Tekken director Katsuhiro Harada claims he isn’t trying to up sticks and leave Bandai Namco after some fans noticed that he’d switched on LinkedIn’s “open to work” function.
Now I can’t blame people for thinking that means he’s trying to jump ship. After all, the open to work function is supposed to be exactly for that—letting recruiters know that you’re looking for new job opportunities. Harada’s own open to work preference says he’s looking for roles such as “Executive Producer, Game Director,” and “Vice President of Business Development,” which are lots of nice-sounding corporate words I’m sure mean something.
But, according to Harada, he’s not actually planning to hand out his resumé to other developers anytime soon. Apparently, he only did it because he wants to broaden his professional social circle. “Oh, don’t worry about this,” he tweeted in response to someone asking if it was true he was looking for other work. “I meet a lot of people on a regular basis (but I don’t actually have that many friends in my private world LOL), I just wanted to meet more people and expand my horizons in the future. I just want to meet more people when I turn this option on. Just that.”
Well, that’s the panic over… I suppose? I’m not exactly well-versed in LinkedIn—it feels too much like a strange corporate Facebook for my liking—but I assume what he says is true. Besides, anyone in a creative field will know that networking (shudder) can be a super useful thing to do, so I don’t blame Harada for wanting to put the feelers out there regardless.
Some small part of me would be interested to see Harada working for another developer, though. He’s been at Bandai Namco for the better part of three decades now, having been around since the very first Tekken in 1994. The series has been the main bulk of his portfolio, occasionally branching out into other fighting games or Bamco JRPGs.
Whether he will though, I dunno. On an episode of Harada’s Bar last year, the director said of him and producer Michael Murray: “Tekken 9 will be our last work before retirement,” before almost immediately reiterating: “If we were to work on Tekken 9, it would likely be our final project.” Considering there was around seven years between Tekken 7 and Tekken 8, the ninth game would take Harada into his 60s. Seems as good a time as any to bow out, even if that makes me a bit sad that we’ll likely never see him elsewhere.