Tekken’s developers hope that AI will be able to assist future 3D stage creation as development costs reach all-time high 

Tekken series producer Katsuhiro Harada recently gave a presentation at Japan’s Computer Entertainment Development Conference (CEDEC) 2024 (reported on by 4Gamer). One of the topics the developer touched on was the series’ detailed 3D environments and the significant impact they now have on development and labor costs. 

Tekken is a 3D fighter, allowing players to make use of the third axis with a camera that can capture their character from all angles. Up until Tekken 3 and Tekken Tag Tournament, the series used so-called painted backgrounds, which were flat. But from 2001’s Tekken 4 onwards, the developers turned to 3D stages that depict depth of field and put an emphasis on the “density of information” shown. This is when development costs first started to rise significantly, according to Harada. 

When it comes to Tekken’s 3D environments, what we see in-game is not all there is to it. Harada illustrates this point with an in-engine screenshot of Tekken 8’s New York stage (seen below). The image is zoomed out very far, showing a vast map with numerous tall buildings. The part of the map used in battles is highlighted in yellow, and it’s a shockingly small portion. 

The reason the developers need to create so much of the peripheral environment is not because it gets used somewhere else – it’s all for the purpose of convincingly depicting depth in Tekken’s battles. Things aren’t much easier when creating closed-area environments either, as there are stage interactions to count for, such as breaking through walls or falling down steps. 

“It costs so much money,” Harada comments. The developer hopes that in the future, they will be able to create 3D stages with physics with the help of AI, instead of assets. In Harada’s opinion, the development and labor costs related to environment creation are currently at their peak. 

On a separate occasion, the creator has commented that Tekken’s development costs have grown tenfold since the 90s, with Tekken 8 being two to three times more expensive to make than Tekken 7. At the time, Harada named things like server maintenance, high specs and continuous updates as contributing factors. However, it seems that the game’s 3D stages were a lot more costly to create than the average person would imagine.