Tekken 8 Negativity Can “Seem Bigger Than It Is,” Dev Says

Tekken is a mainstay of the Evo tournament series–and of the entire fighting game genre. But things haven’t been entirely rosy at the King of Iron Fist tournament lately. Despite very strong sales for Tekken 8, many competitive players have expressed a dislike for the changes to characters and overall gameplay introduced in Season 2, and they’ve been very vocal about it on social media. Knowing that things are a bit stormy around Tekken 8’s competitive scene lately, I went into an interview with members of the Tekken team at Evo to ask questions about their upcoming content plans, how to deal with criticism, revisiting past games, and the impending return of their number one 3D fighting game rival.

As the session began, I was shown the trailer for Armor King by director Kohei Ikeda, often referred to by players and staff as Nakatsu. Armor King is a classic returning character, with appearances going back to the very first Tekken. He leans heavily into the “heel” wrestling persona, with a black, spikey outfit and an offense-oriented skillset with a new stance called Bad Jaguar. He can even make the stage floor crumble when performing his rage art.

I noticed that when Armor King’s attacks hit the opponent, there’s a brief flash of the Japanese kanji “aku” (悪), meaning evil. “You’re the first person to notice that,” Tekken designer and interpreter Michael Murray said. “It’s there because Armor King’s classic costume used to feature that kanji prominently.”

These kinds of character details have become increasingly important in Tekken 8. “In the past, we [included] lots of character details, such as Kazuya being a sneaker collector,” Murray said. “But over time, we kind of stopped doing it. Then the fans were like, ‘Why? We used to love those kinds of details.’ So we tried to bring that back for Tekken 8.”

I then got to see the debut of the all-new character, Miary Zo. Miary hails from the African island of Madagascar and fights using traditional African martial arts. Tekken Project producer and series veteran Katsuhiro Harada wanted to emphasize that they did their homework when they decided to design the series’ first African character. “Makatsu [Ikeda] and I actually went to Madagascar for research. We were able to connect with not just the local fighting game community, but also different groups of people. One thing we learned is that Madagascar’s place in the African region is quite unique in how it came about, with its people and its culture located off the coast of the African continent.

“So what we found out was that their roots come from Southeast Asia as well as the main continent. The people of Madagascar have a different look to them than those of the African mainland, like with skin color and hairstyles. For example, we noticed a lot more people in Madagascar had straight hair, especially women.”

The pursuit of authenticity had some unexpected challenges. “When we were trying to do the voiceovers, we learned that there’s no established industry in Madagascar for voice recording, it’s mainly a few people who sometimes do dubs for TV shows in the local language. So to find a voice actor for Miary Zo, we actually had to look for young folks who wanted to be voice actors. We did several rounds of auditions to find the person who was adequate for this task. But then also once we found them, recording at the studio itself was tough, because there’s many power outages throughout the day. So actually finishing the recording was quite a challenge.”

After this new character introduction, I felt that it was time to address the elephant in the room: How was the team responding to criticism of Tekken 8’s Season 2? “We had a lot of new people on the team,” Harada explained. “I’m actually fairly conservative when it comes to game design. I usually wouldn’t make huge changes, but with Tekken 8, I do feel like our team successfully created something unique and new. When the game launched, players loved it. It had a 90 Metacritic and won Best Fighting Game at The Game Awards. But this was before Season 1 ended.

“That being said, we realized that a portion of the Tekken fanbase is also very conservative. Many people would perhaps want to see something closer to Tekken 7, for example. But then that’s very hard to tell from the outside, because you have all these strong opinions on the internet. Then you have other people who just joined from Tekken 8, who don’t know anything about Tekken and are enjoying themselves. Even though there may be a conflict between those opinions, we don’t want to make them fight against each other about what’s proper Tekken.”

“We had this brand-new game in Tekken 8, and we were trying to make it feel even more different and new in Season 2,” Harada continued. “So some people liked it, and some people didn’t. We’re trying to continue to monitor the community and to have a discussion with them to find a middle ground that everyone can enjoy–whether you were a series fan, a fan of Tekken 7 in particular, or whether you like the new systems in Tekken 8.”

Of course, with social media being what it is, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with negativity and hate-baiting clout farming. How does the team separate signal from noise? “It’s difficult,” Harada admitted. “Social media is actually a good way to collect information for Tekken development. It’s also important to come to events like Evo or Comic-Con, though. I can hear the opinions of people who compete in tournaments–sometimes I hear opinions different from what the pro players are saying. At an event like Comic-Con, I can talk to fans who are less engaged in the competitive side of things.”

“I try not to think too much about negative engagement farming. I keep an open mind and remember it’s not a personal attack. It feels like it is sometimes. But I take the data and try to get to what they’re saying, then lay it on the table with Nakatsu. We look it over and say, ‘Okay, what represents most of our gaming population? What would make the most people happy?’ rather than worrying about what people are trying to do on social media.”

“I do listen to negative opinions, but I only think of it as one person’s opinion,” Harada continued. But online media can have the effect of making that negativity seem bigger than it is. When you’re listening to all these different people, are they saying what they’re really believing, or are they just echoing the sentiment of some other person that they heard? Also, some people who are unhappy with something voice that opinion, but others just leave without saying anything. On the other hand, there are people that are happy with the current state of Tekken 8, and they keep playing the game, but we don’t hear from them either, because they’re not vocal about it.”

Murray chimed in with his own anecdote: “Harada often told us a story about developing around the Tekken 3 and Tekken Tag Tournament era. The team wanted to make a new game, so they took all the stuff that people didn’t like about Tekken at the time. The thinking was, ‘If we get rid of those parts, then obviously everyone’s going to love the new game.’ But that didn’t work out. They came up with Tekken 4, which at the time was thought of as a strange version of Tekken.

“We use that as a lesson–that just taking things and limiting elements that people are complaining about doesn’t necessarily make a good game. So that’s why we’re trying to be very careful in our evaluation of what people say about Tekken 8.”

Despite online complaints, Tekken 8 continues to have a strong playerbase, though some players have decided they’d rather play older titles like Tekken 5 Dark Resurrection or Tekken Tag Tournament 2 instead. This isn’t uncommon in the fighting game scene–if some players don’t care for a new game, they’ll often continue to play an older game in the series.

I asked Harada if he’d consider putting together a compilation of older Tekken titles for these players. “It’s a bit difficult,” he replied. “It’s a concept that’s worked well for Capcom. Maybe popular sentiment has changed over time, but back when the subject of reissuing past Tekken titles came up, we did research about the concept’s market viability. But 3D fighters–for example, Virtua Fighter and Tekken–have typically been showcases of the latest technology in gaming at that time. That’s less the case with 2D fighting games. When we were looking at people in the 2D fighter audience, they would go back and play the older titles, whether that’s Street Fighter II or Street Fighter III Third Strike, whatever. Maybe they wouldn’t move to the latest game, or maybe they’d play both at the same time.

“But with 3D fighters, the majority of people would always go to the latest installment, because it had the prettiest graphics and the best technology at the time. Not many people went back and played the older titles. And we noticed, in the console version of Tekken 5, we included the older iterations of the arcade versions for Tekken 1, 2, and 3. People would boot the games up and go, ‘Oh yeah, I remember this!’ And then they return to the main game. But maybe things have changed, and we need to revisit our thinking.”

“Personally, as a business decision for the company, it makes sense to have someone port the games and repackage them,” Harada continued. “But as a developer, it’s not very entertaining to go back and recreate something I’ve already worked on. And there are other factors. For Tekken Tag 2 as an example, it’s a game some of the hardcore Tekken fans really love. Makatsu and I both love it too. But when you look at the overall sales, it did even worse than Tekken 4. It almost killed the series. Sometimes, peoples’ memory of something is much different than reality.”

With a new Virtua Fighter game on the horizon, Tekken’s most-prominent competition in the 3D fighting game arena has returned to the ring. Despite what many people think, however, the Tekken and Virtua Fighter teams are quite amicable towards one another, with Harada having frequently pushed publicly for a new Virtua Fighter game. With that in mind, I asked about his feelings seeing Virtua Fighter return after such a long time.

“From an emotional viewpoint and also a business or company employee viewpoint, we’ve always had a friendly rivalry,” said Harada. “For a while, it felt like the series stopped. People were resigned to not knowing when or if a new Virtua Fighter would release. For quite some time, even when Tekken became thought of as the longest, continuing 3D fighting game series, no one said, ‘Hey, wait, there’s Virtua Fighter.’ Everyone seemed to feel that VF was done.

“I found it frustrating, because that left us as practically the only big name in 3D fighting. To have our rival just disappear and not be a vital part of the genre was maddening. I want them to come back, and quickly, because it’s lonely here. We want other games like VF to be around, because they attract attention and bring people into 3D fighters.”

To close out the interview, I asked Harada about his feelings on the current fighting game landscape. “There’s a lot of people coming into the space in addition to these new, major fighting game titles. People talk about the ’90s fighting game boom, but it ended kind of abruptly. But now everyone is back in full force. Sales of major franchises–Street Fighter, Tekken, Mortal Kombat–all have done very well, not just for fighting games, but for video games in general. If you look at the competitors and viewers for Evo year over year, or even for our own Tekken World Tour, I think the fighting game boom is happening as we speak.”