Street Fighter 6 director on year 4’s controversial character picks

When Capcom recently revealed the next batch of characters coming to Street Fighter 6, series veterans were a bit shocked. Instead of bringing back fan favorites, the fighters coming to the game’s fourth season pass are all newcomers: There’s the Filipino martial artist Yasmine; the beefy ex-police officer Arjun; the World Tour cast member Bosch; and, of course, Tifa from Final Fantasy 7.

While those outside of the fighting game community were excited to see everyone’s favorite Avalanche member make her way to this legendary series, many SF6 diehards were not quite as enthused. “I get releasing new characters, but three new characters and a guest is absolutely a bonkers decision,” one Reddit user said. “Who the fuck said ‘we want Bosch as [a] playable character’?” another chimed in.

The reaction mostly comes down to two elements: tThere are a lot of existing Street Fighter characters (close to 100), and the latest game in the series has been releasing them at a slower pace. For context, Street Fighter 5 received around six combatants a year compared to the most recent game’s four. While most fans probably won’t be too shaken up if Rolento or Sodom don’t make it back, Makoto mains may start Karakusa-ing people in real life if this karate practitioner is neglected for the second game in a row. It all leads to the question: Why did Capcom prioritize new characters over old ones for its Year 4 lineup?

Thankfully, we don’t have to speculate. At Summer Game Fest, we got the chance to speak with Street Fighter 6 director Takayuki Nakayama about the rationale behind some of these choices. One of the main reasons why the season four lineup has so many new characters is pretty straightforward: They view it as a way to bring in new players.

“As you might have noticed, there is an emphasis on new characters joining the lineup,” Nakayama said. “As for the reasoning behind that, as we’re getting more and more new players into the game, we want to expand the brand and possibly even reach a new audience.”

In an interview with Gamespark, Street Fighter 6 producer Shuhei Matsumoto said that over 70% of Street Fighter 6 players are between 15 and 25 years old, meaning most of the game’s seven million players are younger and probably not as invested in the existing cast.

Nakayama further explained how they intend to bring new players into the series: “For example, one of the new characters, Arjun, is from India. India obviously has a big population, with lots of new gamers coming in, so we were hoping that we could create a character that could potentially resonate with that audience. Another new character is named Yasmine, who originates from the Philippines. We know that within the fighting game community, there are a lot of people with Filipino roots who Yasmine might resonate with.”

While there has been a good amount of skepticism toward Year 4’s lineup, the tone of the conversation changed a bit when Yasmine’s first gameplay footage dropped. On top of her flashy rushdown gameplay, many noticed neat culturally specific details, like how her hairstyle is based on the Philippine eagle and that she uses a fighting style inspired by Eskrima martial arts.

“The main objective is to create a character design that we think people would love, characters that other artists can emulate,” Nakayama explained. “And then from there, we would also talk to people who kind of represent those regions and see if it fit with their expectations and if the character was representing the country that they come from.”

As a game series centered on World Warriors, Street Fighter has always leaned into the cultural differences between its fighters. Unfortunately, it hasn’t always been particularly thoughtful about it: The original game is an over-the-top mishmash of caricatures and stereotypes. Yasmine and Arjun seem to be an attempt to go in a different direction.

Image: Capcom

“So in terms of Yasmine, she is going to be the first character from the Philippines to represent that country and appear in a Street Fighter series title. She also has a unique fighting style that is regional and is very specific to martial arts in the Philippines, and she uses a knife (karambit),” Nakayama said.

Capcom hired Filipino American voice actor Abby Espiritu for the English voice of Yasmine. At the risk of sounding overly definitive, the character has been reasonably well received for her representation of Filipino culture, and some have praised her design. There’s also been quite a bit of amusement over English speakers struggling to pronounce her Tagalog attack names.

“In terms of Arjun, he’s not the first Indian character,” Nakayama said. “We have another character, Dhalsim, who comes from India, but for this particular character, we wanted to go for a more modernized look of what an Indian character could look like.” While we’ve only seen concept art for Arjun and received hints at his backstory (he’s an ex-cop framed for murder who seems at least partially inspired by Bollywood action heroes), we’ll know more as we get closer to his release this fall.

Since the beginning, Street Fighter 6 has attempted to balance attracting new players and appeasing series veterans. It features all eight characters from the original Street Fighter 2, but it also includes many newcomers, like Marisa, Kimberly, Manon, Lily, and Aki. With Year 4 leaning heavily toward the new, it will be interesting to see if the game’s presumed fifth season offers any crumbs for oldheads who love Urien’s reflector setups.

Regardless, there’s no arguing that Capcom’s approach seems to have largely panned out financially. The latest entry has nearly outsold the previous one, but in far less time, and years after its release, Street Fighter 6 remains the most played traditional fighting game on Steam. But still, even with its shift in priorities paying off, here’s hoping Capcom finds a reason to add at least a few more returning fighters (Makoto, pretty please with sugar on top) before moving on to Street Fighter 7.

Yasmine comes to Street Fighter 6 on Aug. 3.

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