After more than 30 years at Bandai Namco working on the Tekken series, Katsuhiro Harada has decided to write a new chapter in his career at SNK. This year the producer set up VS Studio, a new outfit backed by the Japanese publisher, alongside several former colleagues from his Tekken days. And judging by his recent comments (in a wide-ranging interview with VGC), his ambition goes far beyond simply assembling a new team: he wants to go further and help bring back what he sees as the "golden age" of Japanese gaming.
For Katsuhiro Harada, the first thing that sets SNK apart from many of Japan's big corporations is the relationship between executives and the games they produce. In that interview with VGC, he claims that the people in charge at major Japanese companies generally don't play the games developed in-house — not the prototypes, not even the finished versions. All they do is sit in meetings about financial results, production costs or break-even points, without necessarily taking the time to try the playable builds and give the teams feedback. Harada is careful to say he isn't presenting this as inherently good or bad, but he insists that SNK, in his view, is the exception.
At SNK, the executives actually play the games
It's precisely that closeness to the games that apparently convinced Harada to join SNK. As he tells it, the people he deals with within the company genuinely know games, enjoy them and understand what makes them tick. The producer reckons that kind of involvement matters in an industry where development costs have ballooned. As he sees it, there are two ways to approach video games today: treat the sector primarily as a business to be optimised, or think about how to create new experiences and new franchises. "We have a clear vision", says Harada, who stresses that VS Studio wasn't founded on the idea of sinking a given sum into a game and mechanically multiplying it a few years later. The goal is rather to make games built on a genuine vision, with quality, innovation and identity as the priorities.
Ozan Kocoglu, SNK's new Chief Publishing Officer after several years at Bandai Namco, shares that outlook. He currently describes SNK as a company in a phase of aggressive growth, one that has to keep building on its heritage franchises while hunting for new ideas. VS Studio therefore shouldn't necessarily be confined to a single remit. The studio could work on new IP, but also collaborate with SNK's own teams to move existing franchises forward.
The new game currently in development by Harada and his team remains under wraps, but the producer promises it won't be something wildly removed from what his fans expect of him. He also has a great deal of creative freedom, though he admits there would be little point in making, say, a puzzle or fantasy game with no connection to his expertise or to audience expectations. The arrival of several former Tekken team members doesn't necessarily mean VS Studio is working on a fighting game, either. Harada points out that those hires were deliberate, and that his team also includes people from other backgrounds. Longer term, SNK doesn't intend to stop at VS Studio. Ozan Kocoglu is already considering further hires and partnerships, particularly with teams that specialise in action games. The idea is to grow the company gradually by attracting talent capable of bringing new experiences to its catalogue.
The lessons of Fatal Fury
That appetite for growth comes with a degree of caution, however. Ozan Kocoglu acknowledges that player expectations have risen considerably, particularly when it comes to the content available at launch. He points directly to Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, which reportedly didn't launch with the amount of content some players were hoping for. SNK then set about expanding and improving the game, to the point that its Chief Publishing Officer now believes he has a particularly strong offering in the fighting game space. That experience is meant to serve as a lesson for future projects: communicate better before, during and after launch, listen more closely to players while preserving the game's creative identity, and plan productions for the long haul. Fatal Fury now receives content on a regular basis, new characters included, which forces SNK to build a proper post-release support strategy.
A new chapter for SNK and Harada
For Katsuhiro Harada, this venture also marks a considerable change. After decades of working within structures already in place at Bandai Namco, he now has to build a studio practically from scratch. His international experience could play an important role, though, as he reckons he has spent much of his career talking directly with player communities around the world and wants to put that knowledge to work in designing his next games. In time, Harada also hopes to collaborate more closely with SNK's teams. He points in particular to his work on Geese Howard in Tekken 7, an SNK character whose integration his team took great care over. He would now like to bring that experience to bear on the publisher's own characters.
For his part, Ozan Kocoglu believes VS Studio could have a major impact on SNK and help give rise to projects capable of changing the way the company approaches game development. That is a particularly lofty ambition for a studio still in its infancy, but it sums up Harada's project rather neatly: not simply pursuing a career after Tekken, but attempting to build a new generation of Japanese games with SNK. Which chimes with what he has said before, namely rediscovering the golden age of Japanese gaming.
