- Triple A
- Posts
- THE DIRECTOR OF TEKKEN 8 REFLECTS ON THE COSTS OF CURRENT GAMES
THE DIRECTOR OF TEKKEN 8 REFLECTS ON THE COSTS OF CURRENT GAMES
For Harada, producer and director of Tekken 8, creating games has become exponentially more expensive and risky
With almost 20 years since the release of Tekken 5, we are now in Tekken 8, and even though it’s the same genre, a lot has changed during this period. To reflect on how th industry has evolved, Katsuhiro Harada, director and producer of the series, made a post explaining a bit more about how game development works.
In a brief summary, Harada explained how the game market has become much more shareolder-oriented after becoming a multibillion-dollar industry, and how production time and costs have risen exponentially.
Image: Bandai Namco
According to Harada in a post on his personal Twitter account, things were much simpler back when Tekken 5 was released in February 2005. He mentioned that at that time, everyone was much more immature, wanting to put as much content as possible on a disc and implementing ideas during production.
TEKKEN5 !? Grrrrrr I'm getting old!
At that time, we were developing software by saying that we would put anything we could think of on a disk.
We didn't have a plan from the beginning, but rather developed software as we thought of it along the way. It was decided from the… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…— Katsuhiro Harada (@Harada_TEKKEN)
2:38 PM • Feb 25, 2024
“We didn’t have a plan from the beginning, but rather developed software as we thought of it along the way. It was decided from the beginning to include Starblade as an extra, but the Devil within mode and the TK1, TK2, and TK3 arcade emulation modes were developed on the spur of the moment. At the time, no one scolded us for such a way of proceeding (cuz we were all immature). Porting and development was going on at such a faster pace with much lower labor costs (us and others too) than now. Now it is completely different.”
Image: Bandai Namco
Harada also commented on how things are very different now, the development costs “skyrocketed” and production time becoming much longer. Because of this, many “self-proclaimed game industry people” and executives, who are not creators and don’t face the voices of the community, interfere in the production.
Finally, Katsuhiro Harada also mentioned how many people suggest that he should not produce ideas and mechanics solely out of passion, implying that Tekken (or any other game) must please the market to be successful. However, Harada disagrees.
Image: Bandai Namco
“I’ve done a lot of things with an idea, and that’s why we have the foundation we have today, but I guess people who don’t have experience in making things don’t understand that. Well, that is how mature this field has become. Nevertheless, no matter how well-planned and smart your are, no one can guarantee that the game will be a success until the very end. This is the only thing that hasn’t changed much” concluded Harada.