Catching up with Capcom's Seth Killian

Capcom's Seth Killian / Photo: M.Concepcion

As game publisher/developer community outreach goes, one would be hard pressed to think of another company that gets as heavily involved with their fans as Capcom, save for perhaps Valve and Blizzard. Senior community manager Seth Killian has been one of the key figures in getting Capcom fans that much more involved in the publishers' content decisions. He also provides a platform for the Capcom faithful to showcase their game-inspired creativity as well as presents opportunities to interact with the company through contests and events. He is also pretty good at fighting games. We thought to check in on Seth to see what's been keeping him busy aside from Super Street Fighter IV and Capcom's upcoming Captivate 2010.

Can you give a brief history on how Capcom Unity started?

The idea for something like the Unity site had been kicking around Capcom for before I was here, but there’s a big difference between having an idea and making it a reality, so my arrival was sort of the tipping point.  We had grand plans before we had to actually make anything, but when it really happened it was a lot of careful baby steps: expanding on the vanilla vbulletin forums, then on to a wordpress blog, then stretching the wordpress blog way beyond what it was meant to do, and then finally using a special platform designed from the ground up to support the kinds of things we wanted to do.  We got there over a year ago, and our excellent web tech team have been expanding that platform to its technical limits as well.

How do you see Capcom Unity excelling in ways that other game publisher's community sites don't?

I don’t really judge what we do in terms of what’s happening elsewhere.  Most of our ideas just come from asking ourselves the question “if I didn’t work at Capcom, what would I want to see them do as a fan?”  That gets you a surprisingly long way, but apart from that, we just put in the legwork.  There’s a lot of great social networking tools out, and many are totally free, but at the end of the day you have to have a real conversation with your fans.  No widget, API, or app is going to do that for you, so you need a committed staff that knows what they’re talking about, and lives the life.

The boogeyman for us was all of those fancy flash marketing sites that are never updated with no reason to go back.  What I think most people in the community space don’t realize is that you can easily recreate those crummy flash sites on twitter or Facebook by putting them up and leaving them to rot, or staffing them with clueless boobs.  Just using social networking tools doesn’t mean your site won’t suck.

What did you work-wise before joining Capcom?

I used to teach philosophy at the University of Illinois.  From that perspective, Capcom was a big shift, although in a lot of ways it was just lining up my lifelong hobbies with my day job.

Reaching out to the community on behalf of Capcom is obviously a reward in itself. Can you think of a specific example of your time at Capcom that was equally gratifying?

There are a million.  A week never goes by without seeing some fan creation or project that just blows me away, and honestly it’s what keeps me excited.  The Mega Man fans do all kinds of amazing projects—one girl sent us a bunch of Mega Man knit hats she had made, which I gave to Inafune-san (MM creator)—seeing him jump to put it on was really satisfying.  Another guy built a Mega Man out of bricks into a wall—it’s just crazy.  Every time I see someone throwing their own Street Fighter tournament, I smile on the inside, and of course my first hire was a Lost Planet superfan that did all kinds of amazing stuff, from Lost Planet lamps to a PlayStation 3 theme we actually put on PSN.  I met him playing online.

What goals have you set for Capcom Unity for the rest of 2010?

There are some boring tech goals, but outwardly facing, we’re always looking for more ways to engage people directly and give them a voice and a sense of ownership over their favorite brands.  This is mostly new avenues for letting them talk to us.

We also introduced something called “the Suggestion Box” where people can submit ideas and vote up the best ones, and then we review those ideas at internal meetings.  We also just implemented an on-site chat client so people can talk to us (and each other) directly, and of course we’re huge believers in live events.  Basically it’s my goal to make sure the community is a part of everything Capcom does, from decisions about our games, to presence at events, and beyond that, in-game community integrations.

Surely the hype for Super Street Fighter IV has reached a fever pitch. What's the atmosphere like in your offices? Are you handling all the emails and forum activity ok?

It’s a lot of fun seeing the reactions to everything we’re doing, as well as seeing everything the community itself is doing.  There’s a huge hunger for information, so the only challenge is to try and meet that need while keeping a sense of excitement and mystery—we want people to be able to have a lot to discover for themselves once the game is out.

Beyond the new characters, are there any less-publicized features in SSFIV that some gamers might not know about?

I’m actually surprised to hear that a lot of people don’t know how cheap it is—it sells brand new for only $39.99.  Beyond that there’s no huge mysteries.

Not counting the Street Fighter series, what is your favorite Capcom game of the past 10 years?

That’s a hard choice for me, but apart from other Capcom fighters, it’s probably Dead Rising.  I was a big fan of zombie movies, and the setting for Dead Rising was just perfect.  It was a great combination of the ordinary (a mall) and the horrific (zombie outbreak), with a great sense of fear and fun.  There was just so much to do, with lots of freedom in a fun “sandbox.”  It was a whole different kind of game, and I was in love from the first time I saw it at E3, before I even worked at Capcom.  Really loving Dead Rising 2 so far.

Many thought that Tatsunoko Vs Capcom didn't stand a chance at making it to the U.S.. Can you briefly summarize what it took to get it here?

A lot of legal wrangling.  It wasn’t like people were fighting against it, it was just that there were a lot of people we had to get working together, which is tough to do across continents, languages, and brands.  Before any of that, we had to get a core of believers inside of Capcom US who were willing to help us push things forward, and the fans were really a critical assist on that front.  They showed that there was an audience for this game, which made everything else possible.

Who is your current preferred Street Fighter IV character and why?

Lately I’ve been reconnecting with El Fuerte.  I’m not good with him, but he helps me to think about the game in a new way.  If I want to win, however, I stick with M. Bison and Balrog.  “Freight Train”-style characters that get in your face and hit hard just suit my personal style.

In past interviews, you've shown considerable modesty when it comes to your Street Fighter skills. Would that be one of your secrets to success, and how do you balance that out with the needed confidence in winning at Street Fighter?

I spend a lot of time playing pre-final development builds, and my work schedule doesn’t give me as much time to play competitively on the final product as I used to have, so that helps me keep me from talking too much trash.  I love competition but my priorities have changed a bit since I started working here—hopefully that means I’m helping to improve the game for everyone now, instead of just beating the snot out of a few guys at a time.