Shigeru Miyamoto Nominated in Time Magazine

Splitt3r wrote with a link to the Kotaku site on Shigeru Miyamoto's Nomination as one of this year's 100 most influential people at the Time Magazine site. "PRO: Most successful game designer, creator of Super Mario, Donkey Kong and The Legend of Zelda, whose new platform, the Wii, is currently the top-selling game console. CON: His perfectionist tendencies often result in games being significantly delayed and, despite the Wii's gameplay innovation, its graphics are far behind the competition." Voting is currently ongoing at the site, if you're interested in swaying the vote.

Comments

More news on Miyamoto

[tcopeland]

...including a mention of him receiving a "Lifetime Achievement Award" at the Game Developer's Choice Awards are on thenewsroom.

Re:More news on Miyamoto

[ajs]

There's an interesting nod to one of his games in World of Warcraft as well. There's a quest chain, It's a Secret to Everybody, which is long and involved, and has many references to The Legend of Zelda, including a green-cloaked gnome named "Linken" who is the central character in the quest chain through which you help him recover his sword.

I think he deserves a spot

[alvinrod]

Compared to a lot of the other people on this list, I honestly think he deserves a spot. The Nintendo Wii and the DS have really shaped up to be great gaming products that have in some ways changed how the industry has to think about games. I'm not going to say the Wii has revolutionized the gaming world. Maybe if the next generation of consoles all featured similar motion sensing technology, but not quite yet.

From personal experience though, I'd have to say the Wii has been a major breakthrough in the gaming market. I had taken mine home over Christmas and for the first time in his life, my father actually played a video game. Even more stunning, he enjoyed it. I can't ever see him being a hardcore gamer like myself, but it was really great being able to share something with him that's a big part of my life and is something that I enjoy doing with my time. I'll still enjoy things like going fishing together or watching ball games with him, but it's nice to know that if we ever wanted to, we could enjoy a few hours together playing Wii Sports.

I like at a lot of the other people on that list and there are many that have legitimate reasons to be there, but there are also a lot that don't. Maybe some of them have brought about a unique experience in your life like the Wii did in mine, but I think that's really what pushes me over the edge when considering whether or not Miyamoto belongs there. From reading comments on Slashdot over the past months I know that I'm not the only one out there who's had something like this happen.

Re:I think he deserves a spot

[Verteiron]

The man invented MARIO. Mario's gotta be one of the most widely-recognized characters in the world. I'd call that fairly influential.

I don't get it

[IceCreamGuy]

You can rate them from 1 to 100... but I don't see which one is better. Is it 1 for 1st most influential or 100 for 100% influential? I might just be missing some part of the page where that is explained, I gave him a score of 100, hopefully that's the best. I'm a huge fan, I have the Triforce tattooed on my back and a Link outfit in my apartment. I think if Miyamoto asked the public for $400 before he announced a product, and simply told us it would be worth it,I would mail my check today. -Julius

Re:I don't get it

[El Gigante de Justic]

You got it correct. They want you to rate them as to how influential they are, so 100 is best and 1 is worst, then the people with the highest average ratings get the highest spots in the list.

Re:Who is RAIN??

[El Gigante de Justic]

I always thought he was an obscure Mortal Kombat character, but according to his profile, he's a Korean R&B and Pop star. He has done some live shows in the US (2 sold out shows at Madison Square Garden) but has yet to hit it big in the US. My guess is that his ballot box is being stuffed by otaku fan girls.

Worse graphics a CON?

[Volante3192]

They must really have been stretching for something to put in the CON field. Heck, I'd consider everything they listed as a PRO aspect. Gameplay > graphics, and I'd rather a game delayed 3 months or more to make sure it works rather than release something halfassed that needs patches later on.

Re:Worse graphics a CON?

[LordBafford]

I have to totally agree with you. I don't mind waiting longer for a better less buggy game. Memories of the WoW release come to mind. Hey we'll start them paying and get paid for doing beta testing on our own product.

Re:Worse graphics a CON?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sheesh, another "gameplay > graphics" fool. Your little argument sounds legit until you grasp the concept that the two are NOT mutually exclusive. You can and do see many games that have great graphics AND great gameplay. What a concept! There's no reason to deliberately cripple your system with last-gen graphics while at the same time charging 3x the amount of a last-gen system and top-dollar for games. Unless you're looking to milk a shitload of profit out of it..

Re:Worse graphics a CON?

[AuMatar]

No they aren't mutuallly exclusive. But given the same resources of time and money, you can't have both. Many of us, including almost all of us with Wiis, would prefer the resources be put to gameplay. Quite frankly graphics haven't done a thing for me in the past decade- I was happy with SNES level graphics. Gameplay is far harder to get right, and most games fail at it.

Re:Worse graphics a CON?

[rizzo420]

the argument is often that graphics should come first. while it has been proven that graphics take a second to gameplay. it has nothing to do with making a good game with good graphics.

if you've ever played any of the top dollar games for the wii, you'd find them worth every dollar.

Re:Worse graphics a CON?

[Nasarius]

Quite frankly graphics haven't done a thing for me in the past decade- I was happy with SNES level graphics. Gameplay is far harder to get right, and most games fail at it.

Amen. I haven't bought a console since the SNES (though I'm seriously considering a Wii), but I've often said the same thing about Quake 3 / Unreal Tournament. I appreciate pretty graphics as much as the next guy, but I can still go back and play a game that's seven years old and not give a second thought to the visual quality. I still play Deus Ex. Will I still be playing Supreme Commander in 6-7 years? Doubtful. It's flashy and fun, but not particularly unique.

It takes an enormous amount of effort to create next-gen quality artwork, cram every new DirectX feature into your engine, etc. And so there are precious few games out there that have both cutting-edge graphics (which will be unremarkable in a year or two) and gameplay depth (which rarely goes obsolete). Off the list of games I've personally enjoyed, the only one I can think of in recent history is VTM: Bloodlines, which was plagued with bugs.

Time magazine must be running out of ideas

[MMaestro]

Some of the people on that list simply aren't that influencial and others are clearly listed simply for name recognition. Rain, a Korean musician? Unless he's the Korean version of the Beatles, I'll pass. Osama Bin Laden? Last time I checked, hes been hiding in a cave fighting his own organization for leadership. George W. Bush at #98?! I hate his policies, but in terms of world influence, hes pretty damned important.

Re:Time magazine must be running out of ideas

[asninn]

Keep in mind that this list is not (supposed to be) US-centric, though. Sure, I've never heard of Rain, either, but how important is that really? Keep in mind that 95% of the world's population do not live in the USA; there's bound to be many important people in the world that you either don't know or that aren't important to YOU.

Also keep in mind that this is not a popularity contest: people can be important even if you don't like them, and bin Laden arguably is important. Or did I miss the part where the "war on terror" was declared over and where it was determined that he's not a threat anymore?

Re:Time magazine must be running out of ideas

[MMaestro]

True, but this is a list about who's been influential in the past year. Rain hasn't exactly reshaped music culture outside of (South) Korea and Osama Bin Laden's influence has degraded to releasing a home video every 6 months and then spending half the time on it trying to convince the world that hes still in charge of Al-Qaeda.

Meanwhile, George W. Bush (for better or for worse) meanwhile has led the U.S. into TWO countries, is rivaling Harry Truman in all-time lowest record in approval ratings and has (arguably) (repeatedly) violated the U.S. Constitution. Thats some pretty damned influential stuff compared to the works of other people.

Re:Who is RAIN??

[Nasarius]

An impressive effort, given that the Colbert Nation is notorious for ballot-stuffing. But at 400k votes on Rain (only 240k for Colbert, who's in first place), I guess they've also mobilized to downrate him.

Worse graphics vs Control trade off.

[trdrstv]

the two are NOT mutually exclusive. You can and do see many games that have great graphics AND great gameplay. What a concept! There's no reason to deliberately cripple your system with last-gen graphics

You have a decision with this generation whether you want to deal with "last-gen quality" graphics or "last-gen quality" control. The same argument can be made that both Microsoft and Sony "Crippled" their system by adopting a control scheme that's 10 years old, and makes certain games (like WiiSports) impossible in their current form.

Re:Worse graphics vs Control trade off.

[tepples]

You have a decision with this generation whether you want to deal with "last-gen quality" graphics or "last-gen quality" control. PC games designed to scale up to DirectX 10 level cards (even if running DirectX 9 software) should look as good as Xbox 360 games, and a lot of people (especially fans of first-person shooters) claim that the USB mouse is at least on par with the Wii Remote. Your dilemma comes into play only if you're trying to develop for a machine with multiple players per screen. The big advantage of the console platforms over Games for Windows is that more consoles than PCs are connected to 23" or larger monitors. Plenty of PCs' video cards have TV output, but hardly anyone uses it. If you can deal with a single player per screen, you can target a LAN of PCs, but don't expect customers in single-family residences to be able to run your game multiplayer.

Re:Eh, no. I am sorry you are wrong.

[Chibi Merrow]

The Wii is going to want to load its data in as linear an order as possible. This will be okay for linear track based racing games that KNOW what scenery/data needs to loaded next, but sucks for GTA type games wich might see you loading any kind of data next.

Only if the game is programmed by an idiot. Unless you're dealing with some sort of weird fourth dimensional travel, movement in a game world is always linear. You know what direction the character is moving in and so you know what content to load next. I find it hilarious that you use GTA as your example since that's primarily a Playstation game and therefore was designed to load data from optical discs, not hard disks.

I ended up skimming over the rest of your argument after that because it seemed to boil down to "MEGATEXTURES == MEGAPEENS!!!1!!one!1!" and not much else.

More power is not inherently better. More power requires more resources to get results, and concentration on that aspect of the product often causes other areas to suffer. Case in Point: The Gamecube was the most powerful system of the last generation, and that earned it nothing (Well, except RE4...)

Consoles are not out to take market share from the PC (Well, with the exception of the 360 perhaps). A PC gamer already has too much invested to just walk away from it.

Re:Eh, no. I am sorry you are wrong.

[Volante3192]

Even more worrying, the Wii worlds possibly are also going to be smaller.

Twilight Princess.

CON?

[AbsoluteXyro]

Why is the Wii's graphical prowess listed as a con for Shiggy? I don't get what that even has to do with him or his influence. That is pretty dumb. Way to go, Time Magazine.

Re:Eh, no. I am sorry you are wrong.

[tepples]

The Wii is going to want to load its data in as linear an order as possible. This will be okay for linear track based racing games that KNOW what scenery/data needs to loaded next, but sucks for GTA type games wich might see you loading any kind of data next.

Say what? Grand Theft Auto runs on the PlayStation 2 console, which relies on its optical disc as well. The key is to divide your game world into "acres", and keep a number of "acres" around the player loaded at once. Metroid Prime handled this well: it would predict which room you were likely to enter next, and it would preload that room. Is the Wii optical drive worse than that of the PS2?

If what you claimed is true then GTA4 done in bitmaps, topdown view, 4 colors would be just as great.

Someone actually tried to make that for NES, called "Grand Theftendo".

And in response to your complaint about non-persistent traffic: The solution is to keep running the simulation in more acres than you actually have graphics loaded for.

Sorry

[Premo_Maggot]

I'm pretty sure Colbert is going to win, and I bet you he mentions it on his show sometime this week, which in that case he definitely wins and possibly makes time's server crash.