience.
From exclusive Wii game with a budget of about a couple millions
it grew into a multi-platform giant
which required a separate website to function correctly
whose infrastructure, according to Jamie, was too complex for the developers
and was ahead of its time.
Besides, a lot of money went into advertisement and localization.
Unfortunately, by 2010
rhythm game market was filled with countless Guitar Hero look-a-likes,
so it was rightfully considered dead by many.
And, considering that Def Jam Rapstar was aimed directly at hip-hop enthusiasts,
no wonder it sold only about 500 000 copies.
Out of nowhere, in 2012, EMI, Britain record company
sues 4mm Games and Terminal Reality.
The reason is that the developers couldn't secure the rights to use 54 music tracks in the game.
Rap and hip-hop are genres that are based on using others' music samples
and cooperation with multiple performers,
which means a lot of paperwork when it comes to song's ownership.
EMI demanded 150 000$ for infringing every song out of 54,
in addition to royalties.
According to EMI, they have informed publishers and developers
about their rights and royalties,
but their words were ignored.
Also, the possibility of another lawsuit was up in the air.
EMI has the right not only to distribute, also to perform the songs.
Remember that Def Jam Rapstar is a karaoke game?
What's curious is that EMI doesn't hold the rights to whole songs,
but only a small percentage.
Additional questions come up
when such label as Def Jam and such company as Universal Music Group,
which are directly responsible for financing the game development
and who own most of the music tracks
are having this kind of troubles.
Not to mention, charges were put on developers, not publishers,
who, by the way, couldn't do anything about the situation.
What happened then?
I can only tell you than 4mm Games was closed the same year.
But that's not the end.
When it rains, it pours.
News about another lawsuit appear,
this time with Konami and Autumn Games as defendants.
City National Bank brings the charges:
the game's development was financed by a $14 million loan,
which was supposed to be repaid with the money from game sales,
because Konami estimated the game to sell $2,5 million in the first year.
CNB accuses the companies of lying about their financial state
before and after the deal was signed
and that they didn't pay a single penny,
keeping the profits to themselves and refusing to remit them to CNB.
Additionally, the bank says that Autumn Games
was supposed to get $1 million from Konami
as an advance to pay down the loan,
but instead spent it other things.
In the end, CNB demands $8,9 million as compensation for fraud,
in addition to repaying the loan.
As you can see, things are going south.
The lawsuit drains the money from publishers,
so Autumn Games stops financing Reverge Labs.
Developers don't get paid a single coin from every copy of the game sold.
All these events happened in March 2012.
As you remember, news about layoffs from Reverge Labs appeared in November.
In these news we found out that the team was fired back in July of the same year.
Everyone who worked at the game left without a job and a salary.
PC version was up in the air
and the work on the first DLC was temporarily stopped.
It is worth mentioning that Reverge Labs wasn't closed,
only Alex's and Mike's team was laid off.
Official sources told that only a part of developers' team was laid off,
but that was, in a way, a lie.
The reason for the layoff was a bit strange, too.
For example, here's what Richard Wyckoff,
CEO and founder of Reverge Labs
said in XBLA Fans interview:
Of course, you can say that besides the main development team
there were plenty of freelancers and other people,
but that doesn't change the facts.
Everyone who was responsible for the game was fired.
Probably, there were only two people left at Reverge Labs,
the same that founded it:
Richard Wyckoff, CEO and Emil Dotchevski, CTO.
What can one possibly do in this dire situation?
The answer was a surprise to everyone:
Lab Zero Games а a new name for the old company.
Peter Bartholow in XBLA Fans interview shared some details:
This way Mike and friends continued the work on the project,
by founding their own company,
where all fired members of Reverge Labs have returned.
Autumn Games was still in the hold of the IP
and they gave new studio the green light to work on the game,
but they still couldn't fully pay for working on it.
said Bartholow in one of the NeoGAF threads.
The publisher was interested in releasing the patch as quick as possible,
that's why they were happy to see the new developer studio.
The developers were also interested in patch's release,
because it was supposed to fix a lot of bugs,
balance the game and address some of the player's complaints.
Unfortunately, this patch came out only for PS3.
The game was released on Xbox 360
with the help of the service called Xbox Live Arcade
which has patch size limit of 4 megabytes.
The 600 mb patch had to be delayed indefinitely.
In the end, Xbox360 patch came out in May 2013
after cutting down the filesize and exhausting negotiations with Microsoft,
when most of the buyers were tired of waiting and abandoned the game.
New details surfaced about events in June.
Peter Bartholow in the same Neogaf thread said that the problem was purely financial.
Also, approximate sales figures became known to the public.
That's a good result for a digital-only indie game in a niche genre.
Trying to get up on their feet,
Lab Zero Games tried their luck with new different projects,
but nothing really came out of it.
Time went on, the team was running low on money,
and somebody had to do something.
By chance, in January, before EVO 2013,
breast cancer research charity drive has started.
Donations were used not only for the sake of charity,
but also to vote for a certain game.
The one that gets the most donations
will be featured as the eight official EVO 2013 tournament game.
In a few weeks Skullgirls made $78 000,
reaching second place.
They were beaten only by Super Smash Bros. Melee,
which raised $94 683.
In total, $225 744 were raised а a very good sum of money.
Despite placing second,
EVO organizers have provided Skullgirls
with dedicated setups for their side tournament,
guaranteed to stream Top 8 matches and gave $1000 as pot money.
This charity drive gave hope to the developers.
It showed that Skullgirls are popular enough,
that people are willing to play it and to pay money for it.
Finally, after donation drive has ended,
during a stream dedicated to the end of the charity drive,
Mike revealed a new character: Squigly,
who supposed to be the first DLC character,
but wasn't finished because of layoffs.
The crowd went wild.
Mike also said that everyone
who is interested in adding this character to the game
should wait for news in the next couple of weeks.
Knowing that the publisher won't be able to solve the money problem,
Lab Zero Games appealed directly to
customers, fans and fighting games enthusiasts.
Peter Bartholow said in interview to Giant Bomb
We were at lunch at Curry House
and people were like
'I think we ought to try it because...
I don't know, why not?"
February 25 2013 Indiegogo character fundraising campaign was launched
and momentarily became successful.
Squigly was funded in 22 hours since the start,
Big Band а in two weeks.
The developers were shocked.
In the end, the team had $829,829 on their hands,
which guaranteed the development of two additional characters,
that were supposed to be chosen by fan voting,
Robo-Fortune,
their story modes, arenas,
four alternate character voice packs
and three announcer voice packs.
The developers even managed
to find time and money to add more stages,
in addition to initial promises.
Everything mentioned above was supposed to be free for a limited time.
Nobody expected this kind of success.
Indiegogo even made a special offer а
extend the donation drive deadline
in order to reach one million dollars,
which would be the record for this organization,
but Lab Zero decided to refuse the offer,
because, firstly, that would be somewhat tactless
and secondly, the team wanted to deliver their promises,
not make new ones.
Of course, crowdfunding wasn't met positively by everyone.
Despite the fact that developers were transparent
about how and where their money will go,
plenty of people were saying
that $150,000 for just one character is way too much,
that the team spends their money inefficiently,
that they asked for that sum just to cover up months of inactivity.
This line of thinking was heavily criticized
by people directly working in game industry,
such as Seth Killian а former Capcom community manager
and Dave Lang а at that time Iron Galaxy Studios CEO.
Video game development is an expensive thing,
most people can't even imagine how expensive,
even when others are trying to be as transparent as possible
when it comes to financial side of things.
More than that, the developers purposely tried
to save as much money as possible
at the expense of their own salaries just to lower the cost of DLC characters.
Shortly after the start of the crowdfunding,
in February 2013 Skullgirls came out in Japan.
Sale figures have exceeded all expectations of the publisher, Cyberfront.
The reports say that in two weeks
the game sold more copies in the land of rising sun
than publisher expected to sell in whole game's lifetime.
Because of this reason, Lab Zero Games localized
the Indiegogo campaign for the Japanese audience.
January 30, 2013 the news about long-awaited PC-port have surfaced.
Marvelous AQL was supposed to be the publisher.
PC port wasn't going to be a hack job:
the beta was scheduled to come out in June
and have high resolutions support, lobby system,
in addition to early access to Squigly.
It seemed that just yesterday Skullgirls were doomed:
despite the uniqueness and warm welcome,
circumstances and harsh reality of game industry
almost destroyed the talented team,
while game's future:
patches, new characters, ports, sequel а
were put on a hold.
Despite all the misfortunes,
our little team didn't give up
and proved everybody that it's important to never back down
and to trust your fans.
All is well that ends well.
But the end is yet nowhere to be seen.
Voting for new characters
was one of the main attraction factors of the crowdfunding campaign.
Thirty-one character, two of which must be chosen.
Fans were making fan-art,
clawed at each other's throats,
discussed the poll's results.
Some people took the vote so seriously
hat they threatened to take their money back
if their character doesn't win.
Paypal, a payment company,
which services were used for the crowdfunding,
because of such statements
asked Lab Zero to provide guarantee and proof
of their devoted involvement in the development process.
On April 20, 2013 in the midst of the DLC voting,
Peter Bartholow at NeoGAF
tells that Paypal froze Lab Zero's account,
which meant that they couldn't pay the team.
One possible reason for the suspension
was fear for Paypal's own money:
if someone's character didn't win the vote,
a person can demand his money back,
and demand them not from Lab Zero or Indiegogo,
but from credit card issuer.
The person who donated the money
can write a statement that he has been deceived
or didn't get what was promised.
Paypal gathers the information about money transfer
and works together with the bank
to investigate the evidence and look into possible solutions.
If consumer's demands are valid,
Paypal is the one who has to pay back the money.
If Lab Zero couldn't deliver their promises
and release the characters,
plenty of people could demand their money back,
which meant a lot of trouble for Paypal.
Paypal representative even outright said
"Until the threat of chargebacks has passed,
Paypal is effectively financing your development."
Obviously they wanted to make sure they are as safe as they can get.
"They also asked if we're good for the $700,000
if something goes wrong.
I said "No," because, well... we're not?"
In the end, the restrictions were lifted from the account,
although Paypal took 35,000$ as collateral damage.
Way back when Team Fortress 2 hat promos
could guarantee good initial sales for any game,
Skullgirls developers have decided to jump the bandwagon.
Peter Bartholow in February 2013
during one of the Indiegogo streams
told that team wants to make TF2 hats as promo material.
Of course, the responses to this news were good enough
to prematurely include Leviathan hat
as the reward for the 30$ donation.
Lab Zero were confident that Valve's approval would be easy to get.
Unfortunately, they were wrong.
Several days later, Lab Zero were forced to remove the hat by Valve's request.
The whole idea was now up in the air.
Peter told that this was just a temporary bureaucratic setback.
In the end, Valve declined Lab Zero's request,
explaining that they don't have the resources to add it in the game.
Peter apologized to the fans,
assured that this decision is not final,
promised digital goodies instead of the hat
and, if people demanded it, to return the money.
Lots of people were disappointed, but there was still hope.
On 11th of May, in 2013 Peter Bartholow declared the beginning
of the voting for new headgear for TF2.
Valve could add the hats,
but only if enough people support the idea.
There were plenty of hats to choose from, although the quality was mediocre.
Unfortunately, people lost their interest
and the vote was quietly forgotten.
The work put in hats was not in vain though.
Officially the hats were not released,
but anyone can wear them in-game with the help of Steam Workshop.
Juju.
New players, unfamiliar with Indiegogo events
might not even know who she is.
Back in the day her fate angered the whole community
and once again expressed the human stupidity and ignorance in its whole glory.
Everything began way back in 2011,
with a seemingly innocent Facebook post.
One guy called Cee McNeel pitched a character idea,
who would be a Chinese sniper with a talking rifle.
Alex liked the idea and drew a sketch of this character
during the Whiteboard Tuesday а
a small event, where Lab Zero team drew various things on the whiteboard.
Juju became one of the Black Egrets members and served Parasoul.
It was implied that she's the one shooting during the Silent Scope blockbuster.
Alex even added the chance that Parasoul mentions her by name.
It should be noted that one Facebook message
is the only Cee's investment in the character creation.
One and a half years later the Indiegogo drive begins,
where two characters had to be chosen by vote.
Suddenly, Juju becomes one of the characters featured in the voting.
Cee remembers about Juju and writes a Facebook post,
where he says that it would be nice to get some reward
because he took part in her creation.
It's unknown whether he was serious or not initially,
but Lab Zero decided that it would be better to engage in the conversation with Cee,
than to completely abandon the character
or to take the case to the court because of one post.
The process of acquiring character rights
is lengthy and costly,
so Juju had to be excluded from the first DLC vote
and, later, from the second one.
Finally, all the formalities were handled
and the character rights were acquired,
but Cee was legally obliged to keep quiet about this fact
until the official announcement.
The very next day,
Cee with one post over Skullheart forums
broke the non-disclosure agreement
and made the contract with Lab Zero void.
Further cooperation had to be stopped
and Juju, as a part of the universe, was abandoned.
Lots of time, nerves and money
were wasted and invalidated with one single post,
which, to be frank, was to be expected.
This person pissed everyone off with his forum posts and IRC-messages.
Nobody expected anything good from Cee,
but you know what they say,
a fool is worse than an enemy.
The prophetic words from the first gameplay trailer.
Some people never even wonder how Skullgirls got the "Encore" part.
There's no remastered version or patch with a price on top behind it.
As you may remember, besides Autumn Games,
Konami was also a Skullgirls publisher.
To be fair, their involvement was purely because of the Microsoft policy,
because to get on Xbox Live Arcade
you need a retail publisher support.
Other than that, they did more harm than good.
Towards the end of 2013
the team understood that further cooperation only hinders the release of the updates,
because Konami refused to greenlit any patch or DLC
until Lab Zero tests the content inside and out from their own pocket.
Besides, Konami refused to help the team with Microsoft certification process.
This led to termination of business relationships
between Autumn Games and Konami in November 2013.
Now, despite the fact that patch was almost ready,
a lot of paperwork laid ahead,
because without new publisher, update releases were unthinkable.
Due to the difference between services,
Autumn Games was the publisher for PSN
and Marvelous AQL is for Xbox Live.
Without them the game would be removed from the stores completely.
Of course, this meant that Xbox360 patch was going to be delayed again.
Since Konami was the publisher in US and Europe,
Japanese version and PC version were going to be released without any hindrances.
Unfortunately, Konami couldn't leave without pulling a dirty trick.
On 6th of December in 2013
Mike during weekly Salty Cupcakes stream brings bad news:
because of the relationship dissolution Konami
from Sony and Microsoft to remove Skullgirls
from PStore on 17th of December and 31th of December from Xbox Live.
Lab Zero found out about this only after Sony informed them,
which meant that the decision was already approved on their side.
Mike had to work in haste on a new version of the game,
which supposed to replace the old one.
The reason for that is every game has an ID number and Communications ID,
so if Konami wanted to get rid of the game
they fully had the right to do so.
Simply put, nobody could buy the game until the new publisher appears.
Other than that, there were plenty of issues to solve:
getting new IP-address for Autumn Games,
transfer the consumer purchases to the new version of the game,
make a new publisher deal
with Sony's different regional divisions and Autumn Games,
create trophies and leaderboard from scratch for Sony,
since Skullgirls would be treated as a new game at PSN,
send the new build for testing after dealing with aforementioned problems.
Time was short.
What's more, the team asked Konami
to give them time till 31th of December to fix the PSN issues
but they told that Sony won't let them.
Then, Sony asked Konami to extend the deadline,
but Konami said that Autumn won't let them.
Finally, when Sony, Lab Zero and Autumn Games asked to move the deadline
Konami didn't say anything.
Such cases.
Sometime later they agreed to give extra time,
leaving a strong sense of displeasure.
Theoretically, there was enough time to update the game for PSN
and to finish the paperwork before the new year,
if everything went smoothly.
Still, the Xbox 360 patch could only be released after publisher change,
so until 31th of December this would not be possible.
In the end, Skullgirls disappeared from the stores on 31st of December.
At Indiegogo campaign page
Peter Bartholow explained what is going to happen with the game in the nearest future.
New version for PSN is planned to be released in January;
Xbox Live update is going to be released with a delay again
because Marvelous AQL can send patch to Microsoft for testing purposes
only after the end of holidays.
Additionally, the process is going to be delayed because of bureaucratic work
associated with publisher change and signing of the new contracts.
The new versions will get a new name:
Skullgirls Encore.
Finally, Skullgirls were released at PSN in US on 11th of February in 2014,
19th of March in Europe and 15th of July in Japan.
Xbox360 owners had to wait until 22nd of April 2014.
As was mentioned before, PC version was safe from these perturbations.
It should be mentioned that Cyberfront,
Japanese Skullgirls publisher
was dissolved by a parent company, Kaga Electronics on 19th of December in 2013.
Fate of the Japanese version was also hanging in the air:
these news took everyone by surprise;
attempts to contact Cyberfront representatives were futile
and, to be fair, there's no information up until 2015
about what was happening to Skullgirls publisher.
As far as it is known,
the old version wasn't removed from the store,
but Skullgirls Encore appeared in Japanese PSN on 15th of July in 2014
published by Marvelous AQL.
What's curious is that Xbox version came out a month earlier in Japan.
Generally, Skullgirls got off with the whole skin,
forcing the fate to work on themselves.
Publisher switch only did good for the game,
allowing the team to work on further updates in peace and quiet.
That doesn't mean that the curse was over.
In May 2014 news came out:
the team is forced to change to color on Valentine's crosses
and several other characters.
Why?
The answer is Red Cross,
international charity organization.
The Red Cross emblem is copyrighted by Geneve conventions;
Red Cross is trying to protect their logo
from use in violent movies and videogames.
Valentine has this logo as a part of her design,
she's a nurse, after all.
Despite the fact that Red Cross never complained about it,
it happens that over at Japan they take the Red Cross very seriously,
so during the initial Skullgirls release in Japan,
Cyberfront had to sign a document
which said that they will take responsibility
if Red Cross tried to take the issue to the court.
After Cyberfront' dissolvement,
Marvelous AQL took over the publishing in Japan.
In their turn, they've decided not to sign such document,
since they didn't want to get involved.
Autumn Games, in case of a possible lawsuit tried to put the responsibility on themselves,
but Marvelous refused to willingly violate the law,
even if another company is willing to take a hit.
In the end, the color of crosses
was changed from red to magenta by Marvelous request.
It's no secret that console game development
deals with limited resources and requires certain sacrifices.
Sometimes you have to use low-quality textures and models,
use engine tricks and cut content а
there are plenty of ways to acquire needed results.
Skullgirls went through all this during the development, too.
For example, Peacock and Double Blockbusters,
Peacock intro and eye beam special were cut before the release.
Assists until recently didn't play win animations
if they were on the stage when the opponent is defeated.
On consoles you could often see during character's tag-in or intense matches
character sprites disappear completely,
leaving only visible hitboxes in their place.
In further patches game was optimized,
lengthy load times were sped up
and visible hitboxes were changed
to low-resolution sprites during memory shortage.
Big Band also brought a lot of issues to the development process.
His size was shortened while he was still in Beta
and Take-A-Train special
for a short time was unavailable as an assist attack,
because the animation took way too much memory.
Eliza, according to prototype
was supposed to spill blood all over the stage
to use it later in different ways.
Some fans think that this type of gameplay
couldn't make it because of performance issues,
though it's more likely is that team decided
to take a different route with the character.
After all, prototype is just a concept, not a final design.
Despite console limitations,
Mike as the time went on, optimized the engine,
managed to deal with most issues
and even added new special effects,
such as improved dynamic sprite lighting.
The curse follows Skullgirls wherever they go.
EVO 2014, the most important FGC event.
Even though Skullgirls didn't make it to the main lineup,
place and time for their own tournament is guaranteed by Madcatz.
Lab Zero and Autumn Games pledge 5000$ as a pot bonus,
which will be shared among top 16 players.
They also had their own stream time:
from 11.00 till 13.00 Tekken was supposed to be streamed,
then, from 13.00 till 15.00 а Skullgirls.
Everyone was waiting impatiently for the tourney
and, of course, the stream.
But when the much awaited time came,
viewers saw Tekken and it wasn't even about to stop.
What's worse, those were exhibition matches, first to 13.
There were two reason for this outrage:
first - Tekken players came an hour late
and the second one а MarkMan, Madcatz community manager,
was busy with business meeting during this time
and couldn't supervise the whole deal.
Skullgirls fans rightfully judged the situation
as a spit in the face of the whole community.
Even when Tekken players finished their matches,
one hour of stream time
was spent on new character announcement for Mortal Kombat X.
Summing it up, the stream of the biggest Skullgirls tournament
was delayed for three hours
and only included the last hour of the tournament, semi-finals.
During the stream MarkMan apologized to the public
and tried to redeem himself with free T-shirts and caps,
which angered plenty of viewers.
In the end, out of planned Top 8 or even Top 16,
only top 4 were shown on stream.
It should be noted that those matches were fantastic,
with skillful play from the participants.
MarkMan apologized after the following events
and explained the situation on NeoGAF,
promising to pay more attention to Skullgirls
and to promote the game as hard as he can.
In 2015 Skullgirls had another unlucky stream,
this time at Combo Breaker 2015,
the biggest Skullgirls tournament that year.
More than a hundred participants,
2000$ pot bonus а more than enough.
Unfortunately, every single stream goes down
because of technical difficulties with Internet service provider.
Everyone has to watch the tourney recordings at Youtube.
In April 2015 one of the Beta patches
changed a couple of animation frames for Cerebella, Filia and Fukua.
According to the developers,
these frames were on their "to-do" list for a very long time,
since they didn't correspond to their own artistic values.
"Well, they're sexy girl and they are fighting.
If one of them is wearing a skirt,
you're bound to see some ***.
We're not trying to hide it,
but we're also not going out of our way to show it either"
Of course, the masses took this change for censorship
and blew everything out of proportion.
The thing is, the outcry began
almost half a year later by the word of mouth
after the patch' release on consoles.
Most people didn't even know about the altered frames,
until they were told about them.
Earl Gertwagen explained the situation in-depth at Reddit,
bringing the clarity to Lab Zero actions.
This isn't the first time the game was altered in this way though.
Before the release, two Filia winposes were removed.
Soon after the vanilla release,
Parasoul was left without one of her pantsushots.
Eliza DLC was met with very warm responses.
You bet а first of the characters that won the vote,
with outstanding story mode and three new stages,
one of which was very different from the rest: Gehenna.
Dark, unpleasant, but very atmospheric place with eerie music
was hard to stomach for some people.
By request, this stage was removed from Random Stage select
since Wulfpatch update.
Initially, people thought that this stage is either too scary for some
or that colorblinded have hard time playing on it
because of its specific lighting.
As Earl Gertwagen said, the reason for the removal
are complaints from people with phobia of disembodied eyes,
and there are plenty of eyes at this stage.
In Summer of 2014 Peter Bartholow brings in the news:
Skullgirls are about to be released for PS4 and PS Vita the same year.
Unfortunately, difficulties with Vita port
and Beowulf and Robo-Fortune development
force the release date to be delayed till 2015.
The team promised cross-platform play for PS3, PS4 and PS Vita,
fully voiced story mode,
combo tutorials,
"trials" and "survival" game modes,
old arcade stick support that used to work on PS3.
By buying PS4 version,
the customer would also get the Vita version for free and vice-versa.
Additionally, Skullgirls changes its name once again
Skullgilrs 2nd Encore.
in order to distinguish old version from the new one.
Quite a treat, this new release.
2nd Encore comes out on 7th of July in 2015 for PS4,
other platforms are left with a simple patch
and a new character а Robo-Fortune.
The reasons why they didn't release the updated version
with additional content simultaneously for all platforms, are next:
porting new features costs money;
timed exclusivity, common for most multi-platform games.
What's curious, Bartholow over Skullheart
told that Sony barely financed the development
of the port and the new version:
most of the money came from Autumn Games,
which is a bit strange.
In the end, PS3 didn't get additional features at all,
while PC got its version only on 13th of April in 2016.
PS Vita version, despite the promises,
comes out on 5th of April in 2016.
The reason for the delay is weak Vita hardware,
optimization was one of the main hurdles for the developers,
new bugs and additional features for the upcoming Japan release.
At least Vita got the game:
Xbox One was left without one for a long time
because of Microsoft parity policy:
either games come out on all platforms simultaneously
or they don't get released at all.
Skullgirls became available on 21th of January 2016,
when they were added to the list of backwards compatible games.
About the Japanese 2nd Encore release:
in August Arc System Works announced
that they will publish Skullgirls in Japan:
the game will receive the long-awaited Japanese dub.
Additionally,the collector's edition of the Skullgirls 2nd Encore
named Skull Heart Box is scheduled for the release.
which includes the game, the soundtrack and an artbook with 32 pages.
It's mindblowing that Western game
gets so much attention from the Eastern publisher.
But there's always a fly in the ointment.
ArcSys has a bad case of jealousy towards Youtube
and videos that shows gameplay with Japanese voices and story mode.
A few channels got strikes
and had to delete all the videos containing aforementioned stuff.
This isn't the first time ArcSys does this,
remember Uniel' framedata or Blazblue release?
Even 2nd Encore release on Steam had its share of issues.
The update release on 13th of April in 2016
was accompanied by a 33% discount for everybody
and 50% discount for those who had old DLCs on their account.
For some internal reasons,
a lot of people who supported Indiegogo drive back in the day,
were left without a special discount,
so everyone who had issues with this
had to post about it in specific thread
and give information about their Indiegogo participation.
The problem was solved on 26th of April,
two days before the special offer ended.
All updates and DLC for Xbox360 came out with various delays.
The first patch for Xbox came out half a year after it came for PS3.
Squigly initially was available only for PC and PS3,
for Xbox she was released together with Big Band in April of 2014.
This update was a bit buggy:
The Big Band DLC on European PSN wasn't listed as "free".
Squigly and Big Band for Xbox 360
could only be selected by pressing Light Punch button.
To solve this problem,
it was recommended to delete all updates
and reinstall new Compatibility Pack DLC
or to wait for Color Pack PLC,
which supposed to fix this bug.
For some European PSN regions,
Skullgirls Encore update was unavailable.
Squigly was unavailable too, unlike Big Band.
PC version was spared from these issues.
Same year, in May, Fukua comes out, this time without any delays.
Eliza release was about to arrive in time,
sometime at the end of September or the beginning of October,
but, as you might have guessed, nothing is certain with Skullgirls.
The Xbox patch appears at Xbox Live accidently
and then disappears from the shelves.
Peter Bartholow told that to release a new character for Xbox 360
three separate updates are required:
title update,
compatibility patch
and the DLC itself.
Because of bureaucratic mix-ups,
Eliza DLC was released instantly after certification process,
even though other updates weren't certified yet.
Lab Zero asked Microsoft to remove the DLC
in order to avoid further problems and not to confuse the customers.
Then, the news came from Microsoft:
compatibility pack and title update can't make through the certification
because of two-year old bug,
which existed without any issues all this time.
Soon the bug was fixed
and DLC appeared on 14th of October of 2014.
Next patch with Beowulf was released
in April and May of 2015 for various regions.
Robo-Fortune patch was released for PS3 in July 2015,
for Xbox 360 а in July 2015.
Lobby Patch, also known as 2nd Encore+
came out in January and February of 2017.
This patch added the long-awaited lobby system for PS3, PS4 and Vita,
which was promised since the game's release.
At last, the final update
came out for PS4 and Steam on 1st of April 2017;
for PS3 and PS Vita - on 25th of May 2017
For a very long time, the game was only available in digital.
The only exception was Japanese collectors edition.
Everything changed in October 2016,
when Limited Run Games,
a company specializing in releasing custom physical editions
for digital-only games,
announced that Skullgirls will be getting a physical release.
It will include either a PS4 or PS Vita version,
a game manual and a special edition of the soundtrack.
A PS4+PS Vita bundle was also an option.
If the number of preorders was to exceed 10,000,
the Japanese voice over had to be added as a bonus for all the platforms.
Despite the offering was only available for two weeks,
the desired number of pre-orders was reached in time.
It seemed that all was left to do is to design the appearance of the box,
add the manual, compile the soundtrack,
add the manual, compile the soundtrack,
Well, not so fast.
Initially, the release of the collector's edition was planned for January 2017.
By that time it was clear that additional preparations are inevitable.
According to Skullgirls' blog, there were plenty of issues:
Japanese voiceover took a lot of paperwork,
which is understandable:
using actor's voice overseas
requires a lot of time, money and new agreements.
Another big hurdle was
cooperation with Sony and it's policy towards physical editions of games.
Not only the build process was different
because of the "remaster" status of the physical edition,
but the "remaster" itself could only get through QA testing
after the thorough testing of the final patch.
PS Vita version was only making things worse:
as it doesn't support "remastered" editions,
the game had to be treated as a separate entity.
And don't forget that every single version had to support cross-platform multiplayer
between three different consoles а a very difficult task.
February brought news about another delay.
Getting rights to the Japanese dub turned out harder than expected.
An approximate process of licensing the voices looks something like this:
drafting a contract,
approving it,
translating into Japanese,
having that approved,
then physically mailing it to Japan to have it signed,
then physically mailing it back.
That's twenty-first century for you.
And don't forget about the release of Lobby Patch,
which brought new bugs.
New estimated time was about four weeks.
How naive.
In May, developers tell about new issues:
the international publisher
requested an additional testing.
As the physical edition is the final version of the game,
it had to be perfect in terms of stability and compatibility with different versions,
especially considering the addition of lobby system
and cross-platform multiplayer.
July.
Another delay, this time due to suddenly discovered bugs
which had to be fixed in all console versions of the game.
PS Vita was slowing down the whole deal, as usual.
It's been about half a year,
so disgruntled clients became more and more vocal.
In addition to the apologies,
Lab Zero decided to complement every copy of the game
with a free pencil board.
It's a small thing, but it matters.
The same month came the good news:
PS4 version was approved by Sony,
which means that physical copies were now ready for production.
The final release date was scheduled for autumn,
but because of an undetermined status of the PS Vita version,
it was susceptible to change.
Finally, in 6th of October, 2017
Limited Run Games announced
they finished their production of the physical edition for the PS4.
Shipping was scheduled for the middle of the month,
Shipping was scheduled for the middle of the month,
Unfortunately, as at December 2017,
PS Vita version is still in development,
so every order that includes it
is delayed until the testing process is over.
There's nothing left to do but wait.
It is certainly worth it.
The past а
long five years full of troubles and hardships.
The present а
united fan groups,
universal recognition
and lots of experience under team's belt.
The future а
countless possibilities.
All this would not be possible
without strong, united community,
without Mike Z's genius,
without Alex's and Mariel's talent,
without Peter's persistence,
without workaholics from Lab Zero,
without patient publishers,
without devoted fans of the game.
This product of massive labor and immense love
makes genre enthusiast's heart race.
I hope that you heart in not going to remain indifferent.
Thank you for watching and have a nice day.