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Katamari Creator Critical of Revolution
Gamasutra has an article on Keita Takahashi's reaction to the Revolution controller. From the article: "Takahashi commented of the Revolution, which has drawn widespread praise for its underlying concepts from other Eastern and Western designers: 'I'm not really interested in it. I don't think a controller should have that much influence on the enjoyment of games.' He continued: 'I see what [Nintendo is] trying to do, but they're putting such emphasis on the controller; 'Woah, this controller lets you do this!' and I'm thinking - are you messing with us?'"
It's new. It obviously has new capabilities. How about you use your imagination instead of your tongue?
My work here is dung.
Controllers have always impacted the way people play games - the gamepad revolutionized games (all of those games we had on the original NES and since then aren't practical to play on paddles), the top triggers added to that (allowing for greater control in games), the analog stick greatly added (and became pretty much required for 3d games)... If you want to take another example - take the DDR games... would they be possible without their special controller?
The difference is that the Revolution controller does more than a normal controller, not less.
There already is one. It's called the Gamecube controller, and you'll be able to use it with the Revolution.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
i find it funny that he claims that "nintendo is making all about the controller" because what nintendo is trying to do is rather make the human/machine interface disappear. as it stands, current controllers are totally abstracted: "press A to do this; press B to do that". the player has to take the time to learn what really has no context, thus making it *all about the controller*. now with good software, you just roll the Revo controller to move front, back left and right, swing your sword or toss you fishing lure; the software is what has to understand the context of the humans natural movements. this makes the game more about the human and less about the controller.
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As a video game (esp. Nintendo) zealot turned dissident, I think Takahashi may be on to something. There's been an awful lot of stabs (again, esp. by Nintendo) to "broaden the audience", getting more casual gamers playing. And hey, if Nintendo thinks this controller helps, that's their decision to make.
But, speaking as an overworked graduate student in CS who once floated through K-12, I can say I don't have time for these "revolutions" in the game industry. Katamari Damacy is the only console game I've played in a long while that I actually loved, and part of that was because I could play for 20 minutes (make the moon!) and get a healthy dose of fun and entertainment (ah, the screams of people trapped in their office buildings...) and then put the game down and get back to work.
That doesn't have any direct bearing on the controller, but the controller is representative of this push into new audiences, and I think a symptom of that is companies like Nintendo are starting to ignore old audiences. I'm not interested in using my controller as a light gun (complete with me having to stand and spin around to turn), or as a sword and shield for Zelda, or whatever other recent rumor/fanboy postulating has come up with. I want to sit down for take a break for twenty minutes.
Granted that Takahashi's track record is pretty short, and not growing at any fast rate, but when reading his interviews (and playing his games) he's always felt like, to me, someone that got it -- I want my games to be fun, lazy, and distractions, not things I need to devote my life and body to (okay, I'm out of shape, sue me).
My casual gamer friends may find using the controller as a wand to be interesting, and Nintendo may think that it's pure gold (and the majority of the industry press may agree), but I just want a simple game I know how to play and can do so without large effort.
For me, Takahashi is right. And it makes me wonder if Nintendo is marginalizing one audience in favor of another.
What happens if this thing comes out and it has massive lag, or a problem with the box "losing" the controller, or any number of other technical glitches
Do you really Nintendo would not bother to beta test their flagship product?
I'd think if they were going to ship a product that was horribly flawed they would notice it before they spent millions of dollars to bring it to market.
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Keita Takahashi is the creator of one of my favorite games ever, and I'm inclined to listen to what he has to say on game design issues. But I couldn't disagree more with this statement, seeing as how it implies that he thinks good game design is completely independent of the platform it is made for.
:)
Keita can go and make Katamari Damacy for the original PS1 then. Oh, what's that? Can't handle the huge number of polygons in the game? Lack of dual-analog CONTROLLER makes it not nearly as fun? Yeah, that's what I thought
The Revolution's controller, at the very least, will allow for new gameplay elements. Whether or not this will lead to new and exciting game design is up for speculation, but it won't hurt and it's certainly not some kind of smoke screen.
I'm not really interested in it. I don't think a controller should have that much influence on the enjoyment of games.
The controller has everything to do with the enjoyment of games, because that's how you interact with them. If this statement was really true, we'd all be using controllers like the Colecocision and other such monstrocities from the early 1980s. Look, it has nine buttons AND A KNOB! What more could you possibly ask for? And it's a sturdy, small design, so it can easily be stored.
Can you make enjoyable games with the current controllers? Hell yeah. But the Revolution contoller is about immersion as much as it is about enjoyment. Instead of sending an instruction to your character to swing the sword (passive second person) you actually move your arm to swing the sword (active first person), which will make people much more interested if they actually play the game instead of watch it.
Let's say you like playing sports. Which would you rather do? Be the coach who sits in the box and tells the batter when to swing, or be the batter and decide when you want to swing?
Games will be made on the PS3, 360, and Revolution that are enjoyable. But games will only be made for the Revolution that are immersable, which just compounds the enjoyment.
I don't think he's saying that the Rev's controller is inherently crappy...I think he's saying that a good game should stand on its own merits, regardless of what you're using to control it. Granted, controls that are difficult to use can ruin an otherwise good product...but any developer worth his salt should be able to program around a controller, not for a controller.
Just because the guy developed one popular game doesn't suddenly make him an expert. On the other hand, I tend to agree with the guy. I'm positive that the Revolution's controller is going to be absolutely phenomenal, but only with a handful of games. Excessive amounts of emphasis have been placed on this controller when the reality is that most games just wont quite work with the controller. It's control mechanism is simply too specialized to fit most games. Maybe its partly the media's fault for pushing this thing so much, but then again, Nintendo hasn't really shown us anything other than that controller.
I personally cant stand the existing controllers covered in buttons and poorly designed games where developers felt the need to use every single button on them. So, I'm not saying Nintendo shouldn't use this thing as the centerpiece for the Revolution. Games like Guitar Hero have shown that Nintendo doesn't really corner the market on unique controllers. So I don't think it's going to quite spur the sort of innovation some people are expecting. The innovations that come will be due to compelling game design, not because some unusual controller has inspired it.
Keita Takahashi, as a game designer, is not slave to the limitations of the hardware. He is master of the limitations of the hardware. Takahashi is one of those rare people who knows how to play limitations like a harp.
I would imagine this is why he is apparently not all that interested in seeing those limitations removed.
He is, of course, a bit of an aberration. Pretty much all other game designers are working at a quite different level. Among this group of developers ("everybody else"), there are quite a lot of people who are excited by the possibilities the Revolution controller offers nad feel it will allow them to express ideas that otherwise would be impossible to manifest in game form, and a lot of other people who aren't expressing interest in the Revolution but in the whole don't seem to think a whole lot about play control (and so keep churning out games which never quite feel natural or correct when thoughtlessly shoehorned underneath the modern standard maze-of-joysticks-and-buttons game controller). With both of these groups, and I think that's a significant portion of all game developers, both the developers and the resulting games would benefit from the Revolution control idiom if it became standard.
But if anyone has the right to say the revolution controller isn't necessary, it's the guy who, with Katamari Damacy, managed to make a totally revolutionary and unique control scheme out of the Dual Shock 2.
In all of your examples, however, the gameplay dictated the design of the controller. Revolution appears to be the other way around.
Keita Takahashi has never developed anything outside of PS2 and PSP titles so why is this a surprise? Whats next, an interview where Bungie declares it lack of desire to port halo to the ps3?
As for the controller, I believe Nintendo's goal isnt to focus on the controller but to make the controller something you dont have to think about. I really think they have the right idea and if its done well, it will revolutionize the game industry. Imagine an interface that has virtually no learning curve. People that have never gamed before will be attracted to it after learning its as easy as using a remote control. As a bonus, educators and parents groups will praise it because it not only encourages but requires physical activity. I really think the hardcore gaming community is really underestimating what Nintendo is bringing to the table.
Those of you that are old enough, think back to the days of the 2600. Some of the best most memorable games used the paddle. To date, Kaboom! has not had a decent remake. It simply cannot be done with anything other than a paddle. As much as I love Playstation controller for a gamepad, it had definitly limited game play. That is also why FPS suck on the consoles and are good on the PC. FPS need the mouse/keyboard interface.
Takahashi is making the same mistake a lot of developers made before the DS came out: he's assuming that because this new control mechanism is offered, you *must* use it to make a good game. That's not it at all, the Revolution controller simply opens up a brand new area of control never before offered in such a way- the focus on it is marketing.
The same thing happened to the DS- developers assumed that because there were 2 screens and a touch screen and a microphone, you had to use all of that in your game. A few developers pre-emptively knocked the DS for this very reason. But look at the best DS games, like Castlevania, Mario Kart, or Nintendogs: they're all more or less the same kind of games we're used to but they use the features the DS offers in exciting ways to enrich the gameplay and immerse us in it. The Revolution operates on the same principle- don't build your game AROUND the features but rather use the features to enhance an already-good game design.
So in that sense I agree with Takahashi, that the quality of a game design is not inherently linked to a controller. However, I think the best game designs are the ones that use the unique tools available to them. Dawn of Sorrow would've been just like the trifecta of Castlevanias on the GBA had it not included the new spell system you drew onto the touch screen yourself. In this way, a good game design was enhanced with the DS's tools to make it unique, which I think very much helped Dawn of Sorrow become the best game in the series, save Symphony of the Night only.
The Revolution is all about ENHANCING gameplay, not CREATING gameplay.
-Moses
So what you're saying is that Katamari Damacy would not have been possible with a controller without two analog sticks? That's, like, every console generation before the current one.
Not to mention that it was Nintendo who introduced the analog stick. But that shouldn't have that much influence on the enjoyment of games, right?