Modern fighting game audiences and developers are feeling the double-edged sword that is ongoing base roster expansion. On one hand there’s exciting potential as legacy characters who didn’t make the initial cut might always come around in seasons 2 or 3, on the other is the difficult truth that (unless you’re Super Smash Bros. Ultimate) not everyone from franchise history is going to make it into every game.
Franchises like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and Tekken are in their 30’s now, which means casts of characters have grown well beyond numbers usually characteristic of final rosters. We’ve seen friction on this front for all three franchises, but turn attention today to the latter as Bandai Namco General Manager Katsuhiro Harada recently responded with decent depth on X to fan allegations of his playing favorites and giving characters like Tekken’s Anna Williams the short end of the stick.
Harada has been fairly active on X in recent years, even crossing the language barrier and responding to English speaking fans fairly regularly. His playful response to a post from a fan saying they’d purchase Tekken 8 five times if Anna Williams were added got a much less playful response from another user:
hi harada san, why do you hate anna so much? you always make her lose to nina and she’s treated as inferior to her and even though she’s clearly loved and popular it’s like pulling teeth to get her. there’s no way she’s less popular than zafina and the bears yet they made it in??
— Layla Martin (@matrixminogue) July 3, 2024
This sparked a passionate retort from Harada:
“I don’t remember how many times I’ve written here since I started Twitter, but ‘There is no way I hate certain characters. If I seem to like or dislike them, that is just your misunderstanding, because they are all like my children.'” he starts. “You are just seeing something distorted by your assumptions.”
“I’m also the one who is most disturbed by the popularity pecking order that appears for characters, however it is inevitable (more to the point, popularity and usage are two separate factors). Also, if we keep all the traditional characters, there will be no room to introduce new ones. But introducing 50-70 characters to a game from the start is unrealistic in every respect.”
“It should also be understood that all needs have opposing sides. On top of that, I’ll say it again…your love for the characters is distorting the way you look at things, and it’s so absurd that you unilaterally think negatively about my point of view because of it.”
I don’t remember how many times I’ve written here since I started Twitter, but “There is no way I hate certain characters.If I seem to like or dislike them, that is just your misunderstanding, because they are all like my children”.
You are just seeing something distorted by your… https://t.co/IxTozZmBnl— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) July 3, 2024
The dialogue continued as Harada continued to engage and respond.
You said ” I understand your perspective” But You don’t understand my perspective at all. You can “feel” as you wish, but to dismiss me based on your subjectivity while claiming to “understand” the basic premise of my argument is ridiculous. That’s no argument at all.
— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) July 3, 2024
So it’s you who is assuming that, not me.
You are just telling me how you feel based on your own assumptions, you don’t understand my point of view at all.
However, if it makes you feel better, that’s fine with me huh,,— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN) July 3, 2024
This all surely spills over into the conversation about guest characters in fighting games, another arena the fighting game community is wrestling with at the moment, as slots on character select screens seem to be becoming increasingly prime real estate.
Indeed the Director of Street Fighter 6, Takayuki Nakayama, recently expressed openness to the idea of a Mortal Kombat character joining Street Fighter, and even that fantasy crossover that’s been brewing for three decades was met with mixed response.
This re-centers the conversation as the fighting game community tries to etch out expectations for the ever evolving practice of expanding games via DLC. You can contribute to that conversation yourself by letting us know what you think when it comes to the topic.
Is there a standard developers should be following to keep as many fans happy as possible, or does the choice of character inclusion exist wholly as creator prerogative? What’s to be done when wider fan passions and “what’s best for business” don’t fully overlap?
We don’t expect conclusive, problem-solving answers to this ever growing knot of an issue, but would love to see some opinions as we try to figure out exactly where we all stand.