...lose.
In the latest edition of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Game Makers Notebook podcast, Harada discussed with PlayStations Shuhei Yoshida about the Tekken series.
At one point, Yoshida asked Harada for his opinion on how the one-on-one fighting game can evolve in the future.
Harada replied that the genre will have to find ways to integrate more team-based competition, because thats what the younger generation of players tends to favour.
It seems to me that the way fighting games are played has evolved over time, with the generations, Harada explained.
In Japan, and probably in most of the world, my generation is a big one. It makes up a good chunk of the population. That made our society a competitive one.
If you applied to a school or for a job, there was always a lot of competition. Because of this, people in my generation prefer definitive outcomes, a clear winner and loser. This applies to folks in and around their 50s.
But most young people nowadays are the opposite. Theyre rarely eager to engage in one-on-one showdowns. Plus, because figthing games pit you by yourself against a single opponent, you have to accept all the responsibility if you lose. You cant blame anyone else.
In team-based shooters, when players win, they can say that they won because of their own contributions, but when they lose, its because they got matched with a lousy team.
But maybe we could include other ways of competing, outside of the main game. For example, maybe they dont always have to fight one-on-one. They could opt for team battles, such as 3-on-3 matches.
I think we may want to incorporate this into the online modes official rankings. Maybe team matches could have positions within a team, something like the order of teammates in judo matches.
Right now, in Tekkens online mode, each player fights alone, battle after battle, just trying to climb the rankings. Maybe with more varied modes based on things like teams or regions, it could add more meta-gaming as well.
https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/tekken-boss-says-younger-players-prefer-team-games-so-they-can-shift-responsibility-if-they-lose/
It's kind of funny that this is Harada's way of saying the younger generation is soft in comparison to the more competitive side of the older generation, because I kind of share that mentality of learning to take a loss. But at the same time, Harada does have a point that the most popular games right now are mostly team based games: CS:GO, DOTA 2, Apex Legends, TF2, LoL, Valorant, Rainbow Siege, DbD (playing as survivors), etc. Many people hate the feeling of losing and that's a big problem in fighting games in general. There has been steps in trying to help with the anxiety of going online, but the biggest hurdle has been the 1v1 aspect. With online netcode getting better (because the Japanese devs are now FINALLY putting in rollback netcode into their games) there's only soo much you can blame "lag" or "inputs" until you realize that the main reason you're losing is simply a skill issue. Whether it's motion inputs or pulling off a combo consistently, Fighting games has been the one genre that never sees the level of popularity that the other genre's sees, with the exception of Mortal Kombat and Smash Bros that is primarily driven because of the IP not because they are fighting games.
Do you agree with Harada that fighting games need to evolve to a "multiplayer" game in order for the genre to survive? Is this the next step to make the genre more accessible? A lot of fighting game players (especially the pros) greatly disagree with Harada, but I know plenty of casuals that would love a team based system into fighting games to help take away from the anxiety and blaming others for their loses.