Facebreaker Interview: EA Starts a Fight

EA's Todd Batty discusses the decline of beat-'em-ups and why Facebreaker's a sleeper hit. Plus, what happens when Jack Thompson and Peter Moore get punched in the game?

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Kikizo: So do you hope that Facebreaker will build into a bigger brand that has potential for a sequel?

Todd: Potentially! I'm hoping we do well right out of the gate though! I am hoping that Facebreaker 1 ends up being that sleeper hit we want it to be. And you know, you referenced the fighting genre - working on this was the first fighting game I officially designed; I've worked as consultant on some and whatnot, but it's the first one I've officially designed. I took a good, hard look at the fighting genre, and tried to figure out why it's been in decline - although they're saying this year is going to be the year of the fighter - we've had Super Smash Bros. and Soulcalibur - people are hoping it's the year of the comeback of fighters - but to me, the fighting genre just got so hardcore, and games got so complex and complicated, that the barrier of entry for someone who's just like, "hey I light fighting, fighting in games is fun!", I mean you can't get any more primal than two people beating the crap out of each other in a ring! But fighting games just got so complex and so hardcore that there was this small niche of people who played them, but for other people to join them just because so difficult. So we kind of want this to become a 'gateway' fighting game, you know, here's a fighting game that has a lot of the basics of fighting games - combinations, character-specific attacks, but do it in a light-hearted, approachable, just more fun way. And I think we've done that.

Kikizo: It pains me to say it since I love the series, but I think VF is almost to blame for the relentlessly hardcore direction that the genre has continued to go in for the last yen years; I mean they say that number 4 and number 5 of that series were designed to be more accessible, but it really it's still not pick-up-and-play, despite being the best.

Todd: I agree... I've played Virtua Fighter 5 - and I've never played the earlier games in that series - I picked up VF5 as part of doing research for this game, and I just couldn't get past the 120-page manual! I mean I spent a lot of time in practice mode, and I can see how if you want to invest in that as someone who's a big fan of the series or of hardcore fighters, it does everything really, REALLY well, but at the same time it does have that barrier.

Kikizo: What were you doing prior to this game then? And I'm loving the art style and the characters - are any of these concepts and designs from you personally?

Todd: This [art style] is mostly the brains of art director Greg Juby and our creative director and character designer, Trey Smith - and many concept artists. I mean there was a whole team of people who put these characters together. But the cast of characters was developed before I started working on the game, and it was my job to work on the animation and gameplay, and really try to bring them to life and create a system for them. The last game I designed was NBA Street Homecourt, before that I worked on the NBA series on the last generation of consoles, NBA Live 03, 04, 05, at EA Canada up in Vancouver.

Kikizo: That's great - thanks for showing it to us. And also, I think you should definitely ship with that Peter Moore rendition in the game...

Todd: We're shipping with Peter Moore in the game, actually! I actually personally sent him an email a while ago, because we've used him in all the presentations that I've done, and it's cool for people to see themselves in the game, and when I asked him if he wanted to be in the game, he said he'd be "honoured". He figured that everyone would either want to fight with him, or beat the crap out of him! He's so good, just a great guy.

Kikizo: Yeah. How many other characters like that are there aside from the main cast?

Todd: I think we're going to have seven or eight custom characters, all of which are 'celebrities' whose faces we think people might want to break!

Facebreaker is out today in North America and at the end of the week in Europe. A Wii version, FaceBreaker K.O. Party, is set to follow in November.

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