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 (a sprawling interview over at VGC), his ambition goes well beyond simply building a new team: he wants to go further and help win back what he sees as the “golden age” of Japanese video games.
For Katsuhiro Harada, the first difference with many of Japan's big corporations comes down to 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 out 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 is, in his view, an exception.
At SNK, the executives play the games
It is precisely that closeness to the games that reportedly convinced Harada to join SNK. As he tells it, the people he deals with within the group genuinely know games, enjoy them and understand what makes them appealing. The producer reckons that involvement matters in an industry where development costs have ballooned. As he sees it, there are two ways of approaching video games today: treating the sector primarily as a business to be optimised, or thinking about how to create new experiences and new franchises. “We have a clear vision”, Harada explains, adding that VS Studio wasn't set up with the idea of sinking a given sum into a game and mechanically multiplying it within a few years. 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 looking for new ideas. VS Studio therefore shouldn't necessarily be tied to a single remit. The studio could work on new intellectual properties, but also collaborate with SNK's teams to move existing series forward.
The new game Harada and his team are currently working on 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, even if he admits there would be little point in making, say, a puzzle game or a fantasy title 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 brings together people from other backgrounds. Longer term, SNK doesn't intend to stop at VS Studio. Ozan Kocoglu is already considering further hires and collaborations, notably with teams specialising in action games. The idea is to grow the company gradually by attracting talent capable of bringing new experiences to the catalogue.
The lessons of Fatal Fury
That appetite for growth nevertheless comes with a degree of caution. Ozan Kocoglu acknowledges that audience 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 launched without the level of content some players were hoping for. SNK then worked to expand and improve the game, to the point where its Chief Publishing Officer now believes the company has a particularly solid 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 a game's creative identity, and also plan productions for the long haul. Fatal Fury now receives content regularly, 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 almost from scratch. His international experience could prove important, though, as he reckons he has spent much of his career talking directly to player communities around the world, and he wants to put that knowledge to use in designing his next games. In the longer term, Harada also hopes to work more closely with SNK's teams. He points out that he worked on Geese Howard in Tekken 7, an SNK character whose integration his team took particular 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 bring about projects capable of changing the way the company approaches game development. That is a lofty ambition for a studio still in its infancy, but it sums up Harada's plan rather neatly: not simply to carry on with a career after Tekken, but to try to build a new generation of Japanese games with SNK. Which chimes with what he has said before, namely recapturing the golden age of Japanese gaming.
