Senran Kagura producer on why Marvelous isn’t investing in as many new IPs
These days, it may not seem like Marvelous is investing in as many new IPs as it did just a few years ago. Whereas titles such as No More Heroes, Little King’s Story, and even Senran Kagura came out of the company in recent years, Marvelous now doesn’t appear to be taking as many risks.
Senran Kagura producer Kenichiro Takaki told Siliconera that producers at the company “get a lot of freedom” to make the games they desire. Back in the day, Marvelous was creating new IPs to find a hit title, which just so happened with Senran Kagura. Now that attention has been given to the series, Takaki is “thinking of new ideas and I would like to try some of those out.”
“It’s not that orders are coming down from above that we have to make franchise titles. I feel that the producers get a lot of freedom to do what they want to inside Marvelous. When we were experimenting with a lot of little titles, the goal was always to find that IP that hit and can be developed into a series. That happened with Senran Kagura, which is why I’ve been focused on that now. I am thinking of new ideas and I would like to try some of those out.”
“The Kagura series really comes from me trying to make a worldwide hit in the past. I wasn’t able to find success that way, so I decided to focus on what I know by a Japanese person for Japanese people. That was the starting concept for Senran Kagura. I don’t want to lose sight of that, but I do want to listen to feedback from Western users. It’s kind of a difficult situation, things like gameplay systems or how the game plays would be easier to adjust.”
