Pro Wrestling X Q&A: Taking the fight to the WWE

In the years since the WWE virtually monopolized the professional wrestling market, fans of the "sport" have grown increasingly splintered. The mainstream fans of the WWE remain intact, but it takes only a few glances at Internet wrestling forums to discover that a sizable number of people have become disenfranchised with the WWE and its brand of sports entertainment. Some look to alternatives, such as the upstart NWA-TNA promotion or the indy favorite Ring of Honor. Others look overseas to the many Japanese promotions that are hugely popular within the country.

On the video game front, THQ's WWE-licensed games are really all you can get your hands on in the US. And similar to the viewing audience for the real-life product, a portion of the wrestling game audience has branched off over the years, with a small but extremely dedicated group looking elsewhere for its grappling game needs, even if it requires expensive importing from Japan.

One of these gamers was Dave Wishnowski. Dissatisfied with the direction the major wrestling games were going in, Wishnowski formed a group called Wrestling Gamers United, which was geared toward forming a unified voice to convince the major publishers that a feeling of discontentment was growing within the audience. Evidently, nobody was listening. Even with the ups and downs the genre has gone through in recent years, as well as the WWE's television ratings not hitting the highs they once did, the wrestling game business is still booming, with several of THQ's SmackDown! brand games for the PlayStation 2 hitting the million mark in sales. It's hard to argue with sales.

Unable to get in the ears of any established developers or publishers, Wishnowski did something unexpected: He went to work on making his own game.

Titled Pro Wrestling X, Wishnowski's vision is to create a wrestling game that puts gameplay above all other factors. It's not often that you hear about someone with no previous experience in the game industry just up and putting together his own project, but that's just what Wishnowski did. Since 2002, Wishnowski has been hard at work putting together a team and making his dream of a wrestling game by fans, for fans, a reality. The project has gained some attention from the Internet wrestling community, and Wishnowski and crew have been regularly updating their fans via the game's Web site.

We caught up with Wishnowski to ask him about the state of the game itself, as well as his thoughts on the genre and his chances of succeeding within it.

GameSpot: First off, thanks for taking the time to talk to us. What exactly is your role on the Pro Wrestling X project?

Dave Wishnowski: Thank you for giving us the opportunity to talk about Pro Wrestling X. It's a labor of love for all of us involved, and we're thrilled to be talking with you and GameSpot. My role in the project covers a lot of ground, but essentially, my main responsibilities have been designing the game, recruiting the right crew, and raising the money to get the job done. So far, so good.

GS: How did Pro Wrestling X come about? What kind of team do you have put together at this point?

DW: Pro Wrestling X has a long and crazy history. Before the game itself was planned, it started out as just an angry bunch of wrestling gamers. A lot of people were extremely upset that we never did get our proper sequel to No Mercy, while Japanese gamers were feasting on incredibly good games like King of Colosseum and the Fire Pro series. But rather than bitch and moan, I decided to see what it would take to produce a really good wrestling game and have the fans help out. I didn't want to just make an indie hobby game; I wanted to take a shot at developing a truly outstanding title on par with the best games out there. I learned it would take two things: a great crew and money to hire them full-time.

That's exactly what I set out to obtain, and as of today, we have succeeded. We've raised first-round financing from the private sector and through Telefilm Canada. We've got a talented and experienced crew, consisting of both eager young artists and experienced game professionals with experience at companies like EA and THQ.

GS: What are some of the games out there on the wrestling market (North American or otherwise) that have inspired you, and conversely, what games are you trying to avoid being anything like?

DW: There are inspiring aspects of almost every wrestling game out there. I love the near-perfect balance of No Mercy, the presentation style of Day of Reckoning, and the customization features of Raw 2. On the Japanese side, I really appreciate the depth of the King of Colosseum series, the tight action and AI of the Fire Pro games, and I've been a longtime fan of Giant Gram 2000 for the Dreamcast. That's one series I wished had continued. It had a very promising combat system, and the team behind the game obviously respected the subject matter. I wouldn't say we're trying to avoid any one game in particular, but we certainly aren't trying to emulate a particular game, either. In my opinion, some of the worst games in recent memory, Backyard Wrestling and Wrestlemania 21, could have been good games if they were just given the time to be properly finished. So the one major thing we are going to avoid at all costs is rushing Pro Wrestling X to market before we feel it's a solid game.

GS: How long has this project been in the making? Has this been like an on-and-off kind of deal since the beginning, or have you been working on it hardcore since the day of its inception?

DW: I've been pushing the project along nonstop since early 2002. The majority of that time was spent designing the concept of Pro Wrestling X and working hard to pull together the financing. We made some mistakes along the way and suffered some setbacks, mostly as a result of getting involved with the wrong investors and inadequate developers. But we learned a lot from those mistakes, and as a result, we got on the right track and have been in full-time production since earlier this year.

GS: Let's talk about the game itself, now. From a gameplay perspective, what is your main goal you hope to achieve in Pro Wrestling X?

DW: A solid and balanced gameplay experience. It should flow like an actual match, and you should be able to exercise complete control over how a match progresses, instead of being forced to adapt your strategy to compensate for poor game design.

GS: What are you going for stylistically? Is it going to be sports entertainment? Puroresu? A middle ground between the two? Or just everything you can toss together?

DW: Pro Wrestling X will reflect all popular styles of pro wrestling as accurately and authentically as possible. Our core focus will be on the gameplay itself, so we really won't be too concerned trying to make a better sports entertainment game than say, SmackDown!. And at the same time, we aren't trying to produce a better puro title than KoC2. We want Pro Wrestling X to cast a broad enough net that you can crack it open and have any kind of wrestling experience that your heart desires. It won't specialize in one certain style of wrestling, but it will pay respect to as many as possible.

GS: A wrestling game is only as good as its gameplay engine. Do you have a finalized engine at this point? Or is it still too early on?

DW: We've developed all of the basic gameplay, including the movement, striking, and grappling system. The next stage of development will bring together the other goodies, like reversal points, submission system, advanced AI, and everything else.

GS: Are you at a stage of development where you can start talking about what kind of game modes you're looking to include? If so, what have you got thus far?

DW: At this point, we can only confirm the standard modes that people would expect from a wrestling game: exhibition, create-a-wrestler, and career mode. We have some other exciting modes on the drawing board, but it's too early to go into any detail about them.

GS: Customization is a big thing in modern wrestling titles. People want to be able to create their own superstars, make the newest guys on the scene, design their own belts, their own crowd signs, you name it. How much of that customization aspect is going to be a factor in Pro Wrestling X?

DW: These days, a wrestling game has to offer deep customization features, and Pro Wrestling X will be no exception. In fact, we hope to excel in the customization department.

GS: The lack of a popular license seems like it could be both a blessing and a curse. Is a license something you might try to work on getting sometime down the road (either with an indie promotion or something like NWA-TNA), or are you content to focus on the game itself, and not a brand name? What about just specific wrestlers that might not be associated with any single promotion?

DW: We decided early on that the gameplay should be the star of the game, and we intend to continue with that philosophy. Besides, wrestling gamers are smart, and they know that a roster full of famous wrestlers says nothing about the quality of the game. Look at the Legends of Wrestling games. Showdown had one of my favorite rosters of all time, but I can barely finish a match in that game without wanting to turn it off.

Accurately creating licensed wrestlers and dealing with all of the behind-the-scenes work that has to be done to secure such deals would just take away from our number one priority: making a great game. Maybe in the future we can consider adding actual wrestlers and organizations to the game, but for now, we just don't see the value in it.

GS: Wrestling gamers are a funny bunch. They're either so entrenched in the WWE brand of sports entertainment or, on the other side of the coin, completely focused solely on the wrestling itself...and completely against anything that even reeks of the WWE. It seems to me like this game would probably be a pretty easy sell to those who want wrestling, and not bra & panties matches. With that said, is there anything about Pro Wrestling X that might be appealing to the more mainstream wrestling audience?

DW: Absolutely. We've been developing our feature list with that in mind. We know we will never convince a WWE fan to buy Pro Wrestling X instead of a current WWE game, because a WWE fan will always want a WWE game. However, we believe we have designed a game that will appeal to all wrestling fans and is something they will want to play in addition to the WWE games.

GS: Without being overly negative, it has to be said that the track record for non-WWE (or, for a while there, WCW) wrestling games has been pretty abysmal so far, especially in terms of sales. Is that even a concern for you at this point? It's got to be a pretty significant investment of both time and capital to do such a grass-roots project. And frankly, the odds aren't in your favor.

DW: It all depends on how you interpret the sales of non-WWE games. The games you mentioned have all been relatively mediocre at best, and still they sold enough to warrant sequels. The way we see it, if bad non-WWE games can sell enough copies to be viable projects, then a solid and innovative game like Pro Wrestling X should do comparatively well. We believe there is a strong demand out there for a quality alternative to the WWE games, and as long as we deliver on that promise, we stand a good chance of producing a long-running Pro Wrestling X franchise.

GS: Have you accrued any major publisher interest thus far? I know you were at E3 this year in the Canadian developers' booth.

DW: Yes we have. It was surprising to get any attention at such an early stage in [the] project's development, so we are very happy with the relationships we've formed so far. E3 was a great experience for us, and we came away with more than a few interested publishers since then. We're very happy in that regard.

GS: What's the pitching environment like these days for you?

DW: Surprisingly quite open. It wasn't too long ago that we'd get responses like, "We won't compete against the WWE license. It's suicide." But the general response we get now is remarkably different. Publishers all want to get in on the next big thing and create new franchises, so a project like Pro Wrestling X has interested quite a few of them. Some are still concerned about competing against WWE products, but after the pitch, they understand we are offering gamers a completely unique experience and not one that is really trying to compete on the same terms as WWE console games.

GS: How exactly does an indie shop such as yours go about getting face time with publishers?

DW: The fans. We owe it all to the fan support we've been fortunate enough to have. We don't try to entice publishers with our long track record of previously published games or valuable brand-name license, because we have none of that. But when you send them thousands upon thousands of pages of fan mail, show them support videos fans have made, show them the merchandise and preorders we've already sold to places as far away as Belgium and Australia... When they see that, it gets their attention. We created a buzz in our own way, and publishers recognize that we have our finger on the pulse of something potentially very successful. That's what gets us in the door.

GS: Any thoughts on the digital distribution market? Is that something you'd consider a viable choice for your game?

DW: Absolutely. The great thing about the wrestling market is that it is global, massive, and most of the wrestling gamers are heavy Internet users. We'd love to see Pro Wrestling X on store shelves, but with the size of the market, digital distribution could be a viable option for us. We find that a lot of gamers still want that tangible ownership so they can hold it in their hands, read the instruction book, and so forth. But even so, I believe it would be a smart move to offer a downloadable version for those who just want the game and want to save themselves a few bucks. Other software companies are doing it, and it seems to be a solid distribution model to follow.

GS: What is it costing you to put this thing together? How much of your own personal finance did you have to throw in to get this project off the ground?

DW: Sweat equity alone for the first few years was easily over $80,000, even at minimum wage, plus I paid all of the legal and operating expenses out of my own pocket. Even after we received funding to pay the crew, I didn't take my full producer fee, nor did I accept payment for all of the other administration work. My goal is to get Pro Wrestling X to market, not become rich in the process. Besides, every dollar I spend is like two dollars I'll have to pay back. Any financial reward I get will come from a successful game...and hopefully the chance to continue the franchise. To do proper market research and build a playable prototype of the game engine, as well as the create-a-wrestler feature, we spent well over $100,000, which is pretty standard. To actually develop the commercial version of the game will obviously be substantially more...into the millions. We've been fortunate to receive generous investment from private investors, as well as Telefilm Canada, to get us this far. Everyone is happy with the market research results and prototype, so if all goes well in the next few weeks, we'll be funded again to complete the project.

GS: Maybe it's too early still, but have you thought about what platforms you'd like to get Pro Wrestling X onto?

DW: Pro Wrestling X is a PC game only at this point. And while PC games are inherently different than console games, we'd love to see it appear on a suitable system, like the 360. We've also been asked to consider a PSP version, but at this point, I don't believe that will happen any time soon.

GS: Thanks for your time.

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