SuperBot Entertainment occupies two squat, unassuming buildings amid a quiet business plaza in Culver City, California. Inside, the developers behind PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale--an upcoming brawler starring numerous PlayStation icons--are entering the home stretch. Finding the right setting to showcase the all-stars has been no small feat for the young studio. With over three years behind them, the team has gone through a lot of experimentation to reach the state their game is in today. Now, the end is finally in sight.

The inside of SuperBot looks like a massive studio apartment turned game studio. The majority of each building's single room is dedicated to rows of computers. A kitchenette sits off to one side, and a few conference rooms are scattered along the walls. There are no partitions separating the work stations on the main floors, creating an open work space where team members can freely talk with one another.

Under the watchful eye of Guru, a massive, multi-armed robot mural, the 110 employees are hard at work putting the finishing touches on their studio's breakout game, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. This mascot brawler stars a host of familiar faces from across the Sony lineup. Similar to its contemporaries, the game has simple controls. All you have to do is press a button and direction together to perform a special attack. Where it differs is in its energy meter, super attacks, and scoring system. But it wasn't always this way. The story of SuperBot and All-Stars begins over three years ago.

Chan Park, president of SuperBot Entertainment, remembers the early days of the company. Before starting work on All-Stars, SuperBot was an incubated team within Sony Santa Monica. Back then they were called Broodworks, with a humble staff of just under 30 people. Being an incubated team meant Santa Monica provided the office space, equipment, and other resources, freeing Broodworks to focus solely on game development. As the two teams collaborated, it was ultimately decided that Park and his young team would take on the mantle of the all-stars with a full, retail release.

Straight out of the gate the team's first challenge was finding the right vehicle to showcase the cast. It went through dozens of ideas, many focusing on a single-screen, multiplayer experience. In fact, All-Stars started out a more casual game. The idea of a capture-the-flag game, with combat as a secondary function, was thrown around a lot. However, another idea that was equally pervasive was the mascot brawler. As weeks passed, the brawler idea gained more and more traction--until it ultimately won out. At that point, the team knew it would need specialized help.

"Implementing and executing a winning strategy is where the fun in fighting games is born." -- KendallEnter Omar Kendall, game director for PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. With his past experience developing fighting games, and the connections he had made within that genre, he was a natural fit. "Once we figured out what the game was going to be, and what that core combat loop was like, then it became a matter of finding the team who could take that experience and make a whole, proper game out of it," said Kendall.

"It was very challenging to find the right talent," Park recalled. "[The fighting game genre] is something where you really need to find experienced people, and even then it is a very specific learning curve." Kendall added that it was difficult to fill some of the key positions--gameplay programming, animation, design--with those who had worked on fighting games before. "We have been fortunate to find some young, hungry, and talented people to fill out this team."

An early concept of the Metropolis stage from Ratchet & Clank.

Three months after Kendall joined, another proof-of-concept was completed, and the team moved into its current space one month later. "Omar nailed everything down," said Ivan Glaze, the game's senior producer. When Glaze was brought on in 2010, the game was still in preproduction, and the team was exploring some very different ideas. "Once Omar came in, he said this is what we're going to do, and this is how we will be different from other games out there--and that really helped."

NEXT: DESIGNING THE GAME