Bungie Vs. Miyamoto - Fight!

Last week Gamehead's Geoff Keighley interviewed Shigeru Miyamoto, and the well-known designer tossed off a mildly controversial comment. Keighley asked him if he felt as though he was losing touch with the American audience as a result of the popularity of games like Halo. GameDaily reports on Miyamoto's response: "I could make Halo. It's not that I couldn't design that game. It's just that I choose not to. One thing about my game design is that I never try to look for what people want and then try to make that game design. I always try to create new experiences that are fun to play." Bungie took exception to that, and Frank Connor retorted in his interview with Joystiq: "Yeah, well. I just want to go on the record and say that Bungie is hard at work on a side-scrolling platform game featuring some plumbers -- I'm not going to say what their ethnicity is, it's none of anyone's business -- but we took that as a gauntlet, a sort of glove slap, and we're going to respond in 2D scrolling style. That's all I'm saying." We discussed that article, along with several other pieces of Halo 3 coverage, this past Saturday.

Comments

The thing is that it's true

[drinkypoo]

Halo is not a revolutionary game by any stretch of the imagination. One could have had the same result trivially by starting with any of the common first person shooter engines, and working from there. The fact that the same is true of Super Mario Brothers, a game made years and years ago (an eternity in video game land) is not even interesting.

Re:The thing is that it's true

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say that Pikmin was pretty original (a modern Miyamoto creation). Not to mention that SMB, much like Donkey Kong, Zelda, and a lot of other Nintendo properties were original when they were created.

Speaking ill of a legend like Miyamoto is not something I would do, and I think the guy at Bungie comes off a little arrogant for doing so.

Disclaimer: The last Nintendo console I bought was an SNES, so I don't think I could be counted as a Nintendo fanboy.

Re:The thing is that it's true

[7Prime]

Different genre. There are really two different RPG genres out there and they have almost COMPLETELY different fanbases. Trying to compare the two is really absurred. I'm not particularly defending FF7 here (I think it's highly overrated, myself... although I am a fan of the rest of the series).

Where you might say, "Think FF7 is a real RPG? Try playing Baulder's Gate or Nethack", I might say, "Think FF7 is a real RPG? Try playing Tales of the Abyss or Ar Tonelico". Seriously, we're talking apple's and oranges here.

East vs. West, Console vs. PC, RPG vs. jRPG... each side takes a different spin on tabletop gaming... jRPGs concentrate on the story element, western RPGs capitalize on non-linearity. Whichever you think works better is up to the audience.

I personally would fall asleep 10 minutes into Baulder's gate. Ar Tonelico might make you do the same.

Re:The thing is that it's true

[theStorminMormon]

East vs. West, Console vs. PC, RPG vs. jRPG... each side takes a different spin on tabletop gaming... jRPGs concentrate on the story element, western RPGs capitalize on non-linearity. Whichever you think works better is up to the audience.

Excellent observation.

And for what it's worth, I'd like to point out that popularity is a pretty complex issue. We seem to operate under the assumption that it's some kind of direct relationship to quality or some other simplistic explanation (e.g. like how good the controls are). The modern narrative about popularity when it comes to art is that blockbusters are kind of mundane and inoffensive with enough explosions/sex/(pick your easily reproduced element to look down on) while the *real* talent shows up in indie/niche creations that you have to be intelligent/free-thinking/(pick your vaguely cool counter-cultural trait) enough to really get.

And while I'll agree that Creed and Nickelback basically suck, the Beatles and Pink Floyd were really good. So sometimes the popular stuff really is good, and sometimes the niche stuff really isn't (no example here: not looking for a flamewar).

FWIW, Halo is my favorite game of all time on any system. From NES, Sega, SNES, PS, XBOX, GC, Wii, 360 (consoles I've played) and over a decade of PCs, I prefer Halo. Why? The story. Just visit ILoveBees.com and you'll get a glimpse of the thought and talent that goes into the world creation. Does this have anything to do with how popular the game is? There's no way to know. Did they get the gameplay just right? Hit the market at just the right time? Was the story good enough to develop an initial core of fans who pushed the game to the frat boys that made it a blockbuster? We'll never know, in my opinion, and the only lesson is that oversimplifying popularity is for fanbois and trolls.

Now go listen to "Indier than Thou."

Re:The thing is that it's true

[ePhil_One]

Halo isn't really even new. It's very much a lot like the game Marathon, only with better graphics and physics.

It is by and large Marathon 4/5/6, there's plenty of evidence it takes place in the same Universe, etc, and is only separated by a large amount of time. Since they also created Marathon, this isn't a huge shock. Marathon was groundbreaking mostly in that it brought an interesting storyline to a FPS game, other than that it was really Mac;s answer to Doom. Of course, Doom was just a revampled Castle Wolfenstien 3-D, which was a 3-D version of an old Apple II game, which probably traced its roots back to the old Bezerker game (which never bothered to explain why you were in a maze running from deadly robots), which probably draws inspiration from an old movie, which was inspired by an old story, which was...

Re:The thing is that it's true

[Chosen Reject]

What are you even talking about? I played Halo before I had even heard of any hype for it. I did it solo, and co-op. The ONLY thing I liked about it better than any other game I had played was the co-op. It wasn't that spectacular, it still isn't that spectacular. There is ONLY one thing that make it so big, and that is the hype. I know people who will prattle on about it forever like it was God's gift to mankind. They can never tell me what's good about it. Every time they try I tell them about lots of other games that have what they are talking about. You want story, go to Half-Life, you want multi-player, see Counter-Strike. You might say that Halo combined those two, but I would say that when you are playing Halo for story, you are not playing multi-player and vice versa, so that point is irrelevant.

The graphics on Halo suck. At the time Halo 1 was getting really popular I got into a discussion about the graphics with a roommate. He was comparing Jedi Outcast at 1600x1200 with Halo at 640x480 and saying that Halo was better. This is the kind of mentality that most Halo fans have. To them, Halo is "Just Better(TM)." I had to just ignore him, as I've had to do with everyone else who says anything about Halo's graphics being good at all. Jedi Outcast was not even trying to be a graphics power house, it was running off an old engine and it still looked better with a Radeon 7200.

Level Design? My goodness, man, what are you smoking. Have you even played the library level? After about two minutes you don't even know which direction you're going, which direction you came from, and you can't even count how many times you've seen the exact same stuff over and over again and again. The maps on the ships aren't much better. Sure there are big areas outdoors, but those are repetitive as well, they just don't feel like it when compared to the monotony you just sustained from every indoor environment.

I don't know how the control scheme compares with other console FPS, but I didn't think it was all that great. It was fine, but the only thing I thought even worth mentioning about it was that you could throw a grenade without having to switch to that weapon. I won't get into a comparison between control schemes for PC-based and console-based games, because that's been done, and is somewhat irrelevant to why Halo was popular on a console, but there wasn't anything special about the controls.

Multi-player is kind of hard to judge. There are lots of games that have better. Comparing time played, as of right now, Counter-Strike has over 5 billion minutes of play logged each month. Adding in CS:S and CS:CZ nets closer to 7.5 billion minutes each month. Since it's inception, Xbox live has logged a total of 2.3 billion hours, or to put it in similar units, 138 billion minutes. Let's be generous and pretend that Halo 2 accounted for every last minute (Halo 1 wasn't on Xbox Live so we can't include it). It would take Counter-Strike 18 months to equal that. IOW, one game does in 18 months what an entire service does in 72. Yet we don't have Counter-strike in the headlines every couple of days do we?

That's somewhat off-topic however. The thing Halo has going for it, I conjecture, might be that it has no bots. People are forced to play with others if they are going to do it at all. But then you'd be crazy to play it on the same box. You get 640x480 divided by 4. A whopping 320x240 in all of its interlaced glory. I did that once, every one talked about how cool it was. I was too busy trying to adjust my eyes to being able to see what I was even looking at. I must say that I enjoyed my time despite the screen size, but that's called a party. It wasn't because of Halo. I would have had a much more enjoyable experience playing UT, Trackmania, or any other game where we each have our own screen, or where the screen is shared more efficiently, such as Wii sports or something. I hate to be a poor sport, but the reason we have Halo stories all the time is beca

Re:The thing is that it's true

[rjung2k]

"Halo is not a revolutionary game by any stretch of the imagination... The fact that the same is true of Super Mario Brothers, a game made years and years ago (an eternity in video game land) is not even interesting."

True, but the difference is that Super Mario Bros. was revolutionary when it was first introduced, as evident by the numerous SMB clones that followed in its wake. I'm hard-pressed to think of a popular game that played like SMB before SMB was introduced.

Halo, on the other hand, was just the latest iteration of a long line of FPS inspired by Doom and Wolfenstein 3D.

Re:The thing is that it's true

[JebusIsLord]

Actually, 2nd person would be if the camera was held by those you're shooting at. That would be fairly disorienting.

Not news

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Stuff like this belongs in drivel like "Hello" and over celebrity gossip magazines, NOT Slashdot.

It has no merit what so ever.

Frank Connor Missed the Point

[Swordsmanus]

If Miyamoto has heard Connor's "retort", I'm sure he laughed. Connor could be taken seriously if he said he was coming up with something new and fun that will sell just as well as Halo. Instead he said he intends to make something that he already knows people want, by implying he's going to copy Miyamoto's years-old idea, Super Mario Bros. Given the sales of New Super Mario Bros., I don't blame him. But he reaffirmed Miaymoto's comment, not countered it.

This is irrelevant...

[__aaclcg7560]

Bungie was compromised after Microsoft bought it out. Microsoft's design theory is to copy everyone else, re-package it as something brand new, and get it right in version three.

"Rather touchy aren't they"

[u-bend]

Wow, he really comes off as downright peevish, no? I mean, even if Miyamoto's comment wasn't out of context, and he meant exactly what he said, the response turns out feeling really childish. Get a grip, dude. Your game's *really* popular. Just because somebody else says he wouldn't make it, doesn't mean you need to get your panties in a twist. And then, as a previous poster says, he basically affirms Miyamoto by saying he's going to copy an old design. Huh. I guess his PR fluffer didn't have him ready.

Re:Is Halo really that great?

[SetupWeasel]

2. Before Halo there wasn't a single decent FPS on a console, just a whole bunch of shitty ports of PC FPS games.

Except, of course, for Goldeneye.

Re:Is Halo really that great?

[Knuckles]

but I'd like to know why Halo is considered by a fairly large population to be a great game

It came out for the Xbox and found a large population of teens that never had played another FPS.

Lost in translation

[johncadengo]

I lot of people are pointing out that Frank mistook Miyamoto's comment.

I think a lot of people are mistaking Frank's comment. It doesn't seem like he's retorting, as people put it, but instead making a sly-sarcastic remark. He not affirming Miyamoto's point (that he just finds what people like and makes that), he's replying to Miyamoto's remark (I can make Halo, but choose not to) with his own remark: I could('ve) made Mario, but choose not to.

Yes, he states, "We are hard at work on a side-scrolling platform game..." But we know he's not. It's obviously a joke. He could be hard at work on that side-scroller, but he chooses not to. He's hard at work on Halo. And that's that.

Re:Halo's popularity

[Anonymous Coward]

Miyamoto has at least 53 games on that list. I don't know how many Bungie has on the list (at least 2), but my guess is that it's less than 53. Was it petty for Miyamoto to make those comments about Halo? Sure. Is anyone in the gaming industry in a better position to judge the merit of a game's design? Probably not.

-Lee