Talking to 2K About Building a Digital Ronda for the First Time in WWE 2K19
Ronda’s first appearance in a WWE 2K game is officially here, and from her iconic entrance to her ever-evolving
RondaRousey.com spoke with WWE 2K developers Jason Vandiver and Shane MacPherson to discuss what it was like bringing in Ronda Rousey for the first time, as well as the future of the series as the women’s evolution continues to dominate the WWE.
You’ve had a lot of classic wrestlers join the game, and a lot of big names, of course, but Ronda joining is kind of on a different level because we haven’t seen someone so big join the game with crossover appeal since Brock, but even that is different as he had history with WWE first. What has this been like, launching with Ronda?
Jason Vandiver: As somebody that’s followed her MMA career, I think it’s pretty incredible. I think the really great thing about Ronda is she brings immediate legitimacy to the women’s division. However, I should probably preface that and say it was already legitimate with Charlotte and Becky, Sasha, Bailey. They’re all great, but she’s a different type of athlete. Right? She’s an Olympic champion, a UFC champion, so I thought it was pretty incredible to have her join the game.
It seems like you guys have a lot of the moves that she actually does, which I don’t recall seeing before in the game. Can you talk about the technical side of what you had to add to the game when Ronda came in?
Vandiver: Sure. We found out that Ronda was going to join the game probably about… April. It was pretty late in the process, and obviously we didn’t have a lot of footage to go off of. I think in the lead up to ‘Mania, she made a handful of appearances. Maybe two or three, right? There was a little interaction. She did a couple throws here and there, but there wasn’t a whole lot. So her move set in the game currently is largely based off of her ‘Mania appearance. Again, over time, as I think talent become a little bit more comfortable with their character and what they’re doing in the ring, they start to evolve, so we’re not entirely accurate with what she’s doing today, but that’s something that we’ll polish up over the next few months and probably look to address in a future version.
So, we basically looked at her footage from ‘Mania and we identified the moves that we thought would capture her character best. We used probably at least two to three different people because she has a very unique posture and movement and skill set. It took about two to three actors to mimic her moves in motion capture.
Interesting. Were there any of her moves, or her techniques from her MMA days that made it and kinda bled over into the game?
Vandiver: She’s got an armbar, so we gave her that. There are plenty of people on the WWE roster that do an armbar, but she had quite a unique transition I think
Shane MacPherson: There’s also some judo throws and stuff as well that are very signature Ronda that are
So how did you guys determine what judo throws to add and what not to add?
Vandiver: We just kinda watched Ronda. What did she do? Who did she throw? How often did she do the same moves? That generally informs kind of what moves we’re going to capture for an individual. And as far as the future, you know, again we’ll just keep watching her at every pay-per-view, every RAW appearance, and kind of look for new techniques that she introduces. Because I get that every character seems to evolve over time. She’s only been with the WWE for six months, or roughly six months. So I’m sure within another six months she’ll have adapted or changed her character slightly.
MacPherson: And now that she’s won the title as well, we’ll expand her entrances, her victory scenes. We’ll add stuff like championship belts and things like that to really kind of flesh her out as a character in the game.
How in-depth is your post-launch support for the game as far as adding move sets and animations?
Vandiver: So what we have announced so far are three DLC packs so there are two character packs and a new moves pack and those are currently in progress and we haven’t announced a release date for the first character pack. The focus is largely NXT, people that maybe didn’t make the main roster that
Gotcha.
Vandiver: The third pack that we have is a moves pack and its kind of an amalgamation of main roster people’s moves and maybe just independent moves that people have requested.
I know I’m putting you on the spot here, but what are the chances of you getting Judo Gene in the game?
Vandiver: Judo Gene… Well, you know, anything is possible. We work very, very closely with the WWE to kind of determine who makes it into the roster. I know that our focus in recent years has been trying to get as many of the main roster people in the game as possible and if you’ve been following the product, you know that they are bringing in a ton of new fresh faces. Young people, old people alike. So, we have our hands full just trying to get all of them in the game at this point. But, you never know. You never know who’s going to come into the game.
Good answer!
Vandiver: We added Bruno Sammartino about four or five years ago, right?
MacPherson: Yup.
Vandiver:Â A real throwback for a lot of people.
The first time I booted up the game, the first thing I heard when I used Ronda was the “Ron-da Rou-sey!” chants. Were those taken from the crowd? How do you create the chants in the game?
Vandiver: A lot of them are taken from actual stems from the actual match. I believe the Ronda chants were actually taken from the Mania match itself.
Do you loop the crowd? Or do you actually add anything extra to it? Tell me the secret sauce.
Vandiver: I can’t really get into the secret sauce of it, but we get a stamp from WWE and kind of take that and put it inside of there and then we layer it inside with our crowds. At certain moments, at certain times in the game when she’s either up ahead or there’s certain trying to make a comeback in the game it starts to boost and you can start to hear it. It works together with the main crowd and so the main crowd behind it kinda builds then the chant kinda builds from behind that.
I always assumed that there was just a bunch of people in your sound booth and you just would layer them on top of each other. That’s how I like to pretend at least.
Vandiver (laughs): We’ve done that a little bit, but we get better results when we work with WWE to get chants from a show.
That makes a lot of sense. OK, this one’s personal for me: when will there be blood online?
Vandiver: Ooh, ya know, that’s a tough one to answer. I think so much of the product is focused on being PG-centered. We try to represent the current product more than the past, I think. That one’s tough. I’m not sure that I can say when blood will ever make a return online. I’ll certainly note it and maybe that’s something we can talk about for private sessions.
Even if it was for private, that would be so huge. I’ve been wanting that for half a decade if not longer. Especially for Hell in a Cell matches, ya know? It just seems right to have. That makes me happy.
Vandiver: I’m writing down a note now.
How many armbars are in the game for Ronda? Remember, RondaRousey.com has a dojo section now…
Vandiver: For Ronda? I think we only captured a single new armbar transition, but I think she has two assigned. Obviously, she can probably get into an armbar a half a dozen ways or more. She made a slight tweak after we captured her original armbar where it kind of hooks the arm a little bit more
Yeah, I’m putting you on the spot here because this is rondarousey.com and
MacPherson: Well, it’s a combination of both. We shoot motion capture. We also clean it up and add more secret sauce to it. So we add a little bit of extra flavor to it to make it kind of just feel stronger, more impactful, things like that. So it’s definitely a combination of the two.
Vandiver: She’s a really intense person so we spend a lot of time just touching up the speed of the motion capture data, right? Because these people in motion capture suits, they perform for eight hours a day, they get tired. Its dangerous work, right? If you’re bumping that much, so you don’t always get the fastest or the most energy. You just get what’s safe and then we take it, we clean it up, we make it look impactful.
Touching on that point, is there any challenges for someone like a Brock Lesner or a Ronda, for example, that’s crossing over with MMA pedigree. Is it a little tougher? Were there any additional challenges to making her character kind of blend properly to reach her multiple fan bases with her in-game animations?
MacPherson: I mean the challenge with Brock and Ronda are that they are both very aggressive people so, in theory, you want to make them feel aggressive in the game. So like Jason Vandiver was mentioning, speeding things up, adding more impact, adding more just overall damage just to make it feel like she’s just tough and going out there and breaking arms and throwing people around. We really spent the time trying to really grab that essence of aggressiveness she has.
Do you think you could have captured the essence of these athletes as well on the lesser technology of years past?
Vandiver: I think there’s only so much you can do. I think the fidelity of the models and capturing the likeness goes a long way as well. Ten years ago, yeah, it would have looked close, but not as close as we look now, right? So, to a degree, sure, I think the motion might have looked similar, but it would have been on a blockier model. Somebody that didn’t quite look as close to what we have now.
When I played the game with Ronda, I can clearly see, even from the gameplay camera which isn’t zoomed in, “hey, that’s Ronda Rousey.”
Especially her posture like you said. Now, is career mode going to be a priority moving forward in 2K games especially like when you compare to NBA’s 2K’s career mode? The stories can possibly frustrate people, but these are also written in and directed by some really notable talent and they have a lot going on. Is there an opportunity for WWE 2K to go down the same path?
Vandiver: We just finished 19, so we haven’t really fleshed out what we’re doing for 20. You know, the response has been overwhelmingly positive for 19’s career mode, so I think there’s a good chance for us to learn from this and continue to grow. Although again, we just finished and we haven’t started talking too much about 20, I can’t say for certain what direction we’re gonna take.
Women’s career mode. Is it on the horizon? I know it’s like an insane amount of work to create such a thing and even if the male and female superstar’s share the same similar story but noting the large amount of female talent that is in the game right now, it feels possible that you could do a female-only career mode.
Vandiver: We know there’s a big desire to see a women’s career mode. We’ve heard that very loud and clear and we’re fans of it ourselves. We have nothing to really announce or talk about right now, but we definitely hear the fans.
MacPherson: And we think it could be a very compelling experience as well.
Are there any new modes or features that you’re anxious for player response for that
Vandiver: I think the response to the game has been largely positive and we’re really excited about that. We’re really proud of what we did. We always leave things on the cutting room floor. Ideas we never have enough time for. The great thing about our game, in particular, is that every year we have an opportunity to add more and more. I’m very interested to hear more feedback on Hell in a Cell, Steel Cage, Payback System… Those are areas that I worked very closely on and with the designers with. Shane, do you have anything in particular?
MacPherson: Just trying to flesh out more of just overall presentation of the game. You know, more cutscenes, more entrances, more character specific entrances for Elimination Chamber. We added a lot more this year, I would like to do more next year and there are things that particularly that I, from an animation standpoint, would like to grow to