The $5,000 Decision to Get Rid of My Past

After a series of painful losses, Ben Kuchera learns that when your games become your ghosts, it’s time to clean house.

Source: Polygon
Published: Jul 12, 2017
Length: 7 minutes (1,804 words)

Street Fighter 2: An Oral History

Twenty former Capcom employees and business partners look back on the creation and massive success of the game that ‘helped revolutionize the industry’: Street Fighter 2.

So I remember being down in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and we’re launching the game down there. And I didn’t even have the earnings back yet. I mean, they were coming in — we had one unit in Sunnyvale Golfland; the other one was in Milpitas. So I had my testers go out there and I said, “Hey man, I’ve gotta have some kind of idea what’s in there.” So they said, “Well we opened the cash box up. We haven’t even hit the weekend yet, just been cruising through the week.” And … I think it was like $650 that was in there. I go, “That’s not bad. That’s not bad.” So I said, “Well, let me just do a little surmising. Eh, it’ll probably end up doing about 800. That’s a really good report.” So I’m down in Florida basically telling my distribution network, “I think it’s gonna be about an $800 a week game, based on testing in Milpitas.” And then seven days came up after my distributor meeting, and the thing made $1,300.

So one of the things that we quickly found was, Golfland says, “We’re having problems with the players, because everybody’s backed up on the unit. Can we get another one?” “Yes, you can get another one.” We bring another one out. Now I’m afraid if I put a second one in there I’m gonna cannibalize it. I’m gonna have two doing $600. Not the case at all. They both do 14. So now we know we’ve got a juggernaut on our hands. Sunnyvale Golfland and Milpitas, I believe at the peak, were probably operating up to 15 units inside there. And you know, the game went through the ceiling.

Author: Matt Leone
Source: Polygon
Published: Feb 3, 2014
Length: 76 minutes (19,037 words)

Anatomy of a Cosplayer

A profile of a woman who participates in and builds props for cosplayers—fans who dress up as their favorite fictional characters:

“The first time Tysk worked with wood was to ramp up the unique-factor of one of her own costumes. Cid Highwind from the Square Enix classic Final Fantasy 7 is not an uncommon character to find in the cosplay wild; his outfit is simple, the character is iconic among JRPG fans and the game itself is one of the most popular of all time. Tysk wanted to dress up as Cid, and was determined to make herself stand out from other Cid cosplayers. So she suited up, grabbed some wood and paint and clay, and made herself the character’s trademark spear.

“Once she knew she could successfully make props, she decided to share her new skills by making weapons for her friends. Over the span of a few months, she shaped hunks of wood and plastic into daggers, swords, claws and even a realistic chainsaw.”

Source: Polygon
Published: May 7, 2013
Length: 14 minutes (3,616 words)

Why Aren’t Video Game Actors Treated Like Stars?

The voice actors behind billion-dollar games are paid hourly rates, and have seen video game voice acting budgets eaten up by Hollywood stars:

“‘With very few exceptions, allocating a major portion of a budget to a big name is a magnificently terrible waste of money,’ Blum says. ‘A name on a game is something executives use to impress each other, and I find it difficult to believe that those huge dollars can ever be recouped or even justified.

“‘I recently walked off a game because they expected me to record over 20 vocally stressful characters in one session for scale because they had blown their budget on a few “A-listers.”‘”

Source: Polygon
Published: Apr 2, 2013
Length: 13 minutes (3,450 words)