GamesBeat: Hmmm … you know, I guess I’m different from a lot of people, because when I play Street Fighter all I care about is the gameplay.
All of these people asking for more narrative, like … who is that? Is that a more Western thing, or is this a request coming from all over the world? Because I really could not care less about the back story.
Ono: That’s an older generation’s feeling, yeah. I think it has more to do with that.
What ended up happening is that Mortal Kombat X came out, and we had people internally, like Matt here and his team, who knew that people wanted this type of story content. On our end, initially, we thought, “Hey! Maybe this is just a western thing.”
But when we started talking more about this with people all over the world, we started realizing that young people were really into this type of content. The younger generation realizes that this is a fighting tool, a tool to be able to compete with other people, like chess. But they also want to have something they can enjoy as a single-player experience. They’re wondering, “What’s going on in the world of Street Fighter?”
This is something they want to know, that they care about. For older folks who’ve been involved in the series, either they don’t care, or they already know everything.
GamesBeat: [Laughs]
Ono: These younger people, the only sources of information they can go to are some old guy. … [Ono gestures toward me] … and that’s probably not the best experience. It’s probably a sort of generational gap.
So in order to bridge that gap between people who know and people who don’t know, this is something we’re providing to fans, to get them up to speed on what’s happening in the Street Fighter story.
GamesBeat: Hmmm. …
Ono: For console users, Street Fighter is fairly well known, but it’s not like every single console user is completely aware and understands Street Fighter to the fullest.
As we come out with each iteration of Street Fighter, as you said, a lot of things change. We reset the game system, the look and feel of the game. This time around we wanted to bring back everyone who was playing Street Fighter III and Street Fighter IV, but we wanted to reset the playing field so that everyone has an opportunity to immerse themselves in the world of Street Fighter.
As I said, up until now this has been a fighting tool, a tool to battle between two people. But there are different types of players out there. Not everyone is just into fighting. There are people who are into RPGs or Call of Duty.
These people are more into action gaming, the personal experience. To provide something in the game that could give people a hook to immerse themselves in the Street Fighter world, we prepared this prologue for the character stories and the story expansion.
It’s something that can give an opportunity for these types of players, who aren’t necessarily into just the fighting tool, but are more into games as a personal experience.