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Seth Killian joins Sony Santa Monica to work on All Star Battle Royale

Wario64

works for Gamestop (lol)
https://blog.us.playstation.com/2012/07/02/a-message-from-sony-santa-monica-studios-newest-employee/

Hello PlayStation, I’m Seth Killian. A few of you may know me as a familiar face in the world of fighting games, but I’m writing today to say that I’ve joined Sony as the lead game designer for the external group at the Sony’s Santa Monica Studio.


I was excited to join Santa Monica Studio in particular because of the chance to work with some great individuals, but also because of the incredible range of projects they take on. If you head out of my office and turn right, you’ll run into the “God of War: Ascension” team. If you turn left, you’ll find the Giant Sparrow crew working on “The Unfinished Swan.” There are other amazing studios in the world, but nowhere else that I know where you can find that kind of diversity combined with such a deep commitment to greatness–which also happens to sum up what’s so exciting to me about Sony overall.

The external group works with Sony’s outside studios — teams like Queasy Games (Sound Shapes), Fun Bits Interactive (Escape Plan), thatgamecompany (Flower, Journey), and… SuperBot Entertainment, makers of PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale!

Fighting games are very close to my heart, and as someone that’s spent much of my life with traditional fighters, All-Stars has been a great opportunity to take a step back and rethink fighting fundamentals from the ground up. The entire team was put together from scratch to create this game, and they are loaded with fighting game superstars (including some impressive tournament credentials–I’m not even the first EVO finalist to join the team!) who love great combat just as much as I do.


All-Stars is also a total love-letter to Sony fans. From the characters, to their special moves, to the incredible level 3 supers, and the stages themselves, I’m not sure there’s ever been such a giant dose of fan-service in Sony history. Beyond great character designs or all the ingenious little ideas that make combat feel great, the real test of a great game to me is that “just *one* more game!” feeling. If it’s 3am and you have to work the next day, but you’ve still got the urge to play again, you know you’re doing something right. You only have to walk through SuperBot’s studio and see all the staff being scolded to stop playing their own game andget back to work to know that they’ve really got something special cooking.

You don’t have to take my word for it, however–we’ll be taking All-Stars on the road and making sure you guys have plenty of opportunities to go hands-on, starting with PlayStation’s first official presence at EVO this weekend. More details soon.

For everyone that’s already reached out, thank you so much for the kind welcome into PlayStation Nation, and for everyone else, I look forward to doing my absolute best to give PlayStation fans the great games they deserve.
 

Geek

Ninny Prancer
Oh, look! Here's a long interview I did with Seth about the move from Capcom to PlayStation! He'll be working on more than just fighting games.

http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012...joins-sony-santa-monica-playstation-all-stars

"I am intensely interested in balance," Killian said, "but to do it right means taking time to try and understand not just a few characters, but the whole ecosystem of All-Stars, which takes some time. That said, the target is definitely to make it withstand and even shine under serious competitive pressure. It's a fun game that you can just mash around in with friends, but the SuperBot team includes a lot of stone-cold fighting game killers who want to build something they enjoy too, and you only have to look around the office to find them all playing for fun and smiling."

"All-Stars is a real wild-card in my opinion, which is part of why I wanted to work on it," Killian continues. "It ignores a lot of conventional thinking about fighters, both in terms of how you win (no lifebars, only supers kill, regular moves build super meter) and in terms of execution. There are some tricky styles of play, but none of the moves are hard to do at all (button, or button + direction), so you can get the basic elements very quickly and dive into strategy much faster than you could in a traditional fighter.

"Taking a what people think of as a 'fun' or 'party' genre and sticking a bunch of extremely technical and smart players on the project has this amazing result--a game on very serious underpinnings with a zany fan-service wrapper. It ends up being something total noobs can have fun with while also rewarding smart players and clever mind reading. The noob won't beat the good player, but the weirdest thing about All-Stars is that I have fun even when I'm getting owned. Usually when I get creamed in a fighter, I get kind of depressed, or feel helpless, or maybe even angry.

"In All-Stars, for some reason, I'm left smiling and curious, with the urge to play just *one* more game. Maybe it's just PaRappa, but I think they're really on to something."
 

BoSox06DH

Member
Interesting news. It's good that he got a job quickly after leaving Capcom. I'm not that interested in this game, but a few characters being in there could change my attitude in a heartbeat.
 

Revven

Member
Oh my goodness, megaton! Perhaps this was Sony's plan all along!

Anyway, I hope he can push for some options in the game so players who like Smash can actually play this game. I can't stand the current idea of get super > KO foes. Even if I haven't played it yet, I'd rather play Stock with %.

I guess this also confirms Seth's EVO presence! YAY bring on the awesome commentary, Seth!
 

zlatko

Banned
Good move on his part. I hope this is a success for them, but at the same time I'm wondering what projects Seth will be involved in if this were to tank.
 

Clipse

Member
Had no interest in the game, especially after the boring E3 presentation, but now will keep an eye on it.
 

Brazil

Living in the shadow of Amaz
Well, the game's practically done at this point, so I don't see how he'd be able to actually influence anything.
 

TreIII

Member
Interesting...I'll be keeping an eye on this now.

And hey, if it gives Sakurai all the more incentive to stop purposely gimping his own game, so much the better...
 

Chavelo

Member
Sony All Stars for EVO 2K13. And Smash Bros: Namco Edition to follow it for EVO 2K14. Now I really gotta catch the EVO panel for the game.
 

Takao

Banned
Capcom betrays Sony, Capcom employees betray Capcom to go to Sony. This some Jurassic Park shit right here
 

rdrr gnr

Member
This a huge deal. Wow. Sony is really trying with this game.
Lead game designer? I guess I didn't know he had that kind of skill set. Does it involve any coding or deep technical knowledge?
Not necessarily. There a few notable designers out there that don't code. Jaffe for one. I'm guessing by design they mean his knowledge of fighting games and how mechanics should work. So probably spreadsheet/brainstorming stuff. Unless he knows code. I'm not sure.
 

JeTmAn81

Member
Lead game designer? I guess I didn't know he had that kind of skill set. Does it involve any coding or deep technical knowledge?
 
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