At Arc World Tour 2022, announcements have been made for Guilty Gear Strive and DNF Duel. Guilty Gear Strive introduced their brand new DLC character Bedman? As well as a new stage: Fairy’s Forest Factory. DNF Duel introduced their first DLC character Spectre for a Summer 2023 release date, as well as the release of a Nintendo Switch version launching April 20. After the exciting reveal of this new information, we were able to interview the lead producer of Guilty Gear Strive, Ken Miyauchi, to discuss the new releases set for the game as well as where the game is headed in the future.

mxdwn: I wanted to start this with, of course, the new character Bedman? that is coming out. I was really curious about learning about Bedman? because Bedman died in the lore of the previous games. I am interested in learning if the lore plays a role in who you decide to be DLC characters?

Miyauchi: Okay, so yes Bedman died in Xrd, and in Guilty Gear Strive’s Season Pass One, there is additional story content called, Another Story In Another Story, Bedman actually appears, but it is actually not really directly Bedman, it is the bed frame with part of Bedman’s spirit in the bed frame trying to protect his sister Delilah. That is why we call the new character instead of Bedman, we put a question mark at the end Bedman? It gives a little bit of a twist to the character. The character’s look is very similar to the Guilty Gear Xrd Bedman, but if you have seen how he plays or if you actually get a touch on the character you’ll notice that the character is actually very different from how he is in Xrd and I’d like the players to see how he is different and what’s fun about the new Bedman?

mxdwn: Because Bedman is now Bedman? Is there anything that you can reveal about any differences between how he played in previous games versus how he plays now?

Miyauchi: Yep so, it is kind of hard to describe, and I would like to say that I would like to leave that to players, to their impression. What I feel is that he is more fitted into the Guilty Gear Strive game design, while at the same time, it does have some sort of Bedman aesthetic to the new character, the new Bedman? The main difference, in visual perspective, is Xrd Bedman is in a perfect form, and in Strive, Bedman? his arm has corrupted, he is not in his complete form or shape, his body is damaged, but that is a part of the game design. Bedman himself is on the bed and Delilah is walking with Bedman. We did a lot of technical tweaks to Delilah shown in the gameplay. Delilah does not have any power to fight in the game. We did a lot of things that do not really interfere with the gameplay, but then in the visual looks, there are a lot of small tweaks. I would like to see how people will react to those tweaks.

mxdwn: I was hoping to know more about the design process behind the characters, how does that process come about?

Miyauchi: So first, our battle game designers document out how the characters are going to play and the concept. Then those ideas will be shared to the art design team to make sure the design fits. Bedman already has a kit and design from Another Story, so it is not difficult to make the character into a playable character because we already have the design from the story. But how we wanted to approach gameplay is, we go through a lot of revisions and a lot of meetings with the team to discuss and bring up ideas. We also come up with a schedule for character development, how long we can take to develop the different ideas and put them together and that turns out to be the character.

mxdwn: That’s interesting, so do the character design process and kit-making process work in tandem with each other, or does one influence the creation of the other?

Miyauchi: I would say they kind of influence each other, so sometimes the artist’s side will bring up ideas about, ‘wouldn’t it be cool if a character moves like this’ and the battle designer takes those ideas and sometimes they go through, sometimes they turn out to be different. 

mxdwn: In terms of creating the characters, one thing I have found interesting about Strive is how diverse each character is and how diverse each of their mechanics are. How does the team come up with different mechanics for each character?

Miyauchi: So mainly the battle game designers talk about the character ideas, like how the character will be unique, so every time is different. It is not always like the same person bringing up the ideas, everyone in the team brainstorms and comes up with ideas to make sure the characters are different from each other and that there is some form of uniqueness to each character.

mxdwn: I have found that all of the characters are unique in multiple different ways, between the gameplay and the lore. I was curious if you had a favorite character from the lore perspective and/or gameplay.

Miyauchi: So, my personal favorite character is Happy Chaos as a character design. As for lore, I really like Sol Badguy, the main character. For a playable character, I would say I like all of the characters as far as game design goes. As a player, I do have a preference, but this conversation might go differently so I will not talk about it.

mxdwn: And have your favorite character preferences changed as you have played the different games?

Miyauchi: So, I became the Guilty Gear Producer last year, and I’ve been working with Guilty Gear since the production of Guilty Gear Strive, so I actually got into Guilty Gear starting with Xrd. Then I started playing the other Guilty Gear to learn about the series, then joined Arc Systems Works, and then I got into being involved with the series. So the first Guilty Gear game I got into was Guilty Gear Isuka, and the character I found really unique and interesting was A.B.A, though at the time I also played Bridget. At the time I wasn’t a core fighting game player, I was very casual, didn’t know a lot of the game mechanics, but then I got to play fighting games more after Blazblue came out and then I got into the series. 

mxdwn: Does that preference play a role in who gets to be an upcoming Strive character, for you or any people on the team?

Miyauchi: Yes I think so, I would say it’s not one hundred percent, but I can’t say we never have that kind of conversation in the team, I mean we all have our preferences and favorites, but then we also have to look into the market and the game design to see if the character fits into the current Guilty Gear Strive lore. So we are always discussing what character should be next, we always have similar conversations and things always change.

mxdwn: Speaking of new characters, I believe there is one more character left in this DLC pack, are there any plans for any more upcoming DLC packs?

Miyauchi: So we already have the plan for season 3, we already have a year planned for Guilty Gear Strive updates. We have a lot of things that we are trying to do, a lot of challenges, unlike season 2, I would say a lot of the updates in season 3 will be a lot bigger than a lot of people might expect, I can’t give any details yet, but I would say please look forward to it.

mxdwn: And with that in mind, you said that you have another year planned moving forward, how long do you see the game continuing beyond that?

Miyauchi: I would like the game to continue for five to six years, as long as I can, but it really depends on how we sell the game. If we really do a bad job, then maybe there won’t be that long, but as long as I am a producer, I would like to see the game go as long as I can, but if you would like to see more then I am expecting players to keep continuing playing.

mxdwn: Something that might have contributed to that, I believe, is that Guilty Gear is a well-versed game for new players trying to pick up fighting games and veterans. I would like to learn more about how you designed Guilty Gear Strive to fit both markets.

Miyauchi: We don’t have the definitive answer for that, we have been questioning that to ourselves almost every day whenever we are developing the game. Is the game too complex or is it too oversimplified? Does it have enough depth for competitive playing? We do not have a definitive method, but we are always investigating how things work and that can change over time, so that’s how we are looking into that.

mxdwn: So following up on the idea of competitive playing, as a newer player myself, I was interested in learning more about how the ranked system works within each given floor. Is it based on win streaks, level of the character you’re against, etc?

Miyauchi: We do have rules for floor changes and have players who are individually rated. I can’t give you all of the details because I don’t have the game design documents, but as long as I am remembering correctly, different floors have different criteria, such as if you spend certain meters or if you do something specific, then you will get higher ratings and get more points. Also, if you get to a certain level then there are restrictions that you won’t go down too many floors. Like you couldn’t go to the first floor from floor six just by losing. The original concept for the tower was that we did not want the advanced players to fight against a newcomer, then have the newcomer feel like ‘I don’t know how to play this game and there are too many people playing too well and I won’t be able to play this game.’ I mean the fun part about fighting games, always, happens when you are matched with someone of a similar skill level, so we want to make sure that happens and not have an advanced player play against a low rank player. That is why we have different rules in the ranked tower and are constantly seeing if the rule fits or not, it changes by the players and player base. We recently reached Xbox, so there are a lot of newcomers playing from the Xbox platform too, so we like to see how that goes and see if there is any need to change the rules to fit normal players.

mxdwn: Lastly, Capcom relatively recently announced their $2 million prize pool, I was curious to learn about your opinion of that announcement and how you think that impacts the fighting game community as a whole?

Miyauchi: I, as a part of the fighting game community, really appreciate what Capcom is doing because as a game genre, as an esports in terms of tiers, it’s not really high in the esports scene, so I think that if that opportunity potentially brings the fighting game scene, or the esports tier of the fighting game scene, a level higher, then that would also make the base of the fighting game industry also rise. At the same time, if the player base asks us to do the same thing, it would be difficult because $2 million is not that easy to fit in the prize pot, so we would like to investigate how we do our esports, but overall it’s been very positive.