According to Japanese publication Oricon News, Takayuki Nakayama, Director of Street Fighter 6, is often asked if he really needs to create a fighting game that’s as impactful as Street Fighter 2. Nakayama feels as though it is Capcom’s duty to bring the Street Fighter series to those same heights.
“I personally love fighting games and that’s not going to change, but in order to make it a boom in society once more we really need to make sure it’s a game that’s easy to recommend to others,” stated Nakayama. “For that we need to bring back that ’90s arcade vibe where you ask your friends to join you.”
From here, Nakayama outlines how fighting games must expand beyond winning and losing. Losing can be very intimidating for casual players and newcomers, which is part of the reason why fighting games have such an intense barrier of entry.
“Instead of a world that’s just about winning and losing, we want to say ‘You can play on your own, there are lots of interesting characters, you can travel in this interesting world too, don’t you want to try it out?’ continued the Street Fighter 6 Director. “That’s kind of what we’re going for.”
It would appear that Nakayama and the Street Fighter 6 development team hope to hook newcomers with Street Fighter 6’s World Tour Mode. During this single player experience, players will be able to explore the world of Street Fighter without the fear of losing.
We’ve actually seen how creating an engaging single player experience within a fighting game has worked out for a series like Mortal Kombat. Needless to say, Mortal Kombat has both a hardcore audience and a casual audience that are fans of the series.
Nakayama essentially wants it so that players will be able to adventure into taking matches against other players once they feel comfortable enough. Although this is the sixth entry to the Street Fighter series, it’s not meant to be intimidating to those just wanting to break into the genre.
“After getting used to that, you can ask them ‘Let’s have a match,’ that’s the type of world we want,” stated Nakayama. “The title is Street Fighter ‘6,’ but we want it to be a game that’s easy to get into whichever way you please and serve as an entry point despite the number.”
A special thanks goes out to Nicholas ‘MajinTenshinhan’ Taylor for handling the translations used in this article.
