TEPPEN World Championship 2019 GungHo & Capcom Interview: What's Next

4 years 2 months

Executive producers speak on TEPPEN's 6 month journey since launch.
Interview questions fans are curious about.

TEPPEN hosts its first World Championship with a whopping prize pool of ¥50,000,000 (~500k USD) only 6 months after launching.

GamePress sat down with GungHo CEO Kazuki Morishita and Capcom Executive Producer Ryozo Tsujimoto catching up on the 6 month journey and discuss the excitement in TEPPEN.

Esports Journey

Hello I’m Anthony Tu. I’m with GamePress. I wanted to say thank you to Tsujimoto San and Morishita San, as playing TEPPEN has changed my life. I appreciate you guys, it’s an honor to meet you.

I want to say congratulations, I heard that TEPPEN has become an official esports for Japan. When I heard about the news I was very excited. How will TEPPEN approach esports in other regions besides Japan?

We have already started promoting esports events for TEPPEN, such as Anime Expo, PAX, G-Star, and Taipei Game Show. With our appearances, we are introducing TEPPEN and holding tournaments. We prioritize promoting TEPPEN in these regions. I do want to hold an event in Hawaii.

Haha, I would go.

We have had a couple of balance changes for cards and Hero abilities.

How does TEPPEN monitor the game and adjust balance changes?

We look at various data sets for Hero Arts, Cards, and Heroes used in TEPPEN, including use and win percentage. When a card or ability is too strong or too popular in the meta, we have discussions and playtest them. What we research depends on the current meta. In testing, we consider all expansions and pay attention to research and data.

Everyone on the team has their favorite card. If the card becomes too strong, we discuss withholding bias and consider what’s best for the players and the game. Our policy is to never change the overall playstyle of an archetype when adjusting cards/abilities.

Getting into TEPPEN

For someone who has never played TEPPEN but enjoys gaming, is it easy to get into TEPPEN? We have 3 expansions currently.

We are always thinking of the community. Every content update we are campaigning and introducing new mechanics and playstyles to help players adjust. New content will always present a learning curve, but it is our mission to release content for TEPPEN. We are always considering new players, and methods to introduce new content to them.

I love the real-time-strategy mechanic for TEPPEN. I was wondering if RTS in TEPPEN makes the audience limited or unlimited in reach.

When we were designing TEPPEN, the gameplay was not meant to be too long, but rather designed for short, 5 minute sessions, so anyone can sit down and enjoy TEPPEN.

Since TEPPEN not only has card game players, but RTS players joining TEPPEN, I realized this is a good opportunity.

What's Next

We have TEPPEN on mobile, are we planning on PC support?

A lot of players want to play TEPPEN on the computer.

TEPPEN was designed for mobile gaming. When we think about the mobile design for TEPPEN and the transition to PC, we have to consider the integrity of TEPPEN, making sure that it is the same on both platforms.

One of the games I like to play is League of Legends, where they have over 100 heroes. TEPPEN currently has a pattern of releasing Heroes and expansions every 2 months. How do you feel about TEPPEN’s current schedule and will you ever slow down content release? As an example from League of Legends, initially they were releasing a lot of Champions early on, but in recent years have been releasing less Champions.

We don’t think we will release over 100 Heroes to TEPPEN. There’s a difference between TEPPEN and League of Legends, TEPPEN features unique Hero Arts to make various playstyles for playable characters. We do not prioritize releasing Heroes for TEPPEN, card expansions are more important for content release. We will not release a lot of Heroes like League of Legends.

Although the game is still fairly new, how will TEPPEN address standard rotation after more expansions are released?

We will provide various game modes to ensure that all cards new and older will have use in TEPPEN. We cannot tell you when an expansion will rotate as of right now, but players will not have to worry about cards losing value.

The EX Grand Prix is a phenomenal new introduced game mode that has been rewarding alternate card art on a weekly schedule. Can we continue to expect weekly releases of new card art?

New card art is a possible reward for the EX Grand Prix. We intend on doing different types of rewards for the EX Grand Prix.

Different types of rewards, that is exciting!

I noticed the store has a Jewel bundle to celebrate the World Championship, can we expect to get more deals?

We want to provide deals and rewards for celebrations in TEPPEN.

As a player, this has been very fulfilling

We are happy that you and players can be happy with this.