Slashdot Mirror
Miyamoto vs. Everyone Else
Ian_Bailey writes "Wired writes Nintendo won't grow up, because of Shigeru Miyamoto. The creator of some of the most popular franchises, and the head of most of Nintendo's creative development, constantly aims his games at children. Many other devloppers admire his creativity, and believe that a mature-themed game would rock the entire industry. A very interesting read, and a bit of insight into the 'God of Games'."
No mature themed games? What about Conker's Bad Fur Day?
Miyamoto's games aren't aimed at kids, per se. They're aimed at the young at heart, those that can set aside their preconceived notions and enjoy a game regardless of how "realistic" or "mature" it is.
I've been playing the Japanese import of the GameCube "Legend of Zelda" game, and it's easily the best game ever made, irrespective of it's "toon-shading".
and believe that a mature-themed game would rock the entire industry.
The average demographic for video games is not as badly skewed towards pubescent males as it once was - I think I remember reading somewhere that the median age was between 19-20. If the target audience is growing up, Nintendo will probably alienate people who would prefer more mature themes - and 'mature' does not necessarily have to connote sex - unless they wake up.
That aside, I admire the man for his principles.
Mature as in "This is not for kids, this contains violence", or "this is something that belongs at www.somethingawful.com/hentai" ? If it's 'adult' in the sense of 'hentai' then let's just leave it where it is. If it's adult as in 'not a kids video game' then they should move forward...
Other console companies aiming for the adult market (like most xbox and ps2 titles); Nintendo is a breath of fresh air for those people still buying for their kids.
You can count on the nintendo offerings to be kid friendly and family oriented. I'll admit that's not really my cup of tea, but it's definitely the strong part of the market for Nintendo.
Any deviation from that plan would be a mistake in my opinion.
I don't understand why the poster believes that if Miyamoto produced a mature-themed game would "rock the world".
In my gaming experience, the level of maturity has very little to do with how well the game plays, it's much more of a "target the audience" marketing tool than a game design choice.
Besides, if Nintendo chose to shift to a more mature audience, they'd be going much more directly head-to-head with PS2 (a suicidal act, if anything.)
Personally I hope Miyamoto and Nintendo keep making kid oriented games. I am a father of 2.5 kids and my two oldest like playing video games with dad ocassionally. Now I would much rather have a nice and happy light themes of Nintendo's usual fare than the hard core action/destruction that Xbox seems to be focused on. However, I do like the more mature oriented games when the kids have gone to bed, etc, which is why I will prolly end up having both a game cube and Xbox eventually. I bet MS would sell a heck of lot more Xbox's if they made a few more family oriented games.
When you're making a game where you only have a few bytes to describe the character, you have to think up something creative or else the character will be boring or won't make sense. So, he thinks up a plumber who always wears red and his brother who prefers green. Mario gets a few extra pixels around his stomach.
But now, with full 3-D games, they could make whatever characters they wanted to. Your character could look like a relatively normal peson because you could display all kinds of little subtleties that would be impossible when you're working in 4 or 8 bit. But we're seeing the original 8 bit characters like Mario or Donkey Kong translated into full 3D. I don't know if that's good or bad, but it's kind of funny if you think about it. I think limitations encourage creativity.
I'm thinking there will be another Video Game crash. Too many systems, way too many games. Just like how Atari went down.
All the games on the market are crappy racing games, crappy first person shooters, or crappy RPG's.
I dont think nintendo really had a reputation for developing games aimed at children until Nintendo 64 came out. Up until then you had some amazing titles that, while not full of gore were still not "aimed" at children.
Castlevania, Megman, Metroid . Come on, these games were just amazing. In fact they still are. But Nintendo has ceased to develop quality, wide audience games (w/ the exception of maybe zelda) and has instead mass produced crap for children under age fourteen.
Why cant they do both?
to Nintendo.
If there wasn't a system aimed at kids, there would be no older gamers! My age group is crazy about video games. PC, XBox, PS2, GC. We eat everything up...but we all got hooked early on and a lot of that credit goes to Nintendo. I personally still prefer Nintendo...maybe its nostalgia, but they still seem much more together than any of the competitors. Rock on NINTENDO!
For me, the king of games is Richard Garriott. No other series ever gave me more hours of gameplay and satisfaction than the Ultima series did.
Miyamoto is okay, I find games like Mario and Zelda to be fun for a few minutes here and there, but I just can't get into them. They're too... shallow. I know shallow is probably a bad word here as the levels are large, with hidden items abound, but the gameplay itself I find too simplistic. I feel limited by the game engine.
What many people may not realize at first thought is that keeping your game rated G is the best move you can make.
If you start inserting "adult" themes, you are most likely to insert "male fantasy" themes. Not only this alienates the kids, but also most of the potential female players.
But if you stay with the common lowest denominator, a "General" audience, then you are targeting the whole market. Of course this pressuposes that you are not targeting exclusively to kids by inserting repetitive old jokes (barney style), but instead focus on larger storytelling (zelda style) that people of all ages can relate to.
Then if your game is of superior quality, it will prevail. But designing these games are much harder than inserting "male fantasy", and that's why we get things such as BMX-XXX...
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Look the only people who are too 'mature' for bright colors and kiddy themed games are 12-14 year old boys.
Truly mature people can appreciate the quality of the game weather it has lots of blood and guts or if it doesn't. Adults can appreciate both Mario and Vice City.
The only truly adult games I can think of (besides porn, I mean) are the hard-core simulations, like Gran Tourismo or to a certain extent counterstrike.
Anyway, Nintendo has plenty of money. They can hire more 'sophisticated' artists if they want to.
I say let Miyamoto do what he wants. Don't try to control a genious.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I totally agree with you.
The problem is because of all the technical skills needed to makes games these days. For example, programmers working on the PS2 need a good working knowledge of assembly to pull off some of the more advanced tricks and features of other consoles.
Maybe one day proper toolkits will be made and sold for cheap to developers to create fun games, while they purchase virtual actors to place in their game without the need to create models and animate that for all the actions. That way designers can focus on the content, simmilar to the independant scenes in audio and video now.
But now, when systems are so complex and gamers crave innovation every game needs its own engine, something that requires months of work, games do indeed need to make a profit to work. It has been recently emphasised by execs that the games industry is becoming a 'hit' industry, where 5% of the games account for 95% of the profits.
Of course, you can avert this kind of problem from happening. Buy games that were made by small teams, or didn't need as large as a budget, or aren't doing so well. Let the companies know that you appreciate their efforts. Help spread the hype away from the Metroid Primes and the Halos and the GTAs.
It may be worth noting that Mario Sunshine has not set any real sales records. In Japan, it has still not even broken a million copies being out for almost a year. In fact, it is only hovering around 700,000 copies, with is rather disappointing considering the hype of the title.
It has fared a bit better in the US, selling about 810,000 so far. But, overall, it is rather lackluster performance from a rather lackluster (in my opinion) game.
Also, I saw one poster say that Miyamoto produced Metroid Prime. This is only half-correct. Miyamoto was a representitive from Nintendo HQ in overseeing the development of Metroid Prime. Retro Studios came up with the concept, and did all the work. They deserve pretty much all the credit, not Miyamoto.
While one can respect Miyamoto for his achivements, many people in the industry only respect him for his reputation and past work. His recent works has fared rather lackluster in the market, and most critisize him for trying to simplify his games too much. (Such as his goal that all games be playable with only two buttons.)
Miyamoto is not "God", as some would put it, but mearly a very talanted game designer. There are many others that are quite talanted (such as Yuji Naka, Hideo Kojima, or Shinji Mikami for instance) but don't get the recognition due to lack of the "star" status.
I realize this is an unpopular view among the Slashdot crowd, but it's more of the view from inside the gaming industry.
Just some friendly perspective... =)
-Jayde
What's a sig?
I've been a fan of Conker's BFD since I bought it for less than ten bucks at a K-Mart that was going out of business. But I think the pile of BFD's on the ruins of the department store's electronics counter shows the problem: people (that is, the mindless herd, not we the enlightened) can't handle cognitive dissonance.
Conker, the main character, is terribly cute. He curses and fights with a singing monster named the Great Mighty Poo.
Begin mental meltdown...
The game is cute and gameplay is intuitive and fun. One scene involves enticing a big breasted sunflower into intimate relations with a drunken king bee.
TILT!
Faced with this situation, Nintendo took what I suppose was the only logical path: they sold one of their hottest developer groups to rival Microsoft.
It was interesting to me that BFD was one of the last N-64 games... one review I read described it as "the last must-have N-64 game." I saw a kid-friendly Game Boy game featuring Conker the Squirrel at Blockbuster, but didn't rent it... what would be the point? That character is indelibly linked, in my mind, to the Song of the Great Mighty Poo.
So it wasn't too huge a surprise to me when I read the news that Microsoft had bought Rare from Nintendo. I don't know how Rare managed to get Conker out Nintendo's door, but I'm guessing that someone wasn't too happy about it.
I sure wouldn't want to buy anything from the Redmond Empire... but if BFD-2 comes out for X-Box, I may have to put my moral compass back in the box. That said, I like the idea that I can turn to Nintendo for kid-friendly games that -- hopefully -- won't put the adults to sleep.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
I find it interesting that Blackley was the only person they interviewed that outright attacked Miyamoto. The rest (Lorne Lanning, Toshihiro Nagoshi, American McGee, Shinji Mikami) all praise his vison and/or credit him as an inspiration. I'd like to see what some other developers, like Warren Spector and Sid Mier have to say about him. Hell, John Romero is a *huge* fan of Miyamoto (Say all you want about Daikatana -- Doom was a great game and Romero had a lot to do with that).
As a side note, I never really bought into all the "Microsoft spreads FUD" conspiracy until I went to an XBox "tech talk" in 2000. It was almost entirely Nintendo/Sony bashing FUD. The best part was when they claimed that "Nintendo hadn't yet proved itself in the video game industry," and was basically in a risky position. I can't help but think that maybe Blackley internalized some of this FUD-spreading attitude and that this is how it's manifesting itself.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
It has been recently emphasised by execs that the games industry is becoming a 'hit' industry, where 5% of the games account for 95% of the profits. Of course, you can avert this kind of problem from happening. Buy games that were made by small teams, or didn't need as large as a budget, or aren't doing so well. Let the companies know that you appreciate their efforts. Help spread the hype away from the Metroid Primes and the Halos and the GTAs.
The reason why the gaming industry is so "hit" oriented now is because the consumer is simultaneously more and less informed. Instead of looking at the back of a box, thinking it looks cool, then throwing down money for it, people will often research extensively before buying. They'll read previews/reviews, ask for opinions on message boards, and many other things. One problem with this is that the only people to really plumb the depths of a gaming site's coverage are the hardcore gamers. The casual gamers often only know what every form of gaming media highlights on their front page, which is why games like Halo, Metroid Prime, and Metal Gear Solid are so popular. People are lazy, and often refuse to look beyond the surface of many things, including a gaming website's news coverage. The only way to make sure that less popular but very entertaining games are purchased and enjoyed is to alert people. Post on message boards, maybe write an article about a neglected game and ask that it be put on a gaming news site, anything to make people aware that a non-blockbuster game is well worth their gaming time and dollars.
Is probably the day he runs out of imagination.
There really is no need for blood and gore. In fact the "real world" stuff is far more constrained.
Think about it: Mario, Pacman, Tetris, Loderunner. vs Counterstrike, Quake, Max Payne, GTA3 etc. Which has more sameness? Some games can be just distilled to tiny essentials and people will still play them (e.g. snake).
Don't get me wrong. I enjoy 3D FPSes and games like GTA3. But I don't see why Miyamoto should be told how to use his obviously vast imagination and creativity.
There are INFINITE possibilities in the general direction he is heading. So why turn around and head in another direction? Let others explore the infinite possibilities in those directions. Does everyone have to head in the blood and gore directions? Doh.
Miyamoto vs Everyone Else? It'll be a very sad day if the combined imaginations of everyone else isn't good enough to explore blood and gore, and they need Miyamoto there as well.
Something is really wrong with people who keep thinking: "adult themes".
Despite Hollywood's attempts I hope adults still have broader minds than that.