Street Fighter 6 and the art of a bad logo

 You need a new logo? Give me 30 seconds in Adobe...

It's hard to pick out a current, active, and beloved franchise that goes back as far as Street Fighter does. All the way back to the early days in the arcade, defining the competitive fighting genre for decades to come with the introduction of combos in 1991's Street Fighter II, to the absolute apex of the franchise bar none; the Jean Claude Van Damme movie. (Obviously.) It's a franchise with countless entries and a whole much-beloved cross-over sub-franchise with Marvel that I absolutely forgot about until I sat down to write this blog. (To think, only Street Fighter and Fortnite have had the honour of crossing over with Marvel. At least until Kingdom Hearts 4 comes out.) And in all that time never once has anyone really sat back and looked at that largely unmolested series logo. You know, the aggressive font, the loud colours, the uniform layering. I wonder why that is?

"Well" you're probably thinking "Because Street Fighter as a franchise benefits minimally from how the logo is typed out. It's just fodder for the front box, who cares?" And you would be absolutely right in every point. It is just front box fodder and totally inconsequential to what makes a good Street Fighter game, we don't even think about how the logo looks. Unless the game decides to advertise itself and other products during the loading screens between matches, but that's a whole other bag of worms I don't even want to get into right now. But what if we did? What would it take for players to revolt in disgust at the title of the game regardless of whether or not we'd actually seen gameplay? What sort of butchering would need to be done from the design team and who would be insane enough to even attempt to do this? Well the current team helming Street Fighter 6, it would seem; because someone up in the design chair bit the forbidden fruit and shot it right through their intestines onto the marketing slides for all of us to gawk at. Yes, the rumours are true: the Street Fighter 6 logo sucks.

But why does it suck so much? Afterall we've all accepted the fact that a logo is nothing, garnishing on top of the steroid pie. Oh, and Capcom's designers seem to have a fetish for overly beefed-up men, we noticed it in the ugly redesigns of 'Marvel Versus Capcom: Infinite', the hilarious brick-form of Chris in 'Resident Evil: Village' and now the overly muscled Ryu of Street Fighter 6. It's like they hired a child to update all their characters into being the most 'manly' iterations that their underdeveloped minds can conjure up. Maybe that was the start of it, just seeing their deformed Ryu from this trailer put everyone on their guard as they realised "hang on, something's up here!"; only for the title reveal to knock them over and send their world into a tizzy. Yes, I have to say I think the Ryu butchering plays at least 30% of the role when it comes to decipher the fan backlash here. 

Let's ask ourselves for a moment; what is a title supposed to convey? Well on the surface level it has to be eye-catching, stand out on the shelf and against it's peers and look professional enough to subconsciously convince the potential customer that this is a product worth taking seriously, and thus buying. Delve a little bit deeper and we can deduce that the spirit of the game should reflect the choice of colours, sizing and font. The title itself needs to be legible and distinct so that it sticks in the minds of players and, once again, stands out. One could argue that the intricacies of this processes become less important as the series itself grows bigger and the reputation of those games takes on a life of it's own. Call of Duty can happily slap the abbreviation COD on it's box without anyone making the most passing comparison to fish. (Amazingly they never have, but they could) Maybe that exception is what Street Fighter is counting on.

Because as you've likely seen, the Street Fighter 6 logo is... let's say 'minimalist'. Whereas the logo of old was impact-driven, yellow hued with explosive red and white, and typically scratchy and sharp in the tips of each letter; this is a hexagon with the letters 'SF' balanced in it and a slapdash '6' literally plastered in the corner ontop of everything else. There's no denying it; it looks amateur. Graphic designers have come out to draw a comparison between this design and an SF pre-packaged logo on the Adobe Stock Image store which was apparently used as the logo for a French Sci-Fi convention called SF Connexion. You can compare the two logos, remove the 6, and certainly find more than a few similarities.

Of course there are differences, to be sure. The hexagon border has some applied wear and paint smudge to give it a moth-eaten, graffiti look and a few of the uniformly sharp edges of the convention's logo have been smoothed into round curves. Also, the F has been angled downwards in the Street Fighter logo, to further give into the subtle illusion that the logo is embossed or protruding from the middle. It's slight perspective work, very nice. But of course I'm picking at any straw I can find here, the designs are near-identical to one another. The S even features an identical and atypical serif tail in it's type- there's no doubt that one came from the other. If you are a believer, choosing this hill to be your Waterloo, you might have to fall back on the 'it's just an S and an F in a shape; there's only so many ways that configuration of characters can come out, there was bound to be crossover!' Which is true to a point. I think the small details tell a much more intentional story here, and even regardless of intent or not, maybe the generic-nature of the logo is a symptom of the problem!

We'll go back and confer with our stipulations. Is this eye-catching? Not really, it's uniform and bland with a colour scheme of white on grey that might as well melt into the wall. Is it professional? Nope. The design lacks any character or individuality and comes off more as an algorithm generated stock asset- because it pretty much is. Does it reflect the tone of the game? Well that is pretty much a 'wait and see' affair. Street Fighter is usually hand-in-hand with flamboyant and loud stages that take place all across the world and are bathed in explosive, not bloody, violence. This logo tells of a more subdued, realist, street-vibe which is trying to meld with the hip-hop track in the trailer; it certainly isn't indicative of Street Fighter's past, but we'll see how it fares in it's present and future. And is it legible and distinct? Honestly no. The SF abbreviation does not conjure 'Street Fighter' at a glance, the font is a rip-off and if I saw this on a poster I'd have to make the concerted mental leap to associate it with the product. So on nearly every level; I'd call this logo an absolute failure of design and intent.

Now does this mean the game itself is going to suck? No. It probably just means that one of the producers had a kid who wanted to buff up their design portfolio before entering college and so his daddy got him a gig designing for an ultra popular games franchise. That is my best guess for what happened here and I think it's decently believable. We're still in the teaser stages for Street Fighter right now, which means there's plenty of time to quietly shuffle this off and get something more in spirit of the game in. Although, nowadays games companies do have excessively hard times admitting to their mistakes and often posses themselves with a fatalistic hubris that demands they ride each decision until it's bitter demise, so maybe this is the next Street Fighter logo which is going to be printed on all the boxes. If so, then we can chalk this marketing blunder up as another victim of the excessively unnecessary corporate logo redesign age.

Crossover Week

 Whoops, I slipped into the upside down timeline it would seem.

Who doesn't like a little bit of crossover action in their video games every now and then to break up the monotony? I mean you've got to get sick of staring at the same old mugs in the same old worlds all the darn time, why not switch it up and stick Batman in the Ironman suit? But moving away from the whole DC/Marvel crossover concept which I know riles some people up to even think about, what about when game franchises get to pop over the fence and see what their fellow series' are up to? Well, we get some of the coolest cross-over franchises of all time like Marvel vs Capcom, Kingdom Hearts and Super Smash Bros. It's a great way to envision otherwise rigid character roles in vastly different scenarios and set-ups wherein they can interact with others in ways that you might never have thought of in your wildest dreams. For example, who'd have thought that Goofy and Donald Duck would make such great battle friends in the war against the heartless? (Hmm? They're from the same- no way!) For me, I always love a little bit of a crossover time because it shows studio creatives shaking hands with one another and there really should be more of that across the art world in my opinion. However, that being said, even I have to admit that this past week has been a bit too much.

I'll never bemoan throwing franchises together every once and a while, but some sort of devil's bargain was pulled of these past few days because it's as though the magic boxes which contain all our favourite universes have just crumbled away and left us all in chaos. Not so long ago I thought that the most imaginative new crossover project I would see in modern years be the Final Fantasy XV crossover with Assassin's Creed. And to be fair that was absolutely wild, for a series that at least masquerades as being alternate history to crossover with a purely fantastical franchise, but I think some of last week's antics might be threatening to give even that the ol' run for it's money! I like to imagine the people who don't keep abreast of every development in the gaming world, like I do, and who might perhaps even be unfamiliar with the franchises being referenced. I'd love to see the reaction of a laymen to the Assassin's Creed Origin event where a fancy dressed Anime man teleports his way into a pyramid only to be chased out again by a gigantic flying knight with wings made out of swords. ("So which Egyptian myth was that again?")

Yet even with that sort of precedent, I myself am quite a bit taken aback by the event coming towards 'Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid', not least of all because that game was such a rudimentary fighting game easily outpaced by any of it's rivals that I didn't think it was worthy of receiving any support. I mean sure, the devs were going to take advantage of the lack of Power Ranger's games out there, mixed with the rabid fanbase, to fleece some overpriced microtransactions or two, that was a given. But why would any self respecting licence holder agree to having their brand associated with that sort of game/scheme? What's more, why the heck is the fighting game of the industry doing the crossover? That's right, Ryu and Chun Li from Street Fighter are actually suiting up as Rangers to get in on this game! (Hear that Jezebel? That's Chun Li from Street Fighter. Not Mortal Kombat.) This isn't even just skin jobs either. Both fighters have been given their own custom Ranger suits, which is a pretty big deal for fans, and their movesets are reminiscent of their Street Fighter appearances. Scrub my mouth out- but this actually looks like a well-executed Crossover coming to a game which may not deserve it. (How utterly weird)

But it get wilder. Because just as the gaming world was slowly trying to come to terms with the fact that was going to be happening and how we as a society failed to stop it, another crossover with a seriously questionable concept was announced. And I'm cheating with this one, because this isn't actually two gaming series' coming together at all. (Which does, in honesty, make it just a bit more odd.) For some incomprehensible reason fans of Rainbow Six Siege are getting Rick and Morty style skins added into the game. No, this wasn't announced a couple of weeks back on April 1st, this is apparently a real Collab. And want to know the worst part? One of the skin's is Pickle Rick. Oh god, the fifty year-old executives in the decision-room just learnt what memes are, but they're two years behind the curve anyway! That's right, the operative Smoke will be getting the Pickle suit (with Rat head) and a portal gun attachment whilst Sledge gets a Gromflomite uniform. Genuinely don't know what that second thing even is. Don't know if it's from a series I watched or if it came after I stopped watching because the community is the worst. (I should really finally catch up with Rick and Morty now that I'm reaching the end of Golden Wind- damn it, the crossover advertising worked!)

Yet of course that's not the end. Because what sort of 'Crossover week' would this be with only two crossovers? Pitiful numbers I say; Muda! What we also have to throw atop the pile is a crossover that at least makes a lot more sense, both conceptually and in timing, but still stands out to me because I just assumed this had already happened at some point in the past. Resident Evil announced a crossover with Dead by Daylight during their news blowout from the last week, but they've been pretty scarce on actual details like who's actually getting ported over. Now Dead by Daylight is actually no stranger to crossovers, with 'Stranger Things', 'Nightmare on Elm's Street', 'Halloween', 'Left 4 Dead', 'Evil Dead', 'Scary Movie', and 'Silent Hill' already in the rooster to boast about. Resident Evil might be seen as an inevitability. However, the question is what creature is coming this game's way to represent RE's finest; because there's actually a fair few to pick from. Mr X would be the obvious choice, given his reputation as the unstoppable stalker, but Nemesis certainly looks a lot more monstrous. And, if we really want to advertise the new game, may I suggest that perhaps Lady Dimitrescu and her glove/knife hand might make an appearance? Hey it was just a suggestio- what's that dog doing with that hammer? NO! Don't send me back to Horny Jail! I won't g- >Bonk<

And finally, to cap it all off, was a crossover which isn't really a surprise to anyone given that Fornite still holds the rights to crossover with literally anyone they point their fingers at. But even then, it's not as thought they announce a new crossover every week, they had to choose this period of crossover madness to reveal their 'Horizon: Zero Dawn' character crossover. Which served as a reminder to me that Sony are very willing to sell their character rights over to Epic, yet are desperately reticent on letting the actual games themselves get to the wider gaming audience. Yes, I did just turn this, otherwise unrelated, conversation into another complaint about how badly I want Persona 5 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Let not a week go by without my stating: Screw Sony. 

So that is at least four crossover events that all were announced at in this random week midway through April, and I can't be the only one scratching their head thinking there's some sort of Holiday I missed, can I? I mean, there's also the recently announced crossover with Dragon Raja (An MMO I've never heard of) and Evangelion, (A classic Anime that's getting an inexplicable resurrection soon) but somehow that didn't pop as well. And Illusion connect is crossing over with Zombie Land Saga- what the heck is going on! Am I crazy. Are hundreds of crossover events happening every other week and I've just never noticed it before? I feel like that can't be the case but all this is just too big of a coincidence, isn't it? The anomaly must originate from me!

I do love the idea of joining characters and franchises together in crossover events, even when it creates a godawful affront to god like that Pickle Rick skin. (I don't need to see that thing ever again, thank you very much) Where the stiff barriers that form our worlds of fiction broken down a bit more, I think it would make for a much more varied and inclusive eco-system where creators aren't forced to do wild things like steal a bunch of characters from other indie games under the knowledge that they'll never come after you because you're untouchable now. (I'm 90% the person who said that was joking when they did; but just in case they weren't I won't name them and let you look up for the quote for yourself.) However, I know that the sanctity of story telling and world building means that fictional worlds needs to contain some consistency to themselves, and so these crossovers must be rare and inconsistent. Unless it's this week, in which case they're freakin' everywhere.