It’s crazy to think that Tekken has been around for 30 years, as long as the PlayStation itself. Although Tekken is now considered one of the foundational IPs of the fighting game genre, this wasn’t always the case. The 3D fighting series of yesteryear has seen the rise and fall of arcade gaming, survived five generations of consoles, seen the rise of PC gaming, and pioneered international online play, all while cultivating a community of fighting game fanatics over the decades. But why has it lasted so long while other games have declined, and where will the series go from here?
To find out, I spoke with Tekken 8 executive producer Katsuhiro Harada and producer Michael Murray at Red Bull Gaming Sphere to discuss the series’ past and future, and their thoughts on becoming the only (exceptional) 3D fighting game ’s feelings, and how they feel about Tekken’s halycon era past. Murray served as translator, and the full eye-opening conversation is below.
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iGamesNews: How do you feel about “Tekken” 30 years after its release?
Harada: When I was younger, I didn’t really think about this title having such a long life, no matter how far ahead I could see into the future at that age (which was only about 10 years). At the time I was just trying really hard to keep up with my competitors in the fighting game genre. One of my regrets is that I was so focused on catching up with them and putting everything into each issue that a lot of the story background etc. for each issue was considered “on the spot”. If I had known it would last 30 years, I wish I could have put more effort into the main thread of the s tory.
iGamesNews: “Tekken” is undoubtedly the most famous 3D fighting game currently. How does it feel to be the “last man standing” so to speak? Why has Tekken stood the test of time while other games have not?
Harada: It’s a bit of a shame that we’re the only 3D fighting game, because there’s a huge difference between 3D and 2D. In the past, like you said, there were more games, but after a while you just stop watching them. With 2D fighters, sometimes you see more indie developers creating them, but that doesn’t happen with 3D fighters. So yeah, when you look around, it’s kind of unfortunate that this is just Tekken, right?
As for the reason, I think it’s because “Tekken” may have three pillars. This will be the real creative part of it, done by the development team. And then there’s marketing – how do we effectively market the game globally and so on. And then there’s the community aspect!
Murray: As it happens, in Tekken, this has been something that has been handled by both of us for the last 20 years or so. It’s very unique compared to other companies because obviously we’re part of the development team. It’s not like marketers come back and say, “Hey, this is what we should do because it’s cool,” we can go back and say we went to some tournament abroad and saw a shift; maybe outside of Japan, Arch Corridors are not as common as they used to be, maybe [expectations] Shifts, people want more content from consoles, or the community strongly wants certain online features. This is something we’ve been able to see firsthand, and we’ve been able to quickly adapt and resolve issues like this for our development teams.
iGamesNews: Do you miss the days 20-30 years ago? Obviously, today’s games are too expensive, take too long to make, and the teams are too big. Do you have fond memories of the original Tekken era?
Harada: We miss those days so much for a variety of reasons. One of the biggest problems is that the games, as you said, are much more expensive. This means we spend more time playing games, too. In the past, it was easier to come up with an idea and iterate on it and implement it into a game. Now, by the time the audience gets something, we’ve been developing it for a year after thinking about it. In the past, everyone played games in the same environment, whether it was an arcade or an offline console. Now, there are more opportunities to play games on PC or other consoles on the Internet. This means that if someone uses a PC to play the game, everything will be different due to components or network settings between players in different countries.
Therefore, when someone encounters a problem in the game, solving the problem is more difficult than before.
Murray: We all want to, you know, wake up and realize it was 15 years ago [laughs]. Harada also said that rather than having AI create artistic assets or music (we’d rather do the fun parts), he hopes AI can help solve problems in things like networking or personal computers. It would be great if we could convince the board members to give us a bigger budget! [laughs]
iGamesNews: What are your expectations for the future of Tekken? What do you think the next 10, 20 or even 30 years will look like?
Harada: It’s really hard to say. Me and Murray, because of age and how it developed and developed in Japan and things like that, we probably only have one Tekken left. 20-30 years is a long time, so you might have another team and that’s how companies work, right? That’s the unique thing about the Tekken team, even if you take away the two of us, there’s still a director and a leader on the team and we’re all in a similar age range. In most cases, everyone on the team has been with the team for at least 20 years, which is a bit unique. So, when we leave, it might become a completely different game. It might be more casual, who knows? It could be like Super Smash Bros.!
I’m honestly worried because there are so many factors that go into making a game. So obviously, the company’s board of directors and the financial people have their own goals, like the financial goals of the game and how it relates to the company. As you can imagine, they are naturally strong. So it’s really important to have creative ideas that make people aware of the game brilliantly and know what it is need become.
But there must be a strong enough voice [on the development team] On the same floor as those people. So my concern is, if you’re creative, but you’re not on the same page as the people who run the business… I’m concerned about how that’s going to play out.
iGamesNews: So you’re worried that once yourself, Murray and other senior creative leaders leave, the creative side will be a little less powerful?
Harada: Yes. Actually, it’s a difficult balance because if the creative side is stronger than the board of directors of the company – which happens sometimes, right – then the company may not survive [laughs] So, it’s a delicate balance.
iGamesNews: Michael, you’ve been involved since Tekken 4, why do you think the series has stood the test of time?
Murray: Okay! I’ve said this to the community before; Tekken means a lot of things to a lot of people. Often, when you try to be everything to everyone, the results are not good. But with Tekken, I think we’ve struck a good balance between trying to deliver for die-hard fans and keeping casual fans busy with story and bonus content. I think we struck a good balance in terms of trying to offer a lot of content in one package.
But, like Harada said, the core team leaders are able to guide the game as a whole and have direct input after visiting many tournaments around the world and elsewhere, I see that with other companies, all the different interests There is such a disconnect between stakeholders and development teams. When we take people to Evo or other tournaments, our team really sees how much they enjoy the game. It gives us a lot of ideas to interact with the community. As you can see in Tekken 7 and slow motion. Even a trailer! We know exactly what people will do when they see Evo. I think we’re probably better at that than others and that’s the key to success.
Tekken 8 is available now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. The next DLC character, Heihachi, will be released on October 3rd.
