Players Don't Use Fighting Game Tutorials, Says Tekken Producer

Tekken 7 is a great fighting game with lots to do. One thing it didn’t dive too deep on, however, was teaching players its systems through tutorials. Compared to previous entries, Tekken 7 doeosn’t spend too much time guiding players through its systems, often neglecting to mention basic aspects of the game. According to Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada, the team didn’t implement tutorials because players don’t use them.

PCGamesN recently asked Harada about the lack of tutorials in Tekken 7, and Harada said that Bandai Namco can keep track of where players spend their time in Tekken games, and the data showed players didn’t gravitate to them. “You hear a lot of people say this game is great because it has a tutorial but when we look at the data, not many people play these tutorial modes,” Harada said. “This is the same when you buy something new, you take it home and you don’t read the manual. It’s a positive for your product if you can say you have a tutorial but when you take a closer look you notice that people aren’t really playing it.“

Harada also mentioned that their intent with Tekken 7 was to teach players the game through its story mode, keep the teaching light, and players learn the game themselves. “As you’re playing through the story mode, you naturally learn things like, ‘oh, this can be side stepped’ or ‘this character has this powerful special move if I learn how to use it properly.’” Harada told PCGamesN. “In the story mode, you can perform these with a simplified command so once you know about it, you can practice to perform this with the normal command.”

For more from Harada, check out our feature on his involvement in Dragon Ball FighterZ.

Our Take
In hindsight, it’s easy to see why players might not gravitate towards dedicated tutorials: Most games integrate them into their single-player modes, and who wants to sit down and learn all the systems in a game instead of actually playing it? Integrating them into the story mode, then, makes sense, but even with that caveat, there are basic things Tekken 7’s story mode doesn’t tell you (like about how wall-bounces and rage drives work) that would have sped up the learning process for newer players.