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Miyamoto Lecture At Smithsonian Documented
Thanks to 1UP for its report on last week's Smithsonian lecture featuring game industry luminaries, including Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, and as previously mentioned on Slashdot Games. After Miyamoto's entrance, heralded with "hoots and hollers [so loud] that you'd think Natalie Portman had just walked out on stage at a Star Wars convention", the article quotes the Nintendo mainstay on his entrance to the industry ("When I originally I came to Nintendo it was to do industrial design... I wanted to make the new Rubix Cube. I never imagined that I would work in video games, especially since I don't like computers"), and his concern over making videogames accessible: ("Everyone should be able to pick-up a controller and play a video game... But still so many people think games are too complex. So I developed the L/R buttons and analog stick to simplify things.")
/me whacks parent with clue stick. if you've ever watched a young kid or even average middle aged or old person trying to play a game, you'd know that many buttons are confusing. whether they are used in the game or not is irrelevant, they'll be trying to push them anyway, and that includes wondering why some aren't doing anything.
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
But he also mentioned the analog stick, which the SNES did not have.
But his comment is wrong either way. Adding buttons doesn't make it easy to use, especially the way the n64 was set up. L/R/Z? Different grips for the D-Pad and stick? I'm not sure that the N64 was meant for people to simply pick up and play. Even the buttons were set up in a manner that wasn't too smart... they kind of went backwards when they excluded the X/Y buttons, especially given the setup of the SNES controller.
But I do agree with him that people should be able to pick up and play, so on that note get rid of these ridiculous load times that are built in to the system. The splash screens are so annoying, especially after going back to SNES/NES recently and having a simple chime, then a menu in seconds. Of course, that's a limitation of the media.
Life goes on.
-Dizzle
"I most likely AM so interested in myself."
Yes, his comments on the over-complexity of games were spot on. The real-life game of football hasn't changed much in the last 20 years. Why are computer football games today absolutely impossible to play?
I dread it when I'm playing PS2 with my buddies and somebody pulls out a new game that I havn't played yet. It means I'm going to spend the next hour getting whooped as I try to figure out which of the 18 buttons and levers on the controller does what.
I also don't get as much pleasure playing online first-person shooters. It doesn't matter that I am a great melee'r because I havn't figured out the exact manner to shoot X at Y and jump at Z at the exact moment to catapult myself impossibly across the map.
Vonnegut was right: Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been."
While I appreciate a well-tuned scoring scheme that I can measure my improvement by, numbers are never what Miyamoto's games have been about. The reward of becoming really good at a Mario or Zelda game is that of your friends sitting on the couch behind you saying "holy shit, that was awesome."
Agreed, playing Halo online is not fun at all because most of the people on there that have been playing since it came out 2 years ago. Still, someone even got good enough at Super Mario 3 (I think, it's been a while) to beat it in 11 minutes or something like that. Given enough time there are always going to be people who are willing to refine themselves to excellence at a particular game. So I think that element has and always will be there. The trick for developers is to minimize the distance between n00b and expert without dumbing the game down too much. (Remember Bomberman? Anyone could be good at that, and it was the best multiplayer (to me) for a long time)
IMO the only time a game is truely a 'pick-up and play game' is when a newbie can play the game with one hand and be able to beat the stage (though he'll probably die a couple dozen times). Atari 2600 games? A joystick and a button, you could play with one finger and chin. Turn-based games, nuff said. Tetris, Super Mario Bros (early ones), Sonic are all pick up and play games. Looking at modern ones is kinda... well strange when you look at how many buttons there are. (ALL FPSs, RTS games, any online game, even the new Sonic and Mario games.)
The reward of becoming really good at a Mario or Zelda game is that of your friends sitting on the couch behind you saying "holy shit, that was awesome."
Um, how about, "holy shit, that was fun." If I wanted a game that let me numerically assess how good I'm at, I'd count my dribbling of a basket ball on the floor for a minute, and then try to beat that record.
Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.
You're confused. It was the Dreamcast that had analog throttle shoulder buttons, although I've only seen a handful of games that exploit that.
IMHO, the best gamepad layout is the PS2. First of all, the extra triggers are good for more complex games. Just 'cause children's gamedevs are too stupid to realize "you don't have to use all the buttons" doesn't mean that the pad shouldn't make them available to overcomplex games. Second, the dual-analog symmetry is so much nicer than the lopsided dual-analogs of the newer systems. Why are the analog sticks in different positions on the newer pads? It just works so well for so many gametypes - FPS? Leftanalog=aim, right=move, 4 triggers to jump, duck, shoot, etc. and all the old digital buttons are available for weapon switching and suchlike. Descent games even play like a dream on those. Meanwhile, playing FPS games on simpler pads results in a severe button shortage.
OTOH, the N64 pad also has wonderful features. First of all, it deserves credit for introducing the analog stick (although that one was a little rough and wore down easy). Second, the 3-prong layout allowed you to play games one-handed - something none of the newer pads allow. For simple racing games like cruis'n this was a dream.
Still, I just want people to bring back the Space Orb.