Whenever a new way of monetizing or releasing a product comes around there are always long periods where some of the biggest names in a market will sit back and watch. That is what is happening right now for fighting games with free-to-play models, though that doesn’t mean big names like Tekken aren’t keeping tabs on what is going on.
While attending a Tekken 8 preview event (all Dot Esports travel expenses to the event were paid for by Bandai Namco) series director Katsuhiro Harada and producer Michael Murray gave Dot some insight into the current game’s development and how things within the industry may have impacted the series.
When it comes to the F2P model, Harada isn’t a stranger, having openly talked about it in the past with other developers.
It also isn’t new to the Tekken series, as the franchise technically launched the first F2P game on a console with Tekken Revolution back in 2013—even if it was shortlived and hasn’t been revisited.
Free-to-play games have only grown in popularity and volume in the years since, only matched by how many of them seem to be shut down after very brief stints online. This includes the recent rapid rise and decline of Warner Bros. MultiVersus, which saw great success initially with its F2P model and broke multiple player records for fighting games, only to recently announce it would be going offline to restructure.
Despite issues popping up as the model became a normal fixture in gaming, Harada and his Bandai team view free-to-play as a positive that only adds options.
As Murray put it, things have evolved so far beyond the days of the arcade where players would spend a dollar to play rounds of Tekken with their friends. It has reached a point where Tekken 8 will be Bandai’s first time launching a game from the series on consoles first and will incorporate all of the other elements that have come to be added as the market evolved, such as longer story modes with CGI movies and online play.
Related: Tekken 8 could have guest characters, but they aren’t a priority
But, while T8 will be a premium title, Harada mentioned that players who purchase Tekken might not be the same people who prefer the experience provided by VALORANT or Call of Duty’s dual approach with a premium title and F2P option.
“There should be more options for the player,” Harada said. “Some people are still going to want to pay extra because they know how many characters they will get, that they’re gonna get movies and other modes of gameplay. While other players might be like ‘I don’t have a lot of time’ or ‘I just want to try it out.’ If they have that option through free-to-play, then it’s good.”
This lines up with his and other fighting game developers’ stance on the topic from last March’s Japan Fighting Game Publishers Roundtable.
The real question for fighting games in the F2P space can be boiled down to if it is a viable option and if it will interfere with making a good product that players will enjoy. Harada and many other developers essentially view free-to-play as a great thing that will bring more options to the genre and could help certain titles find a much bigger audience—but don’t envision it completely changing the current approach to making a premium title.
For fans, this means they will probably want to look to titles like a potential new Virtua Fighter or smaller releases to embrace F2P rather than the console releases of Tekken and Street Fighter doing so. Bandai and Capcom will most likely leave that to their mobile releases.
Published: Apr 3, 2023 01:19 am