“Half my body’s hair fell out” – the story of how the pressure of Tekken almost crushed its creator

Game development can be stressful, I’m sure you’ve heard. The director of fighting game series Tekken yesterday shared an anecdote about how wild that stress can get. Speaking about the release of Tekken 4 in 2001, director Katsuhiro Harada remembered it didn’t perform as well as previous games. And the game’s relatively weak reception (alongside a lack of support at Bandai Namco) sent his body into a spiral of ill-health from anxiety.

“I was under so much stress at the time that I developed a mysterious condition where all the hair on the right side of my body fell out – just the right side,” said the director in a post on Xitter. “Even the hair on my arms, eyebrows, and eyelashes disappeared.”

If it sounds unusual that hair loss might affect only one side of the body, it’s not actually that uncommon for balding to occur on one side before the other. Conditions like alopecia areata can be activated from stress and cause hair loss from eyebrows, eyelashes, and facial hair. It’s basically an immune system response – your body feels under threat and goes into overdrive, attacking and inflaming even its own hair follicles. Of course, I don’t know if this is what was going on with Harada’s body at the time – I was in school, ignoring the maths teacher. But the developer is convinced that work pressures definitely caused the problem.

“Actually, there was a period – just for about a year before development on Tekken 5 began – when I left Namco due to the stress and shock. It’s not a widely known fact, though,” continued Harada in the post, as spotted by Automaton.

The developer made the comments after a random follower praised Tekken 4 for being “the most authentic and adult Tekken ever released”. Praise which Harada notes is only offered with hindsight.

“But back then, I was absolutely bombarded with criticism,” he said. “I didn’t have a single ally. Not one. That’s a well-known story inside the company.

“Now, in the present day, the critics have all forgotten their complaints, and only those who want to praise the game remain. That’s the only reason it’s being treated like a masterpiece. For me, whether good or bad, this title remains a constant reminder and lesson to myself.”

Years later, we’re now sitting pretty on Tekken 8, and Harada remains the director of the series. Did you know he once tried to convince KFC to let him put Colonel Sanders in the fighting game? Anyway, the latest entry is pretty swell according to our Tekken 8 review, although I’m still waiting for my favourite characters to join the party. Most recently we’ve seen Anna Williams appear, alongside guest character Clive from Final Fantasy XVI. Every time Lei Wulong is left on the bench, I weep a single tear.