Frame data? Puh-lease.
Katsuhiro Harada has been known to speak his mind even if it involves verbally attacking fans. The Tekken producer has been on the road promoting Tekken Tag Tournament 2 (TTT2) with his most recent stop in Australia.
GamesRadar was able to nab some time with the always busy Harada. The interview dived into what attracts the casual fans to fighting games. Check out Harada's response below.
"Fighting games that you can button mash and enjoy are good fighting games. It’s your first experience with a fighting game, you don’t know how to play it, but you’re mashing the buttons and you get a good reaction from that, or even win, and it means it’s exciting because you feel the taste of winning. Not everyone is a hardcore tournament player.
Seventy percent are just your average player who wants to beat their brother, or their friend, or whoever. So button mashing is very important for having them see that it’s fun, [but] those people, if they continue to be interested in the game, will eventually run into someone they’ll never be able to beat by just button mashing. So they will make the effort to learn how to play.
It’s important that they at least feel that they have the chance of winning. If they feel that they can’t beat someone, they’re not even going to try the game at all. There are actually characters in the game designed with that in mind. Those elements are left in the game on purpose because it’s necessary as a whole.
We do get a lot of backlash from hardcore or high level players, but if they stepped into my shoes as a game developer and think of what’s good overall for the whole series, maybe they’ll start to realise that it isn’t such a bad thing."
Fernando's POV: Every fighting game should give all fans an incentive to make the purchase. If you cater to just casual fans, the community will be nonexistent. Catering to only hardcore fans may see a strong community but lackluster sales. Harada nailed it when he said you have to let the average player feel they have a chance of winning.
