Miyamoto Interview on Game Narrative :
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Segatarious1
- Posts: 1110
- Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm
Miyamoto Interview on Game Narrative :
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/11201171/nintendo-super-mario-pikmin-tokyo-film-festival-mandarin-oriental-tokyo-sega-mario-kart-zelda-wii-oculus-rift.html
“I have never thought of games as a means of storytelling,” he says through a translator, “so while many people have approached me in the past and said ‘why don’t you make a movie?’, I had never been interested.”
These younger game creators, they want to be recognized,” he sighs. “They want to tell stories that will touch people’s hearts. And while I understand that desire, the trend worries me. It should be the experience, that is touching. What I strive for is to make the person playing the game the director. All I do is help them feel that, by playing, they’re creating something that only they could create.”
“When you play a game, one moment you’re just controlling it and then suddenly you feel you’re in its world,” he says. “And that’s something you cannot experience through film or literature. It’s a completely unique experience.”
“What the other companies are doing makes business sense,” he says. “But it’s boring. The same games appear on every system. At Nintendo we want an environment where game creators can collaborate and think of ideas for games that could have never happened before.”
The PLAYER is the director - brilliant. You control the action, you are not being made the recipient of someone else's message. I think this undemrines the oil and water nature of gameplay and game story.
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Atarifever1
- Posts: 3892
- Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm
Miyamoto Interview on Game Narrative :
[QUOTE=Segatarious]
“What the other companies are doing makes business sense,” he says. “But it’s boring. [/QUOTE]
This part sounds like a mistranslation to me. It neither fits Nintendo of Japan's normal messaging, the culture of game development over there, nor Mr. Miyamoto's personality. I would be shocked if the word he would choose there was "boring" and not something less loaded.
I like the idea of gamer as director. This is appealing, as a director uses a script, characters, etc. from someone else, and only really determines some of how those pieces will appear in this particular version of the story. Similarly, me and a speed runner can approach the same Mario game (with the same environments and characters) in much different ways, and can, then, have very different takes on it. Compare a "lets play" to a speedrun to see the vast differences.
However, I don't think Nintendo is much different than anyone else here on allowing self expression in games. As much as the Assassin's Creed stories may not appeal to me, I do know there is a ton of room within the games themselves for self expression. Yeah, Nintendo doesn't waste my time with cutscenes I hate as often as some other franchises, but a lot of other developers give me more tools to be a director with, so it kind of evens out. And a real good game like the Halo games allow for some of the best self expression in videogames, and does that outside the story (Firefight being my personal favourite game mode of all time, and that having NO story at all).
“What the other companies are doing makes business sense,” he says. “But it’s boring. [/QUOTE]
This part sounds like a mistranslation to me. It neither fits Nintendo of Japan's normal messaging, the culture of game development over there, nor Mr. Miyamoto's personality. I would be shocked if the word he would choose there was "boring" and not something less loaded.
I like the idea of gamer as director. This is appealing, as a director uses a script, characters, etc. from someone else, and only really determines some of how those pieces will appear in this particular version of the story. Similarly, me and a speed runner can approach the same Mario game (with the same environments and characters) in much different ways, and can, then, have very different takes on it. Compare a "lets play" to a speedrun to see the vast differences.
However, I don't think Nintendo is much different than anyone else here on allowing self expression in games. As much as the Assassin's Creed stories may not appeal to me, I do know there is a ton of room within the games themselves for self expression. Yeah, Nintendo doesn't waste my time with cutscenes I hate as often as some other franchises, but a lot of other developers give me more tools to be a director with, so it kind of evens out. And a real good game like the Halo games allow for some of the best self expression in videogames, and does that outside the story (Firefight being my personal favourite game mode of all time, and that having NO story at all).
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