I expected a lot from the 1st announcement of King of Fighters XII.  And as a 2D game artist myself to have SNK Playmore going for a “full” 2D fighting game nowadays was a surprise. Pretty risky move, you need a lot of time to animate frame by frame, so imagine how time consuming it can be with HD sprites pretty much handmade (they used 3D models to have a smooth animation then exported all the frames to be drawn pixel by pixel). That was a deliberate choice by SNKP because Street Fighter IV was on it’s way, full cartoonish 3D. And i gotta say, i was not happy about it. Those 1st screenshots were so ugly and so polygoned, i mean, i worship Street Fighter III 3rd Strike gamesystem, musics and arts, so yeah i was kinda disappointed.

Basically i was closely tracking KOFXII and denied any SFIV news, until i had the opportunity to play Capcom latest installment during a trip to NYC. Thanks to Chinatown Fair Arcade.

1 player panel, 2 versus setups, check the players list on sticky notes, no more quarters lines :(

The best $1 i ever spent, my stun gauge was full, flashy eyes just like an ultra finish. The game was good, really good and i had to admit it.
Even at that time (sept08) Sagat was a pain in the ass, we were all noobs who couldn’t pull any “saving dash cancels”, but a single “forward roundhouse to ultra” leaded to many shouts and whines around the cabinets.
I started to fear that KOFXII, how graphically appealing it was, couldn’t catch up to his rival. Sadly it was true, the game was rushed, rough and simply didn’t feel right.

However i still admire the work, dedication and guts that SNKP put into the game. Sometimes you just can’t make up your mind, that’s why i tried to draw this KOFXII style Sagat.

ps: i used Goro Daimon sprite as size reference, big! i told ya :]

Or rather, since for practical reasons you usually call one person at a time, the first person I called when I started to think the Gamocracy idea could be something is Rémi. I did that because, on the one hand, the best idea is worth toilet paper if it’s not put in the right hands. And on the other hand, Rémi and Morgan can turn a toilet paper idea into a golden picture (just don’t tell their clients I said that).

Aka Darkside, Morgan has been working for ages with Rémi and they have a company together, Noside. They do a lot of video editing and compositing for all kinds of projects, from promo videos for the gaming industry to TV shows, to live broadcasting of events. They can do websites too, of course, else we wouldn’t be here. Actually they do so many things that I had to ask Morgan how he’d sum it up: “we build all kinds of pictures”, he said.

To better introduce you to them, I thought I’d let you know about some of the stuff we did together, which revolved around… Counter-Strike, once again.

Live broadcasting of stage matches at the Electronic Sports World Cup’s (click the picture to start the video at their site) is one of the best memories I share with these guys. I don’t remember how many times we did it precisely but these events usually took place here in Paris. They directed the on-screen show like no other while I was one of the people doing the live commentary. We even did it in California once where we casted in Enligsh! Yes, Enligsh, for the American audience still hasn’t forgiven our clumsy tongues. (who cares though? WE GO TO DO IT IN DR DRE’S LAND§§§§§§)

We did the same kind of stuff, but on a weekly basis, for French MTV subsidiary Game One. We had a show called “Arena Online” where 2 Counter-Strike teams would go at it for the Xfire (my employers at the time) Trophy. Once again I did the talking, commentating, and they edited the show and made it look real nice. This time I was casting alongside Julien Tellouck, who’s the main anchor at Game One, sort of like Geoff Keighley at Gametrailers/SpikeTV.

So, maybe you got it already, there’s a pattern when we work together: I do the talking, they do the building. That’s how we’re doing it again at Gamocracy. And man do they build right. Rémi on the technical end, Morgan with the graphics tablet: you can see for yourself if you’re into our beta. Or if you check their website where you can see much more of what they do.

Magicians have cards.
Rémi has big boxes with tons of buttons.
Morgan has cameras and tablets (but I don’t have a picture t.T)

Morgan is on Twitter
Rémi is on Twitter
Noside has a website

I don’t know about Morgan, dotsMarc and Rémi, but I find myself past the nervous stage. With the dice now rolling, it’s all about pushing and praying for a 6.

If you registered your email address and didn’t get a key, rest assured we’ll send more soon.

I’m also realizing that many of the people we’d like to see join in during the test phase, I’m talking friends and former colleagues mostly, actually didn’t register their email addresses. And I’m pretty sure some of them are expecting to get a key from the get go. So here’s a message to you guys: before you get offended because you didn’t get a key, and for the sake of our working hours (man, we already have tons to do!), it’d be great if you could register your email address to the right.

That would make things much easier on us because this way, we could put you in the hands of our robot.

See, I don’t know if you noticed already: we hired a robot to take some of the workload off of our shoulders. He’s nice and all.

I was walking down the street in the early evening months ago when it came to my mind that this site I was thinking about, it wasn’t called Gamocracy then, could use some pixel art. Who was I gonna call?

It made no doubt, it was so obvious: a former captain of Good Game, the Counter-Strike team I managed, draws sprites for a living.

It’d been quite a while since we’d last talked but it didn’t bother me one bit, I decided to call him right away. I took the phone out of my pocket, dialed the number as I remembered it from a previous life and soon dotsMarc (self-portrayed here) was on the other end.

At first I thought I was talking to a Gameloft employee, his last known location, coloring pixels for mobile games who could maybe give a hand here and there. As it turned out he had been fired a month earlier… A blessing in disguise: dotsMarc was excited about the idea for the site and totally free. Here we were set for work on Gamocracy.

A career in Show Gamesness

Marc is not your typical gamer: he managed to combine his geekiness with an acting career early on.

First he was cast in a TV show…

… then he made his debut in Hollywood the same year.

After that, always on the lookout for new experiences, dotsMarc accepted a gig in South-East Asia.

Pro Gamedesigner

All Gamocracy pixel art is made by Marc. Banner at the top, buttons on the side, visuals found in some entries, etc.

But that’s not all, see, Marc has a special flair for games: he gets good at every single one he tries. It gets on the nerves somtimes! He was a CS champion at the highest level, he’s G1 in Street Fighter 4 (15,000+ rating points), his Heroes of Newerth Kill/Death ratio is 1.4, etc. It’s as if he understood systems and how to handle them better than… well, me at least.

So dotsMarc is working at game design for us too. It’s kind of like we’re doing reverse engineering: he knows how to identify a system and its triggers? well right now we’re building our own system and triggers.

Indeed, there’s a game built in Gamocracy. We haven’t talked about it too much yet but we will soon.

get a hold of @dotsMarc on Twitter

This pixelart illustrated painting is our tribute to everyone spending their time and energy to make games. I had to make a difficult choice there, so many names and games memories in mind but only four spots for cool guys.

I think the balance is fair with those final 4 designers, pc/console/genre/culture. Even so excuse me in advance not picking your favorite one !

So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.