I'm really glad you brought that up, many of people say that when they first hear the idea. However, we assure you by not controlling your drawing, its actually much cooler. Its not really about me vs you, its about my ninja vs your dinosaur. We are bringing these drawings to life. By letting people control the characters it would belittle the intelligence behind the game and be like every other fighting game out there.
It is much more rewarding to see your character preform an epic karate kick because you have drawn long legs and a headband rather than just pressing the B button. Its more of a strategy/design/creation game rather than a traditional fighting game. All the fun is had with a pencil and paper.
Explaining that doesn't negate the initial disappointment. Having a reason why doesn't make the person feel any less disappointment.
It's like when you give your kid an large expensive toy, and you help them unpack it and show them it, and they then spend the day playing spaceships and forts with the big carboard box it came in.
You can't dictate fun, and the cool features you managed to script in the background are great and all, but if you get hung up on them and they block people having fun with it then you killed 100% of it because you got fixated on 30% of it.
I've worked on a lot of video games (indie and commercial), and this is a perfect example of something that is much cooler to you (the programmer) but not to the player.
You 100% need to have a player-controlled vs mode or the whole thing is a waste of time. You can ALSO have the autoplay strategy/design/creation (what does that even mean?) if you want. And maybe it will emerge as the winner.
But don't take my word for it. Spend two days and make a simple versus mode (two players on one keyboard, for example). Sit down five or ten random people from your target audience in front of each one and ask them which one they like better.
I understand your point, but as an avid fighting game enthusiast myself you've got to understand that the game has a broad audience of everyone who wants to upload their hand-drawn characters. From a technical aspect, it's got to be easier to grasp than even say, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and in the eyes of the fighting game community that's about as non-technical as you can get. Developing a hard-core fighting game is a different task all in it's own, and since the idea of graFighters is to have a move pool of thousands with a character pool of infinity, extrapolating those figures with a traditional fighting game engine and we'd be in for trouble.
graFighters isn't just a fighting game, and that isn't meant to be a sly against fighting games - the truth is, graFighters does a bit of a bunch of different genres; There's fighting, but then there's also strategy, there's also social networking in a sense, and there's also drawing. It's not "a fighting game" or "a strategy game", but saying that it's a fighting game is the easiest way to explain it to the largest audience in the least amount of words.
The point is that you will also very often see your drawing getting roundedly ass-kicked without being able to do anything about it. In the demo movie you showed I was deeply rooting for the gullible girl with huge arms but had to see her getting beaten over and over. After putting that much time into your first character, only to see her not being fit for fight, I don't think anyone will be coming back.
Providing a quality product means meeting people's expectations. You say that many people expect to control their character, so let them. You're in awe of your excellent algorithm, but people are not going to be so happy when they don't get your algorithm on the first try.
You could still map different moves to different keystrokes depending on the output from your algorithm and make the result depend on the characteristics .
Last but not least, don't look down on "every other fighting game out there". The only users that will be interested in your game will be people that are deeply in love with every other fighting game. They will expect to be able to use their honed fighting game skills in your game as well, but with the awesome addition of bringing their dream character to life.
Above all, they will not get back to the drawing board when their awesome character is shredded to pieces by a simulation over and over.
"very often see your drawing getting roundedly ass-kicked without being able to do anything about it"
In reality you are able to do alot about it. Aside from the actual fight, everything you do controls what will happen. How your draw, who you choose to fight, what arena you fight in, what items or weapons you select etc etc. Simply because you are not pressing buttons at the time of action does not mean all hope is lost and everything will become a random simulation. A la the video, we are working on the balance of the game.
"The only users that will be interested in your game will be people that are deeply in love with every other fighting game"
Disagree, almost all of the people who have sent us sketches are not from the typical gamer crowd. They are drawn to the fact they don't have to control them, it takes the pressure off.
"You say that many people expect to control their character, so let them."
This is a really interesting argument that I go both ways on. History has shown both times where it pays to listen and times it pays to ignore your users requests and show them something new and better that they never even thought of. "Providing a quality product means meeting people's expectations" Or exceeding them :)
Thanks for your feedback though, you bring up some interesting points. We aren't ruling out controlling your characters forever, but for the initial launch we think it will ruin the purity of the game. We are exploring adding more decisive elements without adding live "control" if you know what I mean. Mini games etc.
The demo video isn't real the most fair representation - Petunia, the gullible looking girl, is actually really hard for most of the other characters to beat, but damage isn't her best match-up. Trust me, I was rooting for her too.
Also, you won't have a character getting pummeled again and again - but there are some opponents you might just not have any luck beating, and for those fights you want to have a diverse base of characters.
"The only users that will be interested in your game will be people that are deeply in love with every other fighting game." - I don't think this is true at all. The feedback we've been getting range from avid gamers, casual gamers, to even people who don't game, but would love to see their hand-drawn character brought to life. The problem with setting this up as a traditional fighting game is that is then becomes immediately too technical for 95%+ of our audience, which isn't really ideal.
