14 DAY TRIAL // One of the leading developers of fighting games has said that the genre needs to carefully balance button mashing and high-level strategy in order to appeal to the hardcore fan base while also launching commercially successful titles.
Katsuhiro Harada, the game creator behind the Tekken series, tells Games Radar that, “It’s interesting because the evaluation depends on the group, whether it’s the hardcore or just your average gamer, and it can be very different.”
“If you just wanted to satisfy the core fans – the tournament going crowd – there are only a few elements that you really need to focus on,” he further argues.
Harada acknowledges that the hardcore crowd is always asking for balanced characters and for an overall design that rewards those who are technically capable and understand the game.
He then adds, “The game needs to give players the sense that they can beat the higher-level players at least some of the time. It’s a game, so it has got to be entertaining. It’s actually easier to make a game that just appeals to hardcore fans because you know exactly what you need to put in it.”
In order to support his theory, Katsuhiro Harada offers Street Fighter III as an example, a title that was much praised by the hardcore community but failed to make a splash on the market.
Fighting games are currently enjoying a renaissance that was sparked by Capcom and Street Fighter IV but many developers and players believe that the number of recent releases and the focus on hardcore will once again make the genre irrelevant in the coming years.
Katsuhiro Harada is now working on Tekken Tag Tournament 2, set to arrive on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 during September.
Namco Bandai is also working on a Tekken x Street Fighter cross-over.