Article - Accessibility Matters: A Case Study of Ketsui DeathTiny and M2 ShotTriggers The Best Shmup Port that Nobody Plays

*Note*  The contents of this  article are not a journalistic endeavor. The  viewpoint that I express  and the information I speculate on is based on  only observation,  extrapolation, inference, and anecdotal data. This  is an article of  opinion written for the purposes of discussion, not as  a statement of  fact. Please do not misconstrue my musings about M2  ShotTriggers as  factual statements, because they are not.

I  think enough time as passed where I  can write this article with a  level of confidence. Last year, when M2  ShotTriggers announced that  they were working on a port of Ketsui for  the PS4, I was both very  excited and nervous. The reason for excitement,  for any shmup fans not  in the know, is because M2 have set the gold  standard for shmup ports  in terms of both accessibility and accuracy, so  the prospect of them  releasing an improved port of one of my favorite  shmups made me happy.  For any of my readers who feel I have been harsh  on the lacking ZeroDiv  Psikyo ports in my other articles, the work  ShotTriggers has been  putting out is a perfect example of what quality  ports look like.

On  the matter of the previous Ketsui  port for PS3 and Xbox360 done by  5pb, I would say that the port isn’t  terrible, but is certainly lacking  due to accuracy issues (too fast  framerate + glitches) and poor  accessibility (training mode is barebones  and not very useful). Plus,  personally speaking, I’ve always felt that,  even though the input lag  isn’t higher than the other 360 ports, there  is something funky about  the ship movement and game feel overall. So, in  this regard, I felt  that even owners of the 5pb port should still look  into getting  DeathTiny, as it was likely to be a huge improvement.

Up  to Ketsui DeathTiny’s release, the  ShotTriggers team had not failed to  live up to the expectations that  the core shmup community had for  them. Garegga and Dangun Feveron were  both outstanding and DeathTiny,  to my relief, did not disappoint either.  The sprite work looks upgraded  and beautiful, the input lag is solid (3  frames, just like all the 360  shmups), and the accuracy seems right on  the money. In fact, as  Iconoclast reported in my interview with him  about the port, even an  obscure freeze glitch is preserved. Then, of  course, there is the  inclusion of a savestate system, two valuable  arrange modes, multiple  soundtracks, and a well-implemented online  leaderboard and replay  system.

All in all, I think  it’s safe to  say, as a game, DeathTiny is one of the best, if not the  best, shmup  ports ever made. I have been brimming with enthusiasm for  this port ever  since it was announced and have pretty much talked about  it non-stop  since its release. However, as talented and brilliant as  the  ShotTriggers team was with the concept of accessibility within the  game  (savestates, Super Easy Mode, those sorts of things), I feel the  team  fell short when it came to making this game accessible off the  console  and within the marketplace. However, rather than just blindly   criticizing M2 ShotTriggers and some of the decisions that they made   regarding the release, I’m going to offer my theory as to why things   played out the way they did, and how this situation can be avoided in   the future.

As I noted at the top  of this  article, the perspective I am about to present is based on  anecdotal  evidence gathered by yours truly, as well as extrapolation  and  interpretation of other sources of information. Again, do not  consider  this a journalistic presentation of fact. Based on the  interactions I’ve  had with a good number of western shmup players about  the game, as well  as monitoring for any threads or wider discussion  about DeathTiny, I  feel that the game has slipped under the radar of  most core players, and  is pretty much unknown to the general gaming  audience. When I’ve asked  people about why they didn’t buy the game, I  also noticed a trend in  people’s responses. The following is a  summarized list of why people did  not buy the game, starting with the  most frequent responses:

• “I haven’t heard of it.”
• “I don’t have a PS4, but would buy it on PC.”
• “I’m planning on getting it (but still haven’t).”
• “It’s too expensive; I can’t afford it right now.”

These responses, in my mind, can then be translated to the following decisions behind the release of the game:

1. Very little marketing and almost zero press coverage.
2. No PC release.
3. Inconvenient/obscure stores to buy from (PlayAsia, Japanese PSN).
4. Nothing can really be done about price (other than not making the extra ost DLC), but the importing costs don’t help.

Yes,  there are other reasons why  people wouldn’t buy DeathTiny, maybe  they’re just not into Ketsui in the  first place, but keep in mind the  people I’ve talked to are core shmup  players and the target audience  for the game. For fun, I also asked some  of my friends in the FGC if  they heard of the game or were interested  in it, and of course they had  no idea what I was even talking about.

In  case some of the readers of this  article are not aware, unlike the  previous PS4 ShotTriggers ports,  Ketsui Deathtiny never received an  international release. It was never  localized to English and it’s not  even listed on the North American PSN  store. The only way to play this  game is to (1) own a PS4; (2) pay $70  to import the physical disc; or  (3) buy Japanese PSN money from  somewhere and then use that money to  purchase DeathTiny on the Japanese  PSN. After that, you then need to  setup a Japanese PSN account on your  PS4 (which is a pain in the ass,  by the way). As a result, when you look  at what DeathTiny could have  been – a massive shmup release, the talk  of the year, as far as shmups  go – compared to what we got – an  uneventful launch that seemed to have  come and gone without note – it’s  really sad how things played out.  Rather than just lamenting this turn  of events, I also want to do my  best to present what I think happened,  and how it can be avoided in  future M2 releases (hopefully they continue  after Esp.Ra.De).

Ok,  so now the juicy part of this  article, my interpretation of what’s  going on with the ShotTriggers team  and why they probably made the  decisions that they did. One last time, I  could be completely wrong  about what I am going to say, but I am doing  my best to present a  thought-out perspective.

Since  these ports began life as PS4  exclusives, a common topic of  conversation has been why they did not  choose to create PC releases. On  paper, and especially from a western  perspective, the PC seems like a  perfect fit for the ShotTrigger ports.  PC is the home of the shmup, it  has the largest player-base that houses  the Touhou players, the  indie/dojin players, the people who play shmups  on Steam, and the  arcade players (like myself) who use PC to emulate.  The Sony  Playstation 4, while a popular system among many gamers, isn’t  really a  powerhouse for shmup players. Again, not to offend die-hard PS4  fans,  but there’s no arguing that the PC is king of the shmups. For  that  reason, among a few others (like how you can use different monitors  and  control methods), it seems narrow-sighted to only release on PS4.

So  this is where my theory comes into  play. Based on the contents of the  MLIG interview with the ShotTriggers  team (linked at bottom of  article), as well as content from their  interviews with Shmup’Em All  (also linked) and overall behavior, it is  my belief that the  ShotTriggers team is on a race against time. Let me  explain. It is my  theory that, financially, the ShotTriggers ports are  unviable, they  make little to no business sense (this is stated outright  by the team  in the MLIG interview) and everyone at M2 knows this. In  other words,  the ShotTriggers ports are purely projects of passion. Of  course,  people have said this before about M2, but I mean on a deeper  level. I  don’t just mean it’s a “passion project,” in that the devs care  about  what they are making (because it’s obvious that they do). I mean  that  it’s a passion project  in that  these ports are not being made with any commercial interest in  mind,  because it’s understood that the resources being put into these  ports  make no sense commercially. The goal of the ShotTriggers ports is  to  preserve as many arcade shmups as possible before M2 is forced to  pull  the plug on the project.

The  ShotTriggers team is the  antithesis of the current “games as a service”  model of video game  development. The reason why there is no marketing  for these games is  because marketing is expensive and is seen as a  waste of resources  (again, my theory being these games are more about  preservation than  commercial performance). The reason why a PC version  does not exist is  because the devs don’t have the time to support it.  As soon as one  project is finished they need to immediately start  working on the next.  It is my theory that the team probably has a hit  list of shmups it wants  to get done (hopefully Batrider, DOJ, and DDP  made the cut), before M2  has to say, “Look, we need your talent for  games that will actually make  money … we got this Sega Genesis Mini in  the works.” Obviously, I’m  projecting here, but watching the interview I  really got the sense that  M2 admires what the ShotTriggers team is  doing, but also understands it  can only go on for so long.

Another  perspective about the PS4  exclusivity that I think could be argued is  the angle that shmups are  primarily a Japanese genre and the PS4 is  more popular than PC among  Japanese players. Since Japanese players  don’t use PC very much, then a  PC port would not be viable. At face  value, that makes sense, but I  think there are some important factors  to consider. The first is that,  even among Japanese players, Ketsui  Deathtiny does not appear very  popular. While gathering anecdotal  information for this article, I asked  Arasaka, my Japanese STG insider,  about their response to the game. He  made a “rough estimation” that  about 20% of the scene picked up the  release. He said that almost all  the dedicated Ketsui players bought the  game, but that’s not exactly a  huge demographic. One thing that I think  that’s really important to  remind people about the core shmup scene,  whether western or Japanese,  is that it’s tiny. The amount of casual  players who see the game and  buy it on a whim or out of curiosity is  going to be much larger than  the dedicated fanbase. The core shmup  audience is not big enough to  hold up a dedicated developer for long –  just look at what happened to  CAVE. In that sense then, taking more time  between releases and doing  an international PC release would probably  be a savvier move (I mean,  I’m not an expert, but that would be my line  of thinking), but that’s  not what ShotTriggers is trying to accomplish.  Instead, I think they  are trying to get these ports out on a popular  convenient platform that  requires less support than something as complex  as the PC. I’m a PC  player, so don’t misunderstand my wording here as  me agreeing with the  decision to not release on PC (because I still  think a PC release  should have been a goal), I’m just trying to convey  what the team’s  perspective might be.

This line  of thinking probably  carried over to the decision to not have an  international release, which  I think is a big mistake. I’m not aware of  the costs and the time  requirements of an international release, but  no matter the reasoning, I  think this decision has damaged the  release’s accessibility greatly.  Remaining only in Japan cuts down on  the western players who’d be  willing to import it or go through all the  hoops to download it,  obviously, but I also think it hurts the  coverage the game could  receive. When you compare the amount of  articles about the western  release of Battle Garegga Rev. 2016, to the  single Eurogamer article  about Ketsui DeathTiny, it easy to see how the  game’s visibility has  been reduced. Maybe the budget for the game was  just too strained to  even make a western release happen, but as of  right now I can only  speculate.

Whatever  the reasoning behind why the  DeathTiny release was so DamnTiny (sorry,  couldn’t resist), I think  this is a good example that shmup developers  can learn from. I think we  all understand that shmups are a very niche  genre and sometimes maybe it  is tempting to not take the extra  marketing steps and just hope that  the audience comes and finds your  game. But, if one of the greatest  ports of all time of one of the  greatest shmups of all time with a ton  of cool extra content can slip  by its own audience because of  accessibility issues, that goes to show  how important making your game  easy to access really is. Soapbox  moment, but I do think this is an idea  more shmup developers should  consider, you basically need to throw your  game into the audience’s  laps, quality does not translate to  popularity.

Another  example that comes to my mind  is a shmup that I’ve recently got the  hots for, ring^-27. The funny  thing about ring is that it is super  accessible in a way (you can get it  cheap on DLsite with no drm, I’ll  throw a link at the bottom), but the  damn storefront is so niche nobody  is going to find it. I’m seriously  considering sending some emails out  about this game to see if we can get  it to show up on Steam or  something, or maybe I need to work on some  sort of index for these  niche indie games … but that’s a topic for  another article

;-)

Back  on the subject of DeathTiny and  M2, I do think there is light at the  end of the tunnel. Remember the  article I wrote about the Nintendo  Switch, where I said it could be  leveraged for discoverability? Great  minds think alike because that is  exactly what ShotTriggers is doing  with the upcoming Esp.Ra.De release. I  think this is a good compromise  and a way to widen the player base.  Again, I would love to see a PC  release, but you all just watch, when  this bad boy shows up on Switch  it’s going to receive a lot more  attention that Deathtiny did on PS4.  It’s funny to think that Esp.Ra.De  will likely end up more talked about  the Ketsui, but that’s what’s going  to happen. Let’s just hope that M2  has learned from the DeathTiny  release and are not keeping the  Esp.Ra.De release JPN only, because that  would be two steps forward,  one step back.

I was going to end this article with some kind of corny Esp.Ra.De “milking” the Switch joke, but decided not to.

Thanks for reading!

Cheers!

–Mark MSX

Links:

My Life in Gaming ShotTriggers Interview:

https://youtu.be/DKkCTB2eWRw

Shmup’Em All Interview with M2 Ceo:

http://shmupemall.com/interviews/interview-naoki-horii-m2-ceo-18616.html