Since the dawn of video gaming, fighting games have been one of the genres that have stood the test of time. And they have done so thanks to some franchises responsible for selling tens of millions of copies. The Tekken saga is one such example. Its current head, Katushiro Harada, has received the Honorary Award of the BIG Conference 2023 at Bilbao for his contribution to the history of video games. Harada not only received the award but sat down with Antonio Santo, director of the event, to talk about his career.
"As a child, when I was studying, we didn't have consoles at home, so we had to sneak into the arcades," he explained as he recalled his origins. Those escapades cost him some unpleasantness, Harada jokingly recalled. "People in charge of the parents' associations were on the lookout to see who was sneaking into the arcades. When they caught us, they made us apologize in front of the school principal and all our classmates the next day. That's when I became interested in video games: I wanted to work at a place that didn't punish me for playing video games."
Harada has devoted his entire life to developing fighting video games. He is interested in the fact that every game has a clear outcome: "There is always a winner and a loser, and both have to accept the outcome." Looking ahead, he believes it is possible to go even one step further and introduce the concept of team fights. "This way, if your team wins, it's because of you, and if they lose, it's because of your teammates," he joked.
For the Japanese creator, fighting games were not created with competitive formats or expert player niches in mind. "Skiing at the time was not a sport. It was just people sliding down a slope. Therein lies the key: we don't make games for just one type of player but for any player, whatever their level, to experience the satisfaction of winning or losing."
The BIG Conference 2023 Honorary Award winner believes that fighting games will increasingly focus on giving their characters a story and a background. However, Harada believes one of the genre's pillars remains the maneuverability of those characters and the ability to help players achieve a satisfying experience.
The Japanese developer will receive the BIG Conference 2023 Honorary Award this evening at the Titanium Awards gala.
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About the Bilbao International Games Conference
The BIG Conference picks up the baton from the Fun&Serious Game Festival, which started in 2011 in Bilbao. With the slogan of "celebrating video game culture and video games as culture," for years, it attracted tens of thousands of people and the most prominent names in the international video game industry with a proposal that mixed professional presentations with activities aimed at the general public: from the fun for the whole family of the Fun Zone to the congress for indies Games Industry Forum, passing through the Titanium Awards or esports competitions. After the pandemic hiatus, with a purely virtual edition and another semi-presential one, the festival became an exclusive event for industry professionals and it changed its skin with a brand that reflected this new strategic direction.