Capcom denies Street Fighter lead designer to use their license
Capcom denies Street Fighter lead designer to use their license
For over three years David Sirlin, currently lead designer and balancer of Street Fighter HD Remix for the Xbox 360, had been working on Yomi, a card game based on the ability to mind-read the opponent (Japanese: yomi). With characters, and moves directly taken from Street Fighter Sirlin's card game could have easily surpassed the obvious limits of its videogame-y counterpart by allowing any kind of player to take up Street Fighter as an easy-to-learn but yet hard-to-master card game. Capcom, though, denied David Sirlin, Capcom employee since 2004, to use the Street Fighter license for his Yomi card game "due to other things [Capcom] have in the works [for Street Fighter]," states Sirlin. Even though there will be no Yomi in the US, Europe, Japan (or in any digital form) with the Capcom license, Sirlin plans to release the card game with other--not Capcom-licensed--art. And appreciates any help.
This news is especially bitter for Sirlin and Co. as nine, balanced-out prototype decks of Yomi are already based on the Street Fighter franchise. In combination with a refined game mechanic, attacks beat throws beat dodges beat attacks, high-resolution sprites of SF HD Remix would have made it on the decks of Yomi. Of course, Sirlin isn't quite thrilled about Capcom's decision:
After pouring my heart and soul into Capcom products for many years, it's honestly an emotionally crushing blow.[...]My goal was to capture in a card game the mind games that take place in Street Fighter. I wanted to present the guessing games and "knowing the opponent" skill in a way that anyone could pick up, not just those dexterous enough to play the video game.
After about two years of development, I felt it was good enough to take to Capcom licensing. After some resistance, I did get an initial sign off to do a print run of limited size to be sold online-only, which was totally fine with me. [...]
Before I was able to work out the numbers, my contact at Capcom left the company. It took another year before I was able to even hear back from anyone, and it now seems that the answer is no, due to other things they have in the works.
Even though Capcom did a (seemingly) devastating blow to Yomi, Sirlin plans to go on, and wants to release the card game whatsoever--with or without Street Fighter licensed art. If you are a talented artist with specilization in the portrait or character art department, then Sirlin could very well use a helping hand with the card design. Just head over to Sirlin.net and let him know.
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4-year-old Capcom employee ?
Ehem, my bad. Corrected it.
Pretty dumb if you ask me. Being a company employee and using well-known company owned characters in his own game? Before ever investing "2 years" doing that he should have signed a licensing contract with Capcom to ensure the right to use the characters... Or do as many employees do, learn how a company does things then start fresh with a new idea on a new game (whether it be a card game or video game).
Unfortunately going to a company without any elaborate prototype of your concept won't get you very far. The two years where Sirlin put up beta decks, and figured out how the card game is gonna get played were a must, in my humble opinion.
He is better of with a designer for the cards, cause currently they look very shitty. However, losing the brandname will make this a flop more or less.