“We didn’t want them to care too much”: Guilty Gear -Strive- Producer Ken Miyauchi on winning back players with Ranked

Evo 2025 is underway and all eyes are on the biggest fighting games in the world — like Tekken 8, Street Fighter 6 —but there’s another fighting game that’s slowly becoming one of the top titles, not just at Evo but all over the world: Guilty Gear -Strive-.

Evo selects the tournaments to showcase on the final day based on the number of participating competitors, and Guilty Gear -Strive- has made it to the final day the past four years. Producer Ken Miyauchi told Esports Illustrated why he believes the game has become so popular in the FGC and what may be to come.

Ahead of the massive fighting game event, Evo shared the final registration numbers. While it didn’t beat previous years as predicted, it most definitely showed that Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8 are still massively popular esports titles, getting 4,228 and 2,521 signups respectively.

After those two massive scenes was Fatal Fury: City Of the Wolves, a brand new fighting game that’s been gaining traction in the FGC scene. Big names in fighting games are set to compete throughout the weekend.

Third was Guilty Gear -Strive- with 1,508 registered fighters. This is huge for Arc System Works, who haven’t seen a game this large so far. In fact, Miyauchi said it’s a ‘record-breaking title,’ almost hitting 3.5 million players.

“The player base is continuing to grow and we are still motivated to keep updating the game. I’m really happy to see and surprised to see that there are so many players caring about the game,” Miyauchi said as the tournament began.

So what has led to this exciting player record? According to Miyauchi, it’s Arc System Works’ decision to engage the FGC community in the United States and other countries outside of Japan. Past Guilty Gear titles have only focused on Japanese fighters since the titles appealed more to that region and there was a massive language barrier to overcome.

However, developers decided to open up a branch in the United States for Strive, helping them engage with the players and have more direct marketing. By engaging more with US players, Arc System realized that the FGC desired rollback netcode.

This was implemented for Guilty Gear -Strive-, which has increased the playercount significantly. Fighting games rely on very accurate and reliable internet connections to ensure outputs and split-second decisions are reflected in the game. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which uses Nintendo’s poor internet, doesn’t even count online tournaments towards the main competition rankings.

“Back in the day, only Japanese players were getting ito the Top 8. When we started -Strive-, we saw a lot more competitors from different countries,” Miyauchi said. “I appreciate seeing those players still playing competitively, showing up to the tournaments, showing their performance, seeing the game played all over the world.

“Thank you to all the esports players playing it competitively.”

However, when Miyauchi told Esports Insider the exciting player record, he also admitted that a lot of players had been leaving the game. He is hoping the new character, Lucy, will bring some back. There will be more revealed about Lucy on Sunday as the tournament heats up. But is a new character enough?

Like most competitive titles, players come and go. But Miyauchi feels as though -Strive- is struggling to win these lost players back. That prompted the decision to bring in Ranked Matches, which will be implemented into the game very soon.

Previously, Guilty Gear had a very different take on ranked gameplay, Ranked Tower. Miyauchi admitted that ranking ‘doesn’t matter’ too much and that players should be enjoying the game in a more casual sense, rather than caring about their rank. “We didn’t want them to care too much,” he told Esports Insider.

However, competitive players have continued demanding it. Developers are going to add Ranked Matches after seeing what worked and didn’t work in Ranked Tower in hopes of bringing back some lost players.

When it comes to attracting new players, Guilty Gear -Strive- doesn’t have a known plan. While Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8 feature simplified controls and easy game modes to entice beginners, -Strive- has a moveset that doesn’t translate well to simple inputs. Without having that system from the start, it’s quite difficult to add now and it doesn’t seem to be part of the plan.

“We’d love to do it but it depends on what we are going to target in the future. I can’t really talk about it right now,” he said. “Our take is, simple input is a way to help bringing in new audience not familiar with fighting games.”

Instead of targeting new players, Miyauchi hopes some exciting announcements on Sunday will reel in players that have left the community. This doesn’t include a new game, by the way. Miyauchi quickly debunked rumours of a cancelled Guilty Gear game that’s been floating around.

“I don’t know where that rumour came from,” he admitted. “Why would a producer not know about this? It’s interesting that people talk about it and I suspect the reason is a lot of people care about Guilty Gear so I can appreciate seeing that kind of thing.”

For now, Arc System Works is focusing on -Strive-, which has continued to stand out in the fighting game community. While it’s a bit trickier to learn, competitive players have stayed loyal to the title due to its unique visuals and soundtrack.

“I feel weird saying it myself,” Miyauchi said, “but it still stands out as the best quality among other fighting games, even after four years. We want to keep making that quality assured and we want to stand out from other fighting games in that way.”