In a new interview with Games Industry, long-time Tekken Director and Producer Katsuhiro Harada elaborates on his decision to leave Bandai Namco last year.
After joining VS Studio, a subsidiary studio of SNK, Harada has been recruiting a team and is working on a new “competitive game”, though doesn’t specify it will be exactly a fighting game. Continue below to hear more about Harada’s reasoning for joining VS Studio at this point of his storied career.
Reflecting on his career in the video game industry, Harada mentioned how he’d recently been thinking. “As I approached 50, I started thinking about how I wanted to spend the remaining 10 years of my career as a game developer, given that the standard retirement age in Japan is around 60,” he said.
“By the time I turned 50, I realised I might only have time to make one more game, so I wanted to try something new.” — Katsuhiro Harada
He went on to add that originally, he had been imagining that by this time they’d be on Tekken 15 or something similar to it. “We used to release one game a year, but now it can take five years to make a single game,” he said.
“By the time I turned 50, I realised I might only have time to make one more game, so I wanted to try something new,” Harada concluded.
Given that Katsuhiro Harada is currently 55, it’s clear that this had been stewing in his mind for a while. Although Harada doesn’t explicitly mention it, he had a very strong reaction to the news of fellow video game developer and creator of Dead or Alive Tomonobu Itagaki’s passing last year, so it’s possible this gave him the extra push to take the step.
Further remarking on the time when he decided to leave Bandai Namco, Harada explains that he was fully away of how risky a maneuver this was.
It wasn’t as if I left Bandai Namco without understanding the risks,” Harada said. “But after I announced that I was leaving, I was very fortunate to receive offers from many different people, and quite a few of them came in very quickly.”
This is something Harada has been open about before. He mentioned in the past how he was approached by a variety of companies, many unrelated to video game development at all — including an American defense company, a sushi chain and a variety of other interesting offers.
However, when SNK came knocking, Harada was intrigued right away. He mentioned meeting with The Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who has an ownership stake in SNK.
“The Crown Prince is clearly a passionate gaming fan, so being approached through that connection felt very different from simply joining a typical independent studio,” said Harada.
One big part of the appeal to Harada appeared to be exactly this and how the talks didn’t focus on the business side as much as they did on the games themselves.
“We just talked about games, games, games, and more games, right up until the deal was finalised,” Harada explained.
Talking about bin Salman, Harada says he reminded him of Bandai Namco founder Masaya Nakamura.
“[Nakamura] was always talking about games, and he would ask me, ‘What do you want to do?’ While I was talking with the Crown Prince, I found myself thinking about Mr Nakamura,” said Harada.
“The Crown Prince is clearly a passionate gaming fan […] the fact that the Crown Prince genuinely loves games was very important to me.” — Katsuhiro Harada
He continued by explaining thusly: “The game business isn’t about basic necessities. It’s an industry driven to a great extent by passion. In that sense, the fact that the Crown Prince genuinely loves games was very important to me.”
This falls right in line with many of Harada’s previous statements about the current state of game development, and how many currently making decisions in the area have no interest or understanding of games at all.
On top of this, Harada mentions he’s always been a big SNK fan, saying that he’s always loved Neo Geo in particular — hardly surprising, considering Tekken 7’s decision to add Geese Howard as a guest character to its roster, despite Tekken being a much more famous franchise at the time than Fatal Fury or King of Fighters were.
Once the VS Studio was established with Harada as its head, things started happening fast with many reaching out to join the endeavor. “Fortunately, a lot of people reached out to me and said they wanted to join the studio,” Harada remarked, while also noting that he was thrilled that many of them were closer to his own age, being over 45.
“But in game development […] Being in their 50s can be an advantage, because experience really matters.” — Katsuhiro Harada
He mentioned how he views game development as more of an old man’s game than a young man’s game, comparing it in contrast to a sport like soccer.
“Take soccer, for example. If a team in their 20s played against a team in their 50s, the younger team would probably win. But in game development it’s the opposite. Being in their 50s can be an advantage, because experience really matters,” explained Harada.
Harada went on to say that the team formed quite organically after that, with recruitment of many highly experienced people to the project.
In conclusion, Harada said: “We were extremely fortunate in that respect. We started with a core group of 10 people, and those 10 reached out to other people they knew, and I didn’t really have to do anything myself.”
It’ll still probably be a while before we get to see what exactly VS Studio are cooking up, but given that such an industry veteran as Harada has assembled such a strong team and his sheer enthusiasm for what they’re working on, it’s definitely an exciting prospect.
What are you hoping to see from Katsuhiro Harada and the team at VS Studio? A new 3D fighter to try to rival the Tekken series and the upcoming Virtua Fighter: Crossroads and Dead or Alive 7? A new foray into the 2D fighting game space? Or perhaps something entirely different? Let us know in the comments.
