Throw a Fight, Win Big – That’s Just One of The Con’s Interesting Twists

by Louis Bedigian

“Our approach to fighting was built mostly around making you feel like punches and kicks were actually coming at you.”

I always liked to fool ‘em. Leave ’em jaded, confused, unable to comprehend what hit ‘em. Too easy half the time, otherwise it was too close for comfort. But I couldn’t stop. I wanted to keep building them up. Convince them to put down that money. Convince them to give into their own despicable desires, their own greed. I feed on that. I’m the king of this world. I am The Con. 

You bet your PSP I am! My hands-on impressions with the game made me feel like a champ (and a bit sleazy after throwing a couple fights). It also left me with many questions.

“Is that right, punk? Well, we don’t talk about that.”

Actually we do. We don’t talk about Fight Club. We do, however, talk about The Con. And one of the key people to talk to regarding this ruthless street fighter is Game Designer Mike Giam.

I've played the preview disc a while and I have to ask: Is there an exact science to achieving extra damage during the execution of special attacks?

Mike Giam: You can inflict extra damage with every impact your opponent takes….and we mean every impact – punches, kicks, when they hit the ground, anything!  The trick is to tap an attack button each time your opponent takes a hit during those grapple attacks. The timing windows and amount of extra damage you do varies from attack to attack, but it's a nice reward for those of you with that extra sadistic streak. Just don’t complain when the CPU does it back to you…

The over-the-shoulder camera view is great, but I imagine it must've been one of the hardest things to create.  Was it hard to reach a unique and entertaining level without letting the view fall apart?

MG: Traditional fighting games use removed, mostly side-view cameras, giving their games a kind of watching-on-TV quality. This is a directly result of the fighting game's arcade legacy, where both players shared a single screen. We knew we were targeting PSP specifically, which meant everyone would have their own personal screen. From that point, it was a short step to the idea of using an in-fight cam to really sell the feeling of dodging, weaving and counterattacking your opponents as opposed to guiding someone by remote.

Unfortunately, getting it to work was awkward and somewhat difficult at first because the issue of your own character blocking your view was a pain. Using a straight through-the-back view gave us some of the gameplay, but made it hard to judge distance. Simply ghosting your character made it easier to see your opponent's actions, but robbed the feeling that your own fighter was solid enough to really hurt your opponent. We even experimented with higher sky-cam view for a while, which preserved the dodging gameplay and let us see everyone, but that was a step backward to the "not in the action" feel traditional arcade fighters have.

In the end, we were able to combine many of the strengths of the various experimental views, and now that we have it, it has become one of those "it was so obvious, why didn't we see it before?" things. It is by no means perfect, and there is always room for improvement, but we are very happy with what we’ve got. 

Why is it beneficial to throw a fight?  I'd bet against myself if I thought I'd lose, otherwise I wouldn't.  That didn't seem to affect my performance too much.  Was I missing something?

MG: There are a couple of different reasons to throw a fight. As you go through Story mode, there may be times when the fights against higher ranked opponents are all set up a little too soon to properly rest, recover from an injury and train before the fight, so taking on a lower-ranked opponent might be a better option -- so why not play the crowd a little while you're at it?

Other times you might want to buy that special item you've had your eye on...a few of them can get pretty pricey, especially the ones that boost stats -- and many of them are available only for a limited time, so you'll need a quick cash boost. Sure, you could play some big odds betting on yourself against much higher ranked opponents, but after a few fights of that you'll be in dire need of rest and recovery, and what will you do then. On the other hand, if you're relatively high rank and throw a fight against a patsy, the pain-to-payoff ratio is much, much higher. Whatever little respect you lose by taking a dive is easily made up, since you can simply turn around and whip the next chump in line. You can even double-dip a little since of course you can bet on yourself in that follow-up fight!

By the way, here's a little tidbit of info: throwing fights early in story mode is not as easy and profitable as it is later on. The opponents are weaker, so it's harder to convince the crowd your loss is legit. Also since you yourself do not have a big reputation as a winner yet, the payoff is not as big either. You're much better off waiting until you've moved up a little – that's where the money really starts to roll in.

Have the con meter and con features been finalized, or are some aspects still being tweaked?

MG: The con meter and features are finalized in terms of how they work, but as crazy as it sounds, we are going to balance and re-balance this game for as long as we can all the way up to gold. We all want it to be the best it can be, and you can't work on this game without being willing to push limit and gamble a little :)

The character models are some of the best seen on the PSP.  Can you tell us about the technology surrounding them, like the polygon count?  Was motion capturing used?

MG: I’m afraid I can’t give you a straight answer on the poly count question. The customizable nature of our game means that the counts on the models varies a huge amount – after all, there is a huge gap between simple, bald characters in a T-shirt and a fully customized character with a head of hair, hat, earrings, neckwear in a jacket wearing gloves….well, I’m sure you get the idea. I can say that there are thousands of polys in the faces alone. After all, the facial structure not only supports the flexibility of all the adjustments you make in the editor, but also the in-game damage system and facial animations.

We did not use mo-cap for the game, although quite a few of the moves were based very closely off of real-life actions that were recorded and studied in depth. We are first and foremost and arcade game, however, and many of the moves are simply too dramatic and impressive for a normal human to be able to execute. You’ve gotta love it when the action goes larger-than-life! 

What's the history behind the different fighting styles used in the game?  Did Tekken, Virtua Fighter or any other game serve as inspiration for The Con?

MG: As you can guess, The Con began its early life as a straight-up fighting game. You can’t work on any sort of fighting game without looking at the classic fighting titles from Sega, Namco and Capcom….but in the end none of them were the kind of fighting game we wanted to do. They were all designed with the arcades in mind, and the project that became The Con was always imagined as a pure PSP piece.

So to answer your question…were they an inspiration? Of course, they are incredible games that influence any designer who plays them. Did they shape the foundation of our gameplay? Not so much. The nature of the PSP inspired us to go to entirely different influences. Our approach to fighting was built mostly around making you feel like punches and kicks were actually coming at you, something none of those games did. We ended up drawing from a wide variety of sources, including old-school games, first person shooters and even a few movies here and there. That, combined with Think & Feel’s experience in the boxing genre created an interesting basis on which to build The Con.

How were the fighting styles that were chosen determined?

MG: Our fighting is all about rhythm, cadence and anticipation. Our goal was always to make the fight mostly about how well you know your opponent, not how well you know your game character. The fighting styles are an extension of that, each with its own rhythm and speed to it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten used to side-slipping the quick forward knee strikes of a kickboxer, only to have the same movement send me face first into the big swings of the wrestler the very next fight.

Are there any attacks, combos, or special moves that have not been revealed to us yet?

MG: Well, as you progress in Story mode, your characters get new moves and new super attacks. As you add to your available moves in the combo editor, those new moves often lead to you being able to do things you couldn’t do before. There are whole sets of moves that are only available 2 or 3 moves into combo strings. For example, the wrestler has a German suplex attack, that is only available as the second move in a combo after – you need a 1^st attack to land as a “set up” for the move. Jeet Kune Do has some powerful body shots in its repertoire that you will need to “build” into using other moves – what those moves are is still totally customizable, though. Add that together with the fact that you can learn to work the combo editor so that different chains interlink and overlap, and I’m sure there are going to be more than a few surprises coming down the line for everyone playing this game.

Are there any secret playable characters?  The guy who wears the mask, perhaps? :)

MG: Of course we have a number of secret playable characters. What kind of fighting game would we be without them? I have to be honest, though – I like my own better. I have built them up to be (in my opinion) superior to the pre-built characters. Also, I keep editing and re-editing what they wear and the way their combos fit together so that when I take them into Ad Hoc, nobody ever knows what to expect. And as soon as I lose, I go in and change something again….what can I say? I like to win. 

Other than making your homemade character cooler, is there any reason to get rich?  You need cash for the hospital -- are there any other situations where it comes in handy?

MG: There is a boatload of items to buy, and many of them do a lot more than just make your character cooler. There is a subclass of items that actually boost your stats. As you can imagine, they are pretty expensive, but can provide the edge in those close fights. They appear during Story mode for limited times, so you’ll want to have big bucks on hand for those “impulse buys.” Of course, if you’re not the money-grubbing type, you could try to persuade your friends to risk theirs against yours in Ad Hoc fights. Of course, if you happen to lose….

There isn't any blood but the content is somewhat mature.  What ESRB ratings are you hoping to achieve and, if necessary, are you willing to make changes to get that rating?

MG: Once we got the game together the way we liked it, we submitted and received a T (teen) rating straight up. Nothing was added or edited to change the rating we received from ESRB. The game is what it is: there is no blood, but we do have a brutal facial damage system and of course we feature characters beating each other up, so hopefully y’all will find that plenty satisfying. I know we do.

Thanks Mike for the awesome details.