Guilty Gear Strive Producer Ken Miyauchi Explains Why There’s So Many Bridget Merchandise

Guilty Gear Strive has been out for over two years now and with Season 3 still going strong, we got the chance to speak with Producer Ken Miyauchi in an interview.

Being the Producer of Guilty Gear Strive, Miyauchi is in charge of deciding which characters are to be in the season, as well as planning on the future updates and what needs to be done to expand the player base for Guilty Gear Strive.

[Interview is edited for clarity]

Hackerman

The Guilty Gear Strive playerbase was anxious about Season 3 with a lot of fears surrounding the “Hackerman” issue, where hackers had discovered an exploit that was able to remotely crash the games of other players, among other issues. We asked Miyauchi if there were any more updates regarding this issue.

Miyauchi mentions that the Hackerman issue is mainly prevalent for English-speaking Twitch streamers as well as other major streamers. The development team had previously released a security patch back on 25 September which had some effect on certain Hackerman Issues.

“After the patch we have identified different type of cause,which we have addressed in our recent security patch on Nov. 7th.  We are hoping this issue will come to an end after this patch.”

Johnny’s Back

With Johnny joining in the Guilty Gear Strive roster in Season 3, we were curious to know what it was like on the developer side in seeing the community’s reaction to everyone’s favourite Pirate Captain Samurai Gambler.

“We are seeing great reactions from the players.  It also makes us happy seeing some people coming back to play the game since Johnny is one of the top desired returning characters.” said Miyacuhi.

Sin Kiske

Sin Kiske players have been very happy with the Season 3 patch, with many within the community saying that the character could even be one of the best characters in the game now. We asked Miyauchi whether tierlist rankings was one of the factors the team had looked into while tweaking his kit.

“We do sometimes see those tierlists made in the community, but obviously it is not only the decision-making factors.”

Miyauchi continued by saying that the development team also sees a variety of stats and more importantly the actual game replays of different levels of players. He also mentions that hearing about players being happy with Sin makes them feel relieved about how the updates turned out.

Bridget Merchandise

Having almost become the mascot of Guilty Gear Strive, Bridget is undoubtedly one of the most popular characters, having so much official merchandise and even collaboration art. We asked Miyauchi whether this was always the plan or a reaction to her strong placement in popularity polls.

“We recognized her popularity based on the polls as I also talked about it in recent Developer’s Backyard #15, but that merch and collab art are not always our plan. Actually many of those are inbound licensing requests.”

Guilty Gear Strive at EVO 2023

Even after two years after the launch of Guilty Gear Strive, the game still has an incredibly strong showing at this year’s EVO. We asked Miyauchi what his thoughts were about that as the game’s producer.

To which, Miyauchi mentions that he and the development team really appreciate everyone supporting the community.

“Although it is not the only indicator we evaluate our global performance, having our presence at the EVO final day does motivate the development team to prepare surprising and exciting announcements.”

Launch Strive vs Season 3 Strive

Between Season 3 of Guilty Gear Strive and when the game first launched, it almost feels like an entirely different game, especially with a lot of damage being tuned down, along with the implementation of Wild Assault. We asked Miyauchi at what point in the game’s life does the development team start to make decisions to pivot in new directions.

Miyauchi mentions that the development plan for Season 3 had already been confirmed after the beginning of Season 2. But ever since the game’s release, both DIrector Akira Katano and himself had shared the same vision that they will need something new to the game at some point in its lifespan to continue the game updates longer than their past titles.

“We want the game to grow together with our players, so some of the ideas are reflecting user feedback.” said Miyauchi.

Guilty Gear Strive and the SEA Region

The Southeast Asia region has a very strong Guilty Gear Strive scene, with regular online tournaments as well as offline ones, on top of drawing in a healthy amount of players. We asked Miyauchi if there’s anything he’d like to say to the community and could SEA players expect to see more cool things coming to the region in the future.

Miyauchi first thanked the Southeast Asian region for their support.

“Guilty Gear has grown together with the communities, and we really thank many online and offline player supports run by enthusiastic fans and long-time series players in SEA. I am looking forward to hearing more voices in the future updates and seeing the SEA communities directly at some point next year.”

Miyauchi continued by saying that he personally cannot talk about the future of Guilty Gear Strive yet, but he asked SEA fans to please look forward to any future announcements as Arc System Works are regularly talking about the SEA region.

We would like to extend our thanks to Ken Miyauchi for answering our questions and Arc System Works for setting up the interview.

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