Outspoken Tekken 8 director Katsuhiro Harada has made a bold claim that is unlikely to ruffle any feathers in the broader audience: younger gamers prefer team-based games because they can blame, at least partially, any losses on their teammates rather than having to take sole responsibility for losing on themselves.
Sitting down to talk games with PlayStation's Shuhei Yoshida, Harada made some rather spicy comments on the latest episode of the awkwardly named Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences' Game Maker's Notebook podcast (thanks, VGC). Harada explained his rationale, which does make some semblance of sense to us, at least initially:
"In Japan, and probably in most of the world, my generation is a big one. It makes up a good chunk of the population. That made our society a competitive one. If you applied to a school or for a job, there was always a lot of competition. Because of this, people in my generation prefer definitive outcomes, a clear winner and loser. This applies to folks in and around their 50s." So far, so good. Nothing explicitly singling out Millenials or Zoomers yet.
Harada continues: "But most young people nowadays are the opposite. They're rarely eager to engage in one-on-one showdowns. Plus, because fighting games pit you by yourself against a single opponent, you have to accept all the responsibility if you lose. You can't blame anyone else."
The Tekken boss suggests that fighting games must consider this moving forward to continue appealing to a younger audience. Still, he can't resist getting one more jab in at kids these days: "In team-based shooters, when players win, they can say that they won because of their contributions, but when they lose, it's because they got matched with a lousy team. Some games even give out individual awards to each and every player."
In other Tekken news, Harada recently asked his legions of Twitter followers why so many kept asking for a Tekken level based upon the American fast-food chain Waffle House, and the answers he received were quite revealing.
Is Harada out of touch, or are the children wrong? Do you feel the total weight of your loss when you lose a one-on-one bout online? Let us know in the comments section below.
[source videogameschronicle.com]
Comments 26
This statement isn't Harada's fault, his PR team clearly dropped the ball on this one.
100% true, & 99% of time those same players that blame others are trash at the game . in fighting games if they lose, they’ll complain about how you play , it’s anyone but them. really weak mentality to have .
If accepting responsibility was a trait that older generations had then the world wouldn’t be in the state that it is. This isn’t an age thing, this behaviour was taught by our elders.
Based take. The thing is your teammates can be absolutely detrimental to you winning a match in a shooter, MOBA, etc, but you ought to stop complaining about it anyway. You cannot change it, so you should focus on what you can control- your own performance and consistency.
I don't know about blaming any sort of generation but the general sentiment of some people not taking responsibility for a match being lost isn't 100% far off.
I see where he is coming from but I hate to break it to him. People will still find something else to blame in fighting games too. Connection status, buttons broke, cheap moves, etc.
He's right. Though I don't think developers should course correct because we have a generation of babies raised on the "Everyone is a winner" philosophy. This is a cultural problem. Particularly in the US where kids in the 80's and 90's were starting to be raised with this drivel and not taught about the cut throat nature of everything from survival to simply getting that promotion. They shy'd away from this and as a result, finding out you're not special, that you need to try harder if you really want to come out on top is a hard pill to swallow. I hear this crutch of an excuse of it being someone else's fault across the board. Whether its in the work place from younger staff or from kids in the CoD lobby who run around nuking everything with a grenade launcher with no concept of how that is impacting their own team when they do. Then they turn around and blame their team for it. Same with overwatch, which will result in 5 people pointing at the one person who is saying everyone else is at fault without listening to the 5 other players who know exactly what the 1 person did wrong. Of course Blizzard doesn't help matters, by eliminating the end of match coms, so you can't have it out with idiot on your team who needs a good tongue lashing to maybe consider either leaving the game or learning how to play it.
Not every young person has this issue, but it seems like most. It's why those who are adjusted to competition seem to fair better in the real world then those that don't. Number of times I have to explain to someone why they weren't promoted over someone else and they blame the rest of the team for their short comings, just blows my mind.
This explains why Lebron James has so many fans, they mimic his mentality lol
Sore losers have always been around and team based games have always been the most popular. Last time I checked the job market was as competitive as always also…
Sounds like he just wants to pat himself on the back and cope because Tekken isn’t as popular as Cod or Whatever.
He's not wrong, but the problem isn't the kids, or the players, the problem is the games. Team shooters matchmaking systems generally are bad and the genre is fundamentally broken. Some by design to encourage mtx pay to win spend. (See the Activision CoD patent.). Some because they can only work with who is online at the moment even if the pairing is bad it's as close as it can get with who it has. Others (many) for using Elo derrived systems designed for chess, using win loss comparisons to assign a player skill value. Which works for 1v1 games like chess, and Tekken. It goes bad when it tries to assign team skill values, as a team with balanced players and a team with half good, half bad players have the same combined skill, but in reality the team with balanced players can function decently as a team and keep pressuring, while the other team is often only half a team against a full team while half the team spends much of the much respawning. To win, your good plays have to be unbelievably amazing players to pull an upset.
Randoms in team games really does suck and much of the time good players do lose because of bad team matchmaking. League play with known teammates is a completely different thing and that's where team games actually work well in ladder play. But I'm sure he's referring to the random and not league play.
There are more than enough crybabies on Tekken too. "OF course you won with that cheap move, noob. And I was lagging."
And then they rage quit.
I think it's mostly westerners of any age that need a constant stream of positive reaffirmation in order not to fully fall into their well kept anxiety. Heres a platinum trophy, you are amazing!
I blame dlc and in game micro-transactions in games, wich are sometimes just pay to win content. I think that's more damaging then those gamers that can't deal with losing a match online.
"Nothing explicitly singling out Millenials or Zoomers yet."
Well, millennials (it's two ’n’s by the way 😉) aren't really what he's talking about. The term covers people aged between about 43 down to about 26 or so; the point where it transitions to zoomers is different depending on who you ask, but generally it's the late '90s or 2000. So basically the generation that grew up with a NES, SNES, PS1 or PS2 are typically going to be millennials. He's not talking about them, he's talking about people born about 2005 onwards (teens and below).
He is ssssooooo right. I will never be able to understand this generation of players 🙈
He's half right. I think many people definitely prefer to play on a team so they can put the blame for a loss elsewhere but I don't think it's the age of the person that matters as much as the personality. I know plenty of people in my age bracket (40-45) who are the exact types Harada is talking about. And I know plenty of younger people who enjoy the games where you play individually because they want to prove they're the best.
@SgtTruth
Fair points. I'm just going off what I've noticed. I actually prefer to play solo games as well. Always been that way for me, can't really say what made me think like this, but ever since I was young I always viewed gaming as a 'personal' experience at least at home. In the arcade I'd try to test my skills against others from time to time.
This is a topic that comes up around fighting games a lot, especially among people who are just picking them up.
Idk about generational differences but being on your own against an opponent is a big part of the reason some people enjoy the games and others don't
Or, Harada has no friends to play with, so he has to play solo, while the younger kids have friends they like to play with.
The simplest answer is usually the easiest, they play with friends BECAUSE THEY CAN. Poor friendless Harada.ðŸ˜
My actual job is fixing people's screw ups at my company. They have to go through a system where they charge the error to someone or the system.
Let me tell ya: not taking accountability is NOT unique to a generation lol.
@rjejr I alao dont have friends who play video games i have to agree it really depends on your personal life.
I played Guild Wars for 5000 hours over a span of 5 years the playing with friends online made it so much more fun. League of Legends wow that game made stop playing online competitive on PC.
But playing online with strangers is without a microphone god the amount of people that wish you the worst of the worst diseases is insane. Or do something with my mom yewh ill play rather play solo.
I agree that 1v1 is added stress, but I think that applies to everyone, not just the younger generation.
That's one of the reasons I don't play online. Can't stand all the cry babies, or the competive idiots who take it to far. Like games I can immerse myself in without distractions.
@Flaming_Kaiser I've never had friends into video games so when I do play online it's solo. And I always turn my microphone off. But if I did have friends who played online and it was available like it is today between Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite, etc, well that's the way I'd go. I probably could have spent 1,000s of hours on World of Warcraft. Always seemed my type of game but I never played it b/c I always play solo.
So I don't believe him that it's about blame. I think it's a stupid take actually. He's not just wrong, he's very wrong.
Here is the problem, base game 93.50, deluxe 133.50, ultimate edition 146.50. Then you have the coins you can buy 500 are $7, 550 $67. So the top tier price tag is not enough they add in coins, to make even more money. For me most games that have paid consumable items I will avoid. I will make an exception for the Devil may Cry on the consoles, but that's it.
@rjejr Guild Wars was the way for me with more then 4000 or 5000 hours in five years i played it so much and it was a perfect experience with payed expansions and no subscription.
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