You'll be hearing a lot from Capcom's Seth Killian on GameSpy in the coming weeks. We recently dropped by Capcom's offices in San Leandro, CA and spoke with Seth at length, as well as his boss, Senior Director of Communications and Community Chris Kramer. They both had quite a lot to say about Capcom's approach to fostering an active community for Street Fighter IV as its release approaches. Communities for competitive games are crucial to their success, and arguably, no publisher has got this right yet as it applies to fighting games beyond the living room or arcade. But to hear Killian and Kramer tell it, Capcom's going above and beyond.

What follows is an excerpt from our long chat. How would you like to get the rest? More written transcripts? Podcast segments? Let us know in the comments!



GameSpy: You mentioned that the Street Fighter III community has come around to Street Fighter IV. Can you talk a little bit more about this?
Seth Killian: I feel really good about the game, and I think it's going to be a smash. We know, in a lot of ways, that it was sort of hearkening back to the Street Fighter II roots, so we knew that people who were excited about Street Fighter II were going to be excited about Street Fighter IV, but the Street Fighter III crowd, who's been a big part of the scene in the interim years -- and they really love Street Fighter III: Third Strike -- is a tough audience, and they were initially not excited about Street Fighter IV.
GameSpy: Specifically, what was it about the game that they weren't into?
Seth Killian: Mostly, it's parries. Parries [were] sort of the hallmark of Street Fighter III, and that mechanic is just gone from Street Fighter IV. Part of the reason it's gone is because it's really a hard thing to pull off. When you finally master it, it brings you very close to the game, but you've got to probably put in six months before you're even competent at parrying. And that's really rough. So I wasn't sure we ever going to get the Street Fighter III crowd, and it's just one of those things [where] we made some decisions about the game, and we feel good about it. You're not necessarily going to be able to please everybody, but I've been really blown away that [the Street Fighter III community] have actually turned into the biggest advocates for the game. They've been writing guides online, like, super, in-depth guides -- I'm actually learning stuff from their guides, which is a little embarrassing.

But they're also just playing hardcore in the arcades. There are tournaments all the time. There are more tournaments now for Street Fighter IV than there were for Street Fighter III: Third Strike, and they're going nuts with it. There are Street Fighter IV machines popping up all over Los Angeles, which is one of the hotbeds for Street Fighter III, and also in Texas, another big place, and New York. On top of that, probably the greatest player in the history of the game, Daigo Umehara, has over 10,000 wins on Street Fighter IV. You can do the math on that one, as to how many hours that is. He's also been staying out of tournaments. He's waiting for the big one.

GameSpy: He's training?
Seth Killian: He plays Ryu, he acts like Ryu... he's saving his stuff for the big tournament, so he's not playing in the local events. [He's] hiding his techniques, as best he's able.
GameSpy: How can he practice and not have people see what he's up to? Like, some guy with a video camera?
Chris Kramer: He wears a little moustache. Glasses and moustache.
Seth Killian: That is happening, there's a little bit of that on YouTube. Part of it just the Japanese [being] less, maybe, willing to tape over your shoulder. But you get some gaijin [ed note: "gaijin" means foreigner in Japanese] over there... that's where most of the videos of Daigo playing Street Fighter have come from. I ask, periodically, the dev team what's going on -- because the game tracks some statistics -- who are the popular characters and things like that, just for internal use, but also, who's at the top of the leader boards, and they tell me, (dramatically) "It's always one word: Umehara." Which is Daigo's last name. He's got like a 94 percent win ratio, and these are against the best players in Japan.

I know we've excited the Street Fighter II crowd, we've excited, probably, the greatest Street Fighter player in the history of the game, and even the Street Fighter III crowd, which are very dedicated to the whole parrying mechanic, have come right on board. That was actually more than I was expecting.