Why are Platform Fighting games Failing? 

The funny thing is... In my experience, a surprising number of "casual players" don't even know that you can shield, grab, or even dodge in Smash Bros.

Maybe because while the original platform fighter Smash Bros is made by a world class studio, lead by legendary designer Sakurai, and has tens of millions of dollars in funding from Nintendo, every single other platform fighter is made by a low tier AA or Indie company on a shoestring budget. And often on the behest of a bigger company who are blatantly trying to cash in and don't care about the quality of the product. Even Sony with PlayStation all stars tasked SuperBot, a developer who don't even have a Wikipedia page, to make a game with their icons. Why? Because they, like every other publisher who funds a platform fighter, are solely seeking to make a quick buck and to ride smash's coat tails, and have no intention on giving it the budget or development time needed to succeed. Imagine if Mortal Kombat was the only AAA 2D fighting game, and every single other fighting game was made by an indie developer. Or imagine if Call of Duty was the only first person shooter and every other FPS game was made by a AA company as a quick cash grab. That's what platform fighters are like.

good video, though i think rivals of aether kind of doesn't apply as much as the other platform fighters mentioned in this video. it has various side modes and character specific campaigns, a whole modding scene that already lets you go wild with characters and stages beyond a competitive mindset (for example there's a mod that lets you play tetris instead of controlling a character lol) and overall a roster with enough variety to make up for the lack of items or non competitively viable stages (idk why that'd be a problem btw, it's expensive and they're overall hated if they have too much hazards put into it) also, on an unrelated note, thoughts on rivals 2?

The real failing smash clones were the friends we made along the way

As a rivals 1 modder, the alternative gamemodes people have made in the scene honestly can really help a lot will filling in for the games relatively bare bones options. I can also say that the back end code for that game is so bad that one of the devs took a year and a half to recode the entire cast just to work with the workshop 4. Rivals 2 is also so promising, and yet im still worried cause it doesn't have casual appeal cause they simply couldnt afford to develop it. I hope that their story mode ends up being real eventually.

Simple... Smash Bros. is just so well made that the rest of them play like garbage in comparison... And when they aren't garbage because of low budget, they fly under the radar because they don't have iconic characters to hook people in (like Rivals of Aether, which has a roster mostly consisting of original characters). Although, Rivals of Aether has amazing mods that DO provide the game with those "iconic characters..." But come on, most people don't buy games _for_ the mods (unless it goes on sale of course... definitely not speaking from experience).

yeah im inclined to agree, casuals are the largest, quietest group in 90% of games with that said, multiversus rifts couldve totally succeeded in appealing to them if it wasnt such a boring gamemode (doesnt even get voice acting, not much unique gameplay, and a lot of said unique gameplay doesnt have anything to do with the actual gameplay) the rifts also had noticeably unbalanced difficulty on release but thats kinda fixed now as far as i know

I'm so glad you never talked about monetization, because I'm sick of people blaming a game's downfall on that alone. Sure, it's not great to have a battle pass, but people can live with it if the game is good. The problem is, usually the game fundamentally isn't good, and that's what people should focus on.

Fraymakers also has ledges it doesn't have items or hazards YET but it plans on adding them, it's early access

The competitive at the cost of fun section seems really misinformed. Not gonna mention Rivals, since you already bring that game up, but I'll mainly address everything based on the first 2 Nick Brawl games, and Multiversus. - Nick Brawl 1 and 2 both have grabs, in fact, Nick Brawl 1 even had universal air grabs and the ability to grab and throw back projectiles. Technically MVS also has grabs, though they're command grabs as part of a character's moveset, and not universal grabs like in Smash. - Both Nick Brawl games also have shields. - Both Nick Brawl games also have ledges. - Both Nick Brawl games also have items, though to be fair, Brawl 1 didn't have items in at launch, so that's an understandable mistake. - Rivals 1 lacked these 4 things mainly due to budget and game engine limitations, and not really because they're uncompetitive (except items). It's why Rivals 2 is adding in 3 of those 4 things (and even expanding on them a bit). It's also why Smash mods made to make the games more competitive like PM/P+ and HDR don't remove those mechanics either. - Again, shields and grabs aren't anti-competitive or useless. 99% of fighting games have some form of blocking and grab game. The mindgames of knowing when to block and when not to block because your know your opponent is about to go for a grab is a fundamental part of those games. - There are other mechanics that MVS has for defensive options. Rolls, spot dodging, air dodging, universal parries, and the movement in general just to name a few. I don't fully think you need a ton of defensive options to make a fun, more casual fighting game. Power Stone 1 and 2 are seen as pretty casual for the most part, and yet those games have no dodging or block mechanic. The only way to avoid attacks is to move out of the way, and they're great games that anyone can pick up and play. - I would honestly like if more platform fighters included items, but I get why not all of them do. Not only is it a feature that the crowd they're trying to cater to won't use often (if at all), but it takes away development time and resources away from something else. Keep in mind most dev teams for these platform fighters are far smaller than the Smash team, so it's a tough balancing act. - The stage segment really confused me. The Nick Brawl games have tons of stages of all kinds, and a lot of them aren't tourny legal. MVS stages can get pretty wacky, like the Town Hall stage having a hazard that can turn you into a dog, or the Scooby Doo stage with the breakable walls and floor traps. Rivals 1 might be where this opinion came from, but even in Rivals 1 all stages have a comp version, and an "Aether" version that have stage hazards. Rivals 1 basically did the hazard toggle before Ultimate did. - Nick Brawl just has an arcade mode, but 2 has a whole rougelite single player campaign mode and a boss rush mode. MVS has the Rifts mode, but that one's admittedly pretty repetitive, so I'll give you that one. - I agree that MVS movesets having cooldowns is bad, but for a different reason. They're trying to adapt attacks having cooldowns from MOBAs like LoL, but cooldowns work there, but in a fast-paced plat fighter, they feel clunky and cumbersome. MVS characters also have far fewer total moves in their movesets compared to Smash characters or other plat fighter characters, so while they might be more advanced in some ways, in other ways, they're more simple. They're weird. - I feel like the moveset cohesion vs references thing applies a lot more to the first Nick Brawl game compared to the 2nd. The first game's movesets are so bad, and while the sequel isn't perfect, I feel like they overall did a much better job in this regard. I find it weird how you enjoy Rivals so much, because it's kind of a counter argument to almost you entire point about how these games need to be more casual to succeed. Honestly I think the answer to why the Nick Brawl games and MVS failed are a bit different from each other. Nick Brawl 1 failed because it was barebones at launch and lacked a ton of polish. Nick Brawl 2 failed because of it's association with the first game, with people not wanting to buy into the hype a 2nd time, thinking the first game was a scam (especially since it got a sequel so soon after the first game). MVS is failing because it's not really for anyone. As a casual game, it doesn't have enough on offer, as a competitive game it's a complete joke, and as a consumer it's a complete scam due to the microtransactions.

this is why I don't think a melee hd remake would make much sense. What would be the target audience of that? Only competitive melee players basically. A rerelease/port of melee in a collection of sorts or nintendo Switch online would suffice.

I think they should make more crossover action and adventure video games just similar to Nicktoons Unite, Disney Infinity or LEGO Dimensions. Instead of Crossover Platform Fighters. It doesn't matter if they come with modern modes like Battle Royale, Open World, Crafting and Farming. (But optional farming while not mandatory to unlock many things)

I have no idea what you mean by shielding and grabs being seen as “useless” by competitive players. They are extremely important to competitive gameplay.

Simple Smash Bros exists like can't stand out if you gotta compete with the platform champion for like 10+ years

Something that I want to add to the movest desing section (and to be more specific about MultiVersus) is that the characters in MV need a way to tell they players what they characters do. Maybe I'm just dumb, but as an Arya main in that game I spend literally weeks without noticing that with that character is more easy to kill if your hits land from behind. All these characters are full of passives and special habilities but the game doesnt make the efford to tell the player how they are used. You can have a super obvious and intuitive passive like Finn's who throws money after every attack and if you press S+down you discover a store where you can spend that money, but for every Finn theres a Wonder Woman or Agent Smith that have a special bar that probablly means something but you dont know how it exactly works, or you directly have an Arya or a Samurai Jack with passives that you can spend entire matches without knowing are there unless you go to the movement list and literally go to the bottom of it (Btw im not an native english speaker, I do my best with the clases I take, sorry if I wrote horribly wrong in this language)

10:12 I recognized Grand Dad in the music. Certainly a SiIvagunner moment. Plus more content from them used throughout the video, Nice!

3:31 i never talked that one promise

Making games appealing to casuals is much more expensive than just making a small, tight versus mode featuring a few characters. The most frustrating parts of these "platfighting genre is dying" videos is they never consider that these studios aren't choosing to exclude casuals but rather they just literally can't afford to attract them especially when the bar is smash brothers. Casual players like casts of 40+ characters, they like large campaigns, they like extra game modes, they like licensed characters, they like prestige and presentation and cutscenes and VOICE ACTING and they want it all for FREE if they can have it, and we have got to stop pretending that the decision to not add items isn't a scope/budget restriction. While RoA wasn't massively popular among casuals, having your indie fighter that has never been free consistently have 500 players online is more than most games get, so despite not being considered a smash competitor, I think it fills the niche it wanted to well and it seems like with the sequel they understand what's important to attract a casual audience. NASB is more like Rivals than Multiversus in that its budget was so small it made sense to focus on a single mode as well. But Multiversus' existence should be insulting because it had the budget these small games dream of, it has everything casual players like, but they forgot to make a video game. Casual players will buy and play your competitive game if it gives them reasons to like SF6 and Tekken 8 do, but Multiversus just exists to waste your time and charge you money not to and at the center of it all is a bare minimum versus mode that exists purely to show off your investment. They had everyone in the door and they managed to do it twice but squandered it and cleared the room twice because there's simply no video game in this crossover.

I get what you’re saying with NASB and MVS, but i think it’s disingenuous to include rivals (or any plat fighter not built off of pre-existing IPs) in this kind of discussion. To suggest that it “failed” when it was able to get half a million sales, maintain a decently sized competitive scene and active modding community across 7 years, spawn multiple spin-offs to expand the IP, and raise over $1 million for rivals 2 is wild to me. It didn’t have the resources or the recognizability to appeal to a massive casual audience like smash bros did, so they chose to make and market the game to more competitively inclined players and build a brand from there, and they wouldn’t have been able to do that if it weren’t for the fact that the game is really damn good.

You may have been late to the discussion, but this was genuinely one of the best videos I’ve seen on the failure of platforms fighters. You hit the nail on the head on all the notable problems these games face, all while in a mostly concise and dignified manner. In short, very great video man 👍

What about brawlhalla it’s been very successful casually and competitively

I'm glad that there's someone out there who shares the mindset that all the people who want a "Smash Killer" are just people who want Melee, but on modern consoles. A lot of people declare Brawl as the worst Smash game purely because it doesn't play like Melee, despite the beloved additions to the roster or fact that all the game modes from Melee are present or improved upon (i.e. Adventure mode becoming Subspace Emissary). I might be kicking a hornets nest with this comment, but if anyone thinks that Melee is the best Smash game, they're probably the kind of person who treats the roster as faceless functions like the devs of Marvel vs Capcom Infinite.

the reason why things like grabs and ledges were removed in rivals 1 was because of dan not wanting to animate them, not because of any competitive thing (and which also caused shields to be removed) ive never heard of any competitive players compain about grabs and sheild and ledges though. Also wavedash is usually simplified in games that have it like rivals (its just jump and dodge + angling the joystick in the direction you want to move it) i to like rivals of aether i gave them a lot of money

because NASB is a good game and a good dev team made on the same kind of time restraints and budget that Gamemill gave Skull Island: Rise of Kong and Multiversus is a very shiny extremely polished outer shell housing a crappy essentially-a-mobile game that people like purely for the voice lines and skins, but it's F2P so children will defend it because it's all they know also it's a genre that Nintendo founded so people will act offended that anyone other than nintendo makes one and/or complain when it has less money poured into it than smash ultimate (To anyone trying to argue for Rivals of Aether, the common person plays that for the workshop mods like Ronald McDonald. It is high quality at base but don't try to pretend anything else.)

thanks for uploading kazoo. really needed something good to watch

I like the video bringing attention problems with this subgenre but the Stage argument is completely wrong. Every platform fighter game I have has casual stages or stages with wild layouts from Cartoon Network Punch Time Explosion, Playstation Allstars, Brawlout, Brawlhalla, Rivals of Aether, Nick 1 and 2. Multiversus essentially is having a wild problem that it's competitive stage pool has too many chaotic stages in play. Anyways like said good video. I like Rivals because Dan really got a good flow with the mechanics that makes up His platform fighter. It cuts fluff but cooks with the ingredients that are built around it. Multiversus is definitely too competitive focused and drew me off with how much I didn't like the Rift and I don't like playing games where I don't have a full roster which had me dropping KoF15 until recently since I had money to buy the remaining dlc characters. I don't wanna give the game that doesn't feel too enjoyable my money.

rivals 2 23rd october

Because they don't understand why Smash is successful in the first place and thus wind up catering to the wrong audience for the budget given making them fail, the Melee fans Rivals could get away with it as a low budget indie game but the others? 3:13 oh you got that too Another reason is Smash is a self sustainable popularity generator where these others aren't because they don't balance their roster around general audiences but the age range of the Melee audience which prevents casual audiences from cycling in because the new show they're currently watching has a character in this big crossover, how many people picked up Fortnight because they collabed with something else they already has an interest in? I'm betting a LOT both All-star Brawl's for example only had *2* currently airing franchises, no one currently watching Nick will care about your game because their shows aren't there to drive people to pick up the fighting game they're in, or for people who got the game to think about checking out the newer shows because they were in it driving traffic to the network Multiversus has a similar but different problem in being WAAAY too widespread (legitimately it should have started as an exclusively CN focused game going into the wider WB pool later on) and is far too grindy for a casual to consider bothering with when they have no idea when/if their show or character will even make it in

lol who's here after seeing fizzi tweet that he's making a melee-like game

If you think a WB platform fighter is inconsistent, then a Disney platform fighter, as exciting as that sounds, would 10x worse imo. Though if you want a platform fighter with simpler and easier to controls, I'd say give Fraymakers a shot. It's control and movement design is nearly identical to Smashs layout. Though that shouldn't be a huge surprise since McLeodgaming its developer, were the ones behind Super Smash Flash 2. Ironically despite the current state of the game, I still find myself coming back to it more than MvS and that's purely because the controls and movesets are far easier to grasp. Fraynmakers however is still leaning towards that competitive market which can be seen in their stage layouts and the notable lack the casual content at the moment since it's in early access still. MvS may have creative movesets, but I am really not a huge fan of every character having chargeable moves on different attacks, be it neutrals or specials, or the fact that they have cool downs that sometimes will replace one move with an entirely different move altogether and goes as far as to give them different properties than the previous move.

1:46 holy shit Skurry

The removal of shields, ledges, and knockdown states in Rivals were specifically a result of Dan Fornace simply not wanting to animate all of those moves (back when it was only him developing the game). While Dan was a fan of competitive Smash, the lack of those gameplay elements was not a deliberate attempt to make the game more competitive.

Only reason to play rivals would be the workshop characters tbh.

The games racing to replace smash remind me of how Street Fighter 5 had this major competitive focus and tried to streamline what made a good game for sport and ended up just feeling completely sterile until its last two DLC seasons that were essentially the SF6 mechanic tests

I love roa, although the lack of shield means that I have no choise but to constantly attack. with the inclusion of workshop content, my causal part is satisfied.

this video tickled my video to watch while playing a game organ

8:48 silvagunner spotted😊

I have depression.

While I agree with a lot of the points you make in this video, the part at 4:30 is just blatant misinformation. The vast majority of platform fighters have all of those mechanics, including: - Both NASB games - Fraymakers - Icons - Rushdown Revolt - Slap City - Rivals 2 The only platform fighters I can think of that *don't* include these are the first Rivals of Aether, Multiversus, and (as far as I'm aware) Brawlhalla, which also happen to be the three most successful platform fighters outside of Smash by a mile, so if anything the existing evidence points to the exact opposite of your point It's honestly kind of disappointing to see such a significant portion of an otherwise really well made video based off a point that was very clearly poorly researched. Hope you can do better going forward

cool vibeo xd

Wonder what is his opinions is on brawlhalla Jokes aside Brawlhalla is just is the smash game that didnt do smash to point of being a strong brawl being smash and hallas But i think it shows something The game has competitive and a big casual snece (the multiplayer side-games as so good) scene, the game doenst have wavedashing, doenst have ledges but a whole new wall mecanhincs unique to brawlhalla, has unique version of gameplay, tecnically the WAY less fighters that it seems because the fighter is the weapon but then again even legend as 2 weapons so is 3 fighters at once, and it has all the casuak stuff that you mentio at this point brawlhalla is the tekken of smash, but yet no mention I guess smash gnere it self is a curse of never enough

Why does every video talking about platform fighters video essay exclude Brawlhalla.

These critiques don’t work for Rivals, idk why you put it in this video. It was designed as a fighting game primarily and a party game secondarily. I know you brought that up in the video, but I think it’s an even more important distinction than you illustrated. Most of the things you criticized these games for stop being bad when you take into account the intended audience. And, yes, Rivals has appeal that Melee doesn’t as a competitive game. Like you already mentioned, Rivals character designs are top of their class, but it also makes Melee mechanics far more lenient and intuitive to pull off. I know you critiqued wavedashing as being an unintuitive mechanic for something intentionally added, but it’s really just jump+roll in Rivals. Compare that to motion inputs in other fighting games, and it really isn’t so unintuitive. Personally, it’s my favorite game period, and it’s largely due to what you called downsides

3:31 killed me lmao

I think you should try playing fighting games with the objective to actually appreciate them beyond how they are different from Smash. Try Tekken or something. Leo's fun and non-binary... Game doesn't have ledges tho sorry.

if they were just... GOOD then they would not fail!

They aren’t NASB 2 did well and multiversus made a strong comeback

cause they suck lmao

Oh hey look, it’s another generic “Why this platform fighter fails HA HA smesh is better” type video Yeah no thanks, bye 👋

31 seconds no views. Bro fell off

RAHHHHHHHHHH GET EMM KAZOO CAT