Nintendo’s Miyamoto Says Competitors are “Boring”

Shigeru Miyamoto, the legendary creator of some of the world’s most beloved video game series – Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda, has come out against the growing ‘Hollywood-isation’ of the gaming industry.

In a new interview with the Telegraph, the so-called “Walt Disney of games” has declared that games should be games and shouldn’t follow the model of making the games more like movies. He says “What the other companies are doing makes business sense. But it’s boring.”.

It’s certainly true that the gaming industry is becoming more like Hollywood. We see big franchises like Call of Duty, pouring out a canon of games every year or so, utilizing big budgets to pull in big profits. But Miyamoto, a man who would rather spend 5 or 6 years crafting a game like Super Mario Galaxy, thinks this is not the way to go. He’d much rather create an amazing experience that the player controls, instead making he or she the “director”. This is a proven method – games like Super Mario Bros, Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time are regarded by many as some of the greatest games of all time.

“These younger game creators, they want to be recognized. 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.”

So it begs the question, are games losing the elements that make them ‘games’ or are they just maturing thanks to bigger budgets and a bigger audience?

Source: The Telegraph