Satoru Iwata’s warning to game developers at GDC is quite possibly one of the most beautiful things I have ever read.
I often ramble on this blog thinking I’m the only one with these ideas and wondering if anyone else out there ever ‘gets it’. It’s always a pleasure when someone else who is much more visible and influential than I am has the same ideas. There are some real gems in Mr. Iwata’s presentation that I could expound upon for hours, but I’ll just leave you to read and ponder.
If anyone is interested in digging deeper and exploring or applying the ideas, we can do so in the comments.
Game Developer Conferences..where the obvious is always stated.
Interesting that you feel you and he share the same thinking on games when he feels game scope is too large and your previous post laments “3-monthers” (read: scale of current games is too small).
Nintendo and Innovation? Inventors of the waggle stick console and masters of flogging Dead horses? Given that mobile phone gaming is the new Frontier, and far more accessible to small independant developers, you are going to see a lot more innovation there, than in the existing console giants.
@Informis: I guess we took that differently. I read it as newer games have the wrong focus and that many focus on scope while abandoning the fundamentals. It’s like making this magnificent looking table but forgetting to secure the legs.
@Nedral: Yet so few ever take the obvious route when it obviously will lead to a measure of improvement. Why?
@Stompfoot: I think they realized others are even better than they are at putting out shovelware and they are *HOPEFULLY* realizing what made Nintendo great (games like Zelda, Mario, etc.)
I think we should call this the “minecraft model” of game development.
Yep, Minecraft is a great example.
I’m not saying I disagree, but it’s worth noting that Nintendo’s cash cow is the Gameboy. Of course they’re worried about mobile gaming – that market is eating the gameboy’s market alive.
I love my gameboy, but honestly the games on the iPhone and (some on the) Android make carrying the DS pointless. If I were in his shoes, I’d drop the hardware and start developing on those platforms stat. Sony saw the writing on the wall with the Xperia, wait for it…
I’m really not expecting much for the Xperia. I think Nintendo has a firm grasp on the hand-held console industry. Sure, 99% of what they (third parties) make is Shovelware, but the 3DS’ titles like Super Mario 3DS and Zelda (from Nintendo) are a great way to launch.
Iphone games suck though matt, it’s just not noticed because people dump them at such absurdly low prices. It has little to do with craftsmanship then, paying 99 cents for a game is always going to beat a 29.99 one.
This has been worrying me a LOT lately. We are trending towards a direction of creative content selling so low as to be almost worthless unless you get lucky and hit the big bucks. You are not going to make the next Zelda on a dev budget based on selling the game to an app store for 99 cents and getting back 30 cents: you are going to make quick, bland stuff and a lot of it.
Xperia is just Sony getting their feet wet. Wait for the Playstation phone running on Android.
Dblade, I come from the 80s era of computer games. I remember buying magazines and typing in the games PRINTED in the pages into my Atari and saving them to audio cassette. Some of those games were better than $60 EA mainstream titles of today. I am not a believer that there is a direct correlation between budget and quality where games are concerned.
As far as I can tell, I’m not aware of a market more exciting than the mobile market where gaming is concerned. There have already been incredibly great games on the iPhone that have done extremely well. Your post seems to imply that without massive profits, developers either won’t make great games or they will make “quick, bland stuff.” I submit to you GalCon, or Geo Defense, or Rolando. Just hit this year-old link: http://gizmodo.com/#!5447391/the-53-best-iphone-games
Contrary to your position, I see nothing but innovation on the mobile platform, where on the consoles and PC I see nothing but franchise rehash and WoW clones. I have every platform out there and I still play on my mobile phones more than any of the others.
Keen, did you see that Allods removed their paid death penalty system?
Would love to see what you think about this.
FYI for any who havent heard… Speaking of good reads – GRRM just announced July 12th is official for Dance with Dragons!
@Pedro: As ever, Massively just posts a half-arsed, poorly researched press release and gets people excited. Whilst yes, the death penalty drove players away in their masses, it doesn’t really matter, since Allods is pay-to-win with their rune system at the endgame. They’ve simply moved the cash-grabbing from an immediate in-your-face affair to a more subtle, “oh look, you’ve invested all this time getting to 47. Now buy some runes or gtfo.”
But, hey, as long as Massively get paid I’m sure they’ll pander to the publishers’ whims.
@Krystallos: Mmmm, it’s good news, but it’s still a while away. I hope I won’t still be waiting for the final book in 10 years time.
Nintendo and Innovation is kinda mutually exclusive…
When will we get version 12934 of Super Mario or Donkey Kong?
I don’t know when we’ll get the next one, but I know we’ll stop getting them when they stop being some of the best games ever made.
Nintendo innovates a lot. The Iphone can only exist as a gaming platform because nintendo pioneered accelerometer gameplay (way back in the game boy color days with Kirby’s Tilt and Tumble) microgames (wario ware) and touch-based gameplay (DS.) I’m not sure of the timing, but you could even argue they had a huge hand in developing social games with animal crossing which is one of the most underrated games of the genre if you play it with others.
The problem though is that they were against popular innovations and that branded them as reactionary. Not embracing cds or DVDs till late due to piracy (although they were right, those media got pirated to hell) and missing a few other ones like memory cards or console internet gaming. (Again its ironic because nintendo’s reasons against it exist in Xboxlive with its population of tools.)
None of this would have happened if the pricing model was to make games for under three bucks. The list Matt gives is full of games borrowing concepts from past more expensive ones, when they aren’t direct ports of those. Those games he compiled were similar. You’d spend hours typing commands to find a breakout clone similar to the four you already had.
Dblade, the why of mobile gaming’s rise is a separate question. Not many people care why one platform succeeds over another because the vast majority only want to play games on whatever fits their model for gaming. In the same way that nobody cares that Xerox PARC invented the mouse and computer GUI, nobody really cares whether or not Nintendo pioneers motion-controls or touch screens. I could rattle off some of Sony and Microsoft’s innovations (as well as Sega and Atari) but it’s all academic in the end.
Note that I am not disputing what you wrote about Nintendo.
I would say that your dismissal of the creativity demonstrated on the iPhone by that platform’s gaming devs borders on nonsense. Aside from the obvious (all art is imitation) it’s just plainly wrong. There have been whole genre’s spawned on that platform. The tower defense genre wouldn’t exist without the iPhone. The “guide things with finger strokes” genre (Flight Control) wouldn’t exist either. Angry Birds, anyone?
What value there is in scoffing at a promising new platform, and I daresay industry model, I can’t imagine. Unless you’re Nintendo or Sony and can see your markets being eaten up by it.
@Matt: Are you out of your mind? TOWER DEFENCE? I can remember playing that on battle.net (the old one) back in, what, 2002, when Warcraft 3 released (and the iPhone didn’t even exist as a concept, probably). Hell, I’m pretty sure Warcraft 3′s expansion (2003?) shipped WITH a tower defence map (as part of its campaign, no less.)
I remember playing something where you guided your bloke on the screen (who was falling) with your hands on the old PS2 Eye or whatever its camera was called.
As much as I love my iPhone, to say it made and defined genres is ludicrous. What it does offer is pretty much a huge stable of browser-based games (sans browser requirement) that you can take around with you and access all the time. Sure, there are some nifty, better-than-browser games out there, but they are in the vast minority. I don’t think anyone could feasibly argue that Angry Birds is somehow a vast leap over Miniclip-esque games.
The existence of a game is not the same as launching a genre. I never said there has never been a tower defense game before – I said that the mobile platform made it a popular genre, spawning hundreds of clones.
Diablo wasn’t the first diablo game, Gateway to Apshii was (IMO), yet the diablo genre didn’t exist before Diablo.
If you compare iPhone/Android games with browser games, you obviously haven’t been paying attention. The current mobile phones are vastly superior platforms to current handheld gaming devices and the gulf between their capacities is only going to keep growing. Look up the Samsung Galaxy S 2 sometime. The NVIDIA Tegra chipset is just the first of a rapidly improving technologies being built into mobile phones. The latest PSP (whatever it’s called) is drawing it’s new features from the developments in mobile phone gaming. Same for the new DS that has downloadable games.
I don’t have a horse in this race. I enjoy my DS and my PSP and all my other platforms. I just buy them all and play whatever I want. I’m only making the assertion that mobile phones will vastly outpace the handheld gaming market very soon and Nintendo knows it. Thus, their disparaging mobile phone gaming.
@Matt: Mayhaps, then, you might want to clarify that when you say “spawn the tower defence genre,” what you actually mean is “spawns loads of awful clones that the masses lap up and think are very original.” Notwithstanding the fact that the genre did exist and had a large following (desktop tower defence anyone?) to say that for something to be a genre it has to be popular is mind-boggling.
There is no “Diablo genre.” They’re action RPGs, dungeon crawlers, whatever you want to call them, it’s not a “Diablo genre.” We don’t name every other genre after its most successful entity: it’s not the WoW genre, it’s MMORPGs. It’s not the Wolfenstein genre, it’s FPSs.
Sorry, but I don’t buy this one bit. Downloadable games and apps are nothing new or particularly interesting, and, as I asked in my other comment, explain why Angry Birds is somehow not browser-game quality? They’re throw-away purchases designed to entertain for 10 minutes, not games.
In addition to the obvious fear of competition from mobile devices, I think Iwata is concerned about conditions similar to those leading up to the video game crash of 1983 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash_of_1983).
I recall that of the dozen+ game magazines on the newsstand pre-crash, only Computer Gaming World survived.
Game designer Chris Crawford said that in that crash, “About 95% of people working in games lost their jobs. That’s how bad it was.” (See http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/33352/GDC_2011_CGDC_Founder_Chris_Crawford_Ask_Yourself_What_Does_The_User_Do.php)
You lost me at “There is no diablo genre.” Trust me, I had to review enough diablo-clones to know you’ve lost all credibility with that one statement.
@Matt: which, to me, sounds more like “I can’t properly interpret sentences, nor can I be bothered to discuss rationally.”
There is no genre called “the diablo genre.” There are clones of diablo. Clones =/= genre. Just because some sheep suddenly pick up a game and make it popular does not suddenly mean the genre springs into existence. A genre springs into existence when the first of its kind enters the world.
If by reviewing you mean you’ve played them for about an hour, great for you. Your point being what, exactly? That you get to name the genre? Get a grip.
Dril, look up “genre.” I’m not disputing your opinion, I’m merely saying it’s limited to a subset that isn’t held widely enough to reflect on my point or on the main topic. You may not think of the diablo genre in those terms, but I can assure you that the gaming industry does and their decisions are based on precisely that sort of boiled-down, numbers-driven terminology. You don’t have to like Angry Birds (heaven knows I don’t) but breaking a million sales means that the money people are eyeballing that game and working on how to make the Angry Birds genre into cash cows for them.
Stratagems point was far more interesting, but I haven’t had time to respond. The short form would be – the industry back then didn’t have an environment anything like today’s environment. They controlled development, advertising, distribution, and platform all essentially in-house. Today anyone can get the material for creating a game for free, distribute it to the entire world for a percentage, and have more processing power and storage than they likely know how to take advantage of. This is why most of the big development houses have dedicated divisions constantly scouting for new talent – because there’s significantly less need to have internal R&D when you have literally thousands of people “auditioning” in the real world with their indy projects.
If all the majors collapsed tomorrow, you wouldn’t see a collapse of the gaming industry, you’d see a renaissance.