Katsuhiro Harada – creator of Tekken – had his say on the validity of online petitions to obtain something from game developers and publishers. In her opinion, online petitions are practically uselessboth because they tend not to be genuine as it is too easy to leave a signature, and because they can be generated with bots.
However, Harada has a solution for fans who want to make themselves heard: send handwritten letters to the development team offices. The man believes from personal experience that regular receipt of such letters from different people can influence teams.
Harada's full statement
“Let me tell you what is actually most effective for these requests.”
“First of all, as explained above, online petitions are not very effective. On the contrary, a large number of documents hand-delivered by fans with handwritten signatures is even more effective. But in any case, the signatures are not authentic, because even if they are numerous, their enthusiasm is not genuine.”
“Furthermore, demonstrations in front of developers' buildings and question-and-answer sessions at shareholder meetings have in some cases had the opposite effect (a bad precedent is set if one gives in to such demands).”
“In my 30 years of experience in the gaming industry, I have found that two things are most effective.”
“One is to create a big buzz on the Internet and in magazines at a level that gets picked up by news outlets outside of the gaming industry. That's what I call a big 'flame.' When that happens, the management of the company has no choice but to intervene from the top. However, there have almost never been cases of this type of community-wide riot, so this is pretty much an empty theory.”
“Let's move on to another example.”
“In this case, we received several letters from multiple fans (unique users) on a daily basis. But these are not emails, but rather old letters in the post.”
“Having experienced this first hand, I can assure you that a few letters in a postal envelope delivered every day leave us with more than 10,000 results of online petitions transmitted by social networking sites.”
“At one point I received several letters a day asking to reinstate certain characters. Some of these letters were terrible, complete with razor blades, which I don't recommend because it's counterproductive.”
“However, receiving enthusiastic letters from all over the world on a daily basis has a significant impact on the awareness of the development team, making it easier to talk about it within the company and attracting management's attention.”
“On the other hand, as mentioned above, emails and online petitions no longer give the impression of being indistinguishable from mass spam advertising. In other words, the ease and convenience of submitting requests in the online digital space tends to dilute its value.”
“So, let me say that, these days, letter requests are more effective than you might think.”
“Thank you”
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