Tekken 8 director Katsuhiro Harada has warned fans that even the silliest of threats can have big implications on future game events, reveals and even the future of your favourite character.
I’m sure most of us have made banterous proclamations of what we’ll do if our favourite character in a series doesn’t make it to the next instalment. I’m not sure how many of us then decide to go ahead and directly feed that exaggerated proclamation straight to the series director or creator, which always feels like a bad idea.
Unfortunately somebody went and did exactly that, tweeting to Harada: “I swear to f*ck if we don’t get Eddy in tekken 8 I will hit @Harada_TEKKEN with a Burning Hammer.” It’s a tweet that’s clearly in jest, something Harada is also aware of, but I’m sure he’s also received similar tweets where the humour is distinctly lacking. It’s caused him to go ahead and warn fans of the ramifications tweets like them can have, even when they’re made in a light-hearted manner.
“When people make these silly threats, I and everyone at FGC suffer the following losses,” he tweeted in response. He listed three potential outcomes, which included increased security at future Tekken events which he says “increases operating costs and increases the burden on the players attending the event.” Harada went as far to say that event management may ask him to cancel any planned appearances, which thus far doesn’t seem to have happened but seems plausible nonetheless.
He also claims that figures above him like company founders and board members “don’t like to be intimidated,” which could lead to the cancellation of a character or feature that had already been planned in the game. He also takes a stab at fans “making these threats using the word ‘We’ instead of ‘I’ to represent the fans,” saying that it increases the likelihood of the first two events occurring.
“By enthusiasts behaving excessively, repeating these words and actions, or Fake information and hoaxes, or Threats, the motivation of the development staff will decrease rapidly,” he concluded. “As a result, the requests of enthusiasts will be far from being realized.”
I definitely understand where Harada is coming from—especially with Tekken having so many characters, there are a lot of people out there gunning to see their favourites making it into Tekken 8’s roster. Being inundated with messages asking for certain characters, either in a polite or frustrated way, has to get tiring after a while, which is probably why Harada’s bothered to address it in the first place. For now, I’ll be keeping my campaign for Lucky Chloe’s return away from Harada’s gaze, just in case I jinx something.