Street Fighter 6’s extensive avatar creator was a result of players asking for characters
In a recent Famitsu interview celebrating Street Fighter 6’s first anniversary, director Takayuki Nakayama talked about the game’s development, first year of release, and promising future. With regards to development, Nakayama gave a deeper look into one of Street Fighter 6’s most surprising inclusions – the avatar system. This system was born out of player requests and the franchise’s own inclusiveness.
According to Nakayama, long-running fighting game franchises like Street Fighter often receive requests for various characters to be added to their playable character roster. While Nakayama states that he tries his best to fulfill as many fighter requests as possible, they are not always possible to pull off. The avatar system was meant to remedy this somewhat, as players can create the character of their dreams (or nightmares) and take them into the game.
“From a personal point of view, I want to fulfil such requests as much as I can, but as a developer, I know that it’s not always possible. Thus, I had the idea of letting players get a taste of their desired characters by having them make them themselves. So, in a sense, it was kind of according to plan. As a result, you can see a lot of very familiar-looking characters going about.”
While Street Fighter 6 still has the franchise’s classic Arcade mode, the new World Tour and Battle Hub modes feature player creations that can be just as wacky as anything Capcom thinks of. Avatar body parts can be stretched to unrealistic proportions and outfitted with the weirdest gear – the latter of which provide buffs in certain modes.
By far the coolest thing about avatars is how players can create their unique playstyles. Players choose a base fighting style of an existing Street Fighter 6 character and can modify their special moves and supers accordingly. A character with Luke’s base moveset can use Blanka’s Rolling Attack and Akuma’s Shun Goku Satsu super attack. Character fighting styles and moves can be acquired through Street Fighter 6’s World Tour mode and used in both World Tour and the Battle Hub’s avatar battles.
Indeed, the avatar system is one of Street Fighter 6’s most unique features, as every player-created character is different from each other. While players can’t take their creations into Casual or Ranked matches (that would be too chaotic), avatars have their little place in the center of the Battle Hub where they can fight to their heart’s content.
As for why Street Fighter 6’s character creator allows for such a high degree of freedom, Nakayama attributes this to Street Fighter’s versatile setting and world. “…the Street Fighter series features everything from an Indian man who can extend his arms to a Brazilian who generates electricity, so I don’t think the worldview can be broken that easily. That’s the reasoning I used to push the idea.” With this in mind, the team pushed through to create one of the most expressive character creators in recent game history.
