Guilty Gear Strive studio wants to grow the fighting game community through more collabs like Dragon Ball FighterZ

Growing the fighting game community has been a challenge for many developers over the years. The genre is competitive by nature, so it’s easy to feel excluded or gatekept if you lack the skills to hold your own in a fight. Guilty Gear Strive developer Arc System Works wants to see the community expand, and its solution involves more collaboration.

Speaking to IGN at EVO 2022, Arc CEO Minoru Kidooka said that partnerships are the path forward. Specifically, working with other companies can help the studio gain more of a foothold in the West, where its games aren’t as popular. “We need to expand communities through IP,” Kidooka said. “In the future, if we have such an opportunity, we are actively pushing to collaborate with new IP owners.” Arc’s game library already contains a few collaborations, with 2018’s Dragon Ball FighterZ (one of the best Dragon Ball games ever) being the most recent. Modders have already put Goku in DNF Duel, another recent Arc outing, so clearly there’s a lot of love for the Dragon Ball IP among fighting game fans. Arc System Works hopes to capitalize on more of these fandoms in the future.

Collaboration is one method by which the community can grow, but that’s just one path. Warner Bros platform fighter MultiVersus had a similar goal: creative director Tony Huynh wanted to “remove as many barriers as possible” for new fighting game players, resulting in the game being free to play. Clearly, that strategy is working, because MultiVersus has reached 10 million players despite still being in beta.

Even fighting game staples like Street Fighter are looking to be more appealing to newcomers. Street Fighter 6 includes a “modern input” system that will allow new players to more easily pick up and understand the mechanics of the game. Pair that with the introduction of new characters like Kimberly, and you have a good chance of expanding the player base. Some Street Fighter fans even think the new game should go free to play like MultiVersus to further increase its appeal.