Hello, Mr Malstrom,
First wanted to congratulate you for your blog being just recently 1-year old and still being as strong and entertaining and educational, in short being, of great quality, since it started. One year can be nothing for a blog in general, compared to other popular and much older blogs, but to hell with that, your blog has been awesome.
What!! This blog is one year old!? Oh no…
I thank you for the kind words.
Now, I’ll make a few comments and questions so I hope you don’t mind:
-Your articles and blog posts have changed my mentality regarding, well, so many thing in such a significant way. Not only for making me understand how the videogame industry actually works (and I don’t just mean developers, publishers, and Microsoft ::snicker:: but also us, the customers), as in, how could the Wii explode like that in sales, but any industry for that matter.
The reason why I started this site was for my own financial education. I targeted Nintendo because it is an extremely profitable company with few employees, but the company isn’t some corporate shell. There is a sense of creativity coming from it. So how can one make big bucks and make big creativity at the same time? I can’t think of too many companies like that.
With the DS success, there was a strong indication that a volcano was going to erupt on the console side as well. Sure, we can study all this many years after it has happened. But what if we were studying it in the midst of the maelstrom? It is more fun than studying it when it is going on instead of from the future, and we have no benefit of hindsight (just like the decision makers of businesses don’t).
It’s interesting that you say that you’ve become more interested in how other industries operate. Most people come here to find information about Nintendo or another context on the latest industry ‘drama’. It is fun, once understanding disruption, to apply it to other industries!
Your comments about making games and what makes them successful not only sound logical but are true when compared to the empirical evidence. Your posts about Mario and Metroid for example. Even though I liked them, I never could express well why. I thought I liked Mario and Samus but you proved me wrong; in reality I like the Mario games and Samus games. And following that, if I happen to be fond of Mario and Samus, it’s only because they served as proxies or avatars for myself to enjoy the experience the game offered.
So you are saying that when you were playing Super Metroid, say, at this point:
You weren’t thinking, “I like this game because of Samus’s maternal instincts!”?
It is interesting to hear you liked hearing about Mario and Zelda in this fashion. You should see my mailbox!!! Gamers can be very sensitive especially of games about their childhood. It is interesting to go back and say, “What really was driving us to play these games?” Much of this is debatable, but I don’t think anyone played Super Metroid for maternal instincts. When a director says something like this, it baffles me as to how they can think this way.
With what you are saying about the characters being proxies, that is how the Miis are. People do not play Wii Sports because they are fascinated with their Mii. The Mii is funny and cute. But the Mii is not the reason why people play the game. If Mii has a parallel timeline to Mario, we will see Mii RPG and Mii Clock for the DS (hey, that could actually work. Let us place our Miis into DSi software), Mii Movie, and so on. Miis are cool but it is obvious Miis aren’t the reason for the success for Wii Sports just as Mario isn’t the sole reason why Mario games were successful.
And you also shook my view about art in videogames (or if you like, videogames as art), one that I developed myself, mind you, after playing Ocarina of Time back in ’98 without ever knowing people wanted to consider videogames “art”. But you proved it wrong too and the line of reasoning makes me think of all matter just like graphics; after all, what’s the point of a videogame being a piece of art like the Mona Lisa or Macbeth (or having perfectly realistic graphics) if it’s entertaining as box full of pigshit?
I find it curious that you say that I ‘proved it’ wrong. I think the bottom line is going to be how people view our games, today, when we are all dead. That is the real test. But we are talking a century from now. If any games we are playing today are still played a hundred years from now, then maybe it could be art! But for right now, let’s just make fun games.
I keep seeing many parallels between the video game industry and the book industry. What do you call writers who create ‘art’? Unpublished writers. It is that or they work at a university (that pays their bills) so they can place their ‘art’ in some journal that no one reads.
And then you begin to fear for the fate of your beloved games because you now see that people like Miyamoto, Sakamoto, or Aonuma have thought for quite some time about themselves like artists or rockstars. So I would say, I don’t care now for the art, as long as I can enjoy the game first. Shadow of the Colossus would be a good example of this.
So, thanks for the disruption in my reasoning. =)
Sakamoto sounds off his rocker to me. I haven’t heard anything from Aonuma lately. As for Miyamoto…
I think we, as gamers, are doing Miyamoto a disservice by deifying him. We act like he went up a mountain and came down with the Tri-Force. Miyamoto’s true genius is in how he analyzes the customer and can create reactions to the customer. Miyamoto doesn’t seem like the type of person who went through business training or a salesman career, yet he is very good at selling and very good with the press. He is a natural salesman. I’m not worried about Miyamoto thinking he is a rockstar and going off on a wild tangent.
My fear about Miyamoto is that he believes gaming is not about content hence the adoption of ‘user-generated content’. And we aren’t talking user-generated content like a level editor or so. We are talking the primary content of the game being ‘user-generated’. That is crazy. It would be as if I declared this site to be ‘user generated content’ only by opening up the comments section and me never saying a word. I blame Will Wright’s influence for that.
Miyamoto, at times, can give snarky answers. For example, at the round table at E3 2009, Miyamoto’s explanation for NSMB Wii not having online was because of processing power. This may be essentially true, but there is obviously more going on here than that. If you’ve noticed, these oddball answers come only when Miyamoto is talking to a game journalist. I believe Miyamoto, along with the rest of the Nintendo staff, do not have much respect for ‘game journalists’. When Reggie is interviewed by VentureBeat, I mean the interview is a goldmine of information. But when it comes to a game journalist, very little is said. I can sympathize with the Nintendo staff since I am fed up with hearing “Where are the hardcore games, Nintendo!???” or “When is that Wii HD coming out?”, they have to actually answer these numbskulls.
Miyamoto comes across to me as someone who would feel right at home in the theater of being an actor. I don’t mean this as in saying acting = lying. I mean it as in Miyamoto likes to put on a show. He likes his audience to be entertained. He goes into interviews and is thinking of people listening on the other end. If he has nothing to say, and knows it, he will bring up something completely unrelated and say it just for the interview to be super entertaining. Check out the interview of Miyamoto and Iwata over the Wii Zapper Zelda. Miyamoto, alone for the interview, says some of the most entertaining stuff that everyone thought the interview was faked!
When all is said and done, I think Miyamoto will be remembered for Wii Fit more than Mario and Zelda. While Mario and Zelda were revolutionary, Wii Fit is far more so. This likely doesn’t make sense today, but you will see. Making video games as a tool to help one’s health will likely be remembered as the most revolutionary game in the last twenty years. That game is going to spawn a new sister industry next to the game industry.
We have already given Miyamoto what he wants. Like all the Generation Zero game developers, Miyamoto just wants to make games forever. He’s paid enormously well (the investors have made sure of that). I think deifying him is a mistake. He goes along with it for politeness (and it is good publicly for Nintendo to be perceived to have ‘genius game designer’). But what I think Miyamoto would be most interested in hearing about is why people do not play games, and what it would take to get them to play.
Some people have thought that I was ‘attacking’ Miyamato and all. No, that wasn’t it. But I do lean on sounding more hostile because there is an over-deification of Miyamoto in the games industry. His real genius is understanding customers, not in creating ‘art’. If this was emphasized more, maybe the game industry would try to understand customers more and stop trying to create ‘art’ that no one wants to buy.
I don’t really fear so much for the developers of Nintendo. I do wonder if Sakamoto is being set up for a fall. “I have these passionate beliefs about Metroid… We MUST make this game…” and Iwata probably said, “Fine. Let’s use Team Ninja so you don’t waste our resources.” Nintendo developers are harshly trained to have a customer orientated view. This is something I don’t hear much about in other companies except for Blizzard and, perhaps, Epic. This might also explain why these companies make consistent best sellers.
What I fear are the ‘new’ and young developers. These people have grown up with a games industry around them. They do not know what it took to build it. They look at gaming history as if it was a history of gameplay innovation, a history of technology innovation, or a history of artists. The real history, the one these budding developers never want to explore, is the history of the business. They think history of the game industry business is history of the Console War. Young developers need to be more like Nolan Bushnell than Shigeru Miyamoto, and I think Miyamoto would agree. While Miyamoto was certainly a genius, he had the genius of Yamauchi over him and directing him. Yamauchi’s genius is far more rare than Miyamoto’s genius. It was the genius of Yamauchi that made Miyamoto possible, not the other way around.
Iwata revealed that Nintendo was wondering how to teach their young developers all the lessons the older ones learned. There is a very easy answer. It is through the business context. Nintendo of America bought too many Radar Scope (or whatever it was called) games, and they aren’t selling. Based on that hardware, you must write a new game to save the company. And then go into Donkey Kong and how customers responded to it. I have found people seem very interested in learning about why previous games sold. But in order to understand how previous games sold, the discussion turns into why customers bought them. Why did people play Space Invaders? Why did people play Pac-Man? These questions are extremely relevant even today.
The artist personality, as well as the engineering personality, despises the business context. Most writers’ books never make it because they never studied the business context. They thought book writing was to make what they wanted to do. Ultimately, you have to write books that people want to read. Understanding salesmanship and marketing is extremely important to the artist. This applies across all creative mediums from music to movie making. The vast majority of writers go unpublished their entire lives because they refuse to acknowledge the business context. They consider it ‘selling out’. How does knowing about sales and marketing constitute ‘selling out’? They let stereotypes of business destroy their dream. I see it happen all the time. And I’m seeing it happen to young game developers.
The game industry has a problem with the ‘creatives’ and the ‘suits’. The solution to this is for the ‘creatives’ to be versed in the business context and the ‘suits’ won’t be necessary. But since the ‘creatives’ likely have that stupid “selling out” mis-belief, they intentionally remain ignorant and the suits HAVE to come in as a necessity.
The Generation Zero developers didn’t have this luxury. They had to become entrepreneurs themselves. Sure, they got a business guy on the side, but they, themselves, had to learn the business context. They had to learn how to sell. They had to learn marketing.
The second, and equally as big, fear I have with young developers is they are studying the wrong material for game development. Most of the time, they study previous games. Even Miyamoto says not to do this. As far back as the SMB 3 interview in Nintendo Power, Miyamoto advises young game developers to look at Pop Culture. However, I don’t think that is a good idea anymore since pop culture has deteriorated greatly since the 80s. I have another suggestion: go into the classics. If you want to make games that are timeless, it makes sense to look up things that are timeless.
Every game developer wants to build massive towers. We’ve heard that the increase of technology, of better development kits, and so on will finally let game developers make those ‘massive towers’. We keep saying this every year, every generation, that we need to realize that it is not going to happen. The true reason why game developers cannot build ‘massive towers’ is because of the weak foundation. The foundation for these ‘massive towers’ of gaming is not in the technology or development kits. It is in the mind.
It is a hobby of mine to study geniuses. Why did they become a genius? One trait that covers them all is that they built up a significant reservoir via education. The education for Mozart, for example, was more than just everything music. It was in classical books, poetry, and art. America’s founding fathers have a very rich education in things not even pertaining to law. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson would travel England together after the war to visit Shakespeare’s birth site. George Washington, a huge theater fan, instructed the troops to enact the play of “Cato” while at Valley Forge. Benjamin Franklin learned both literature and science in equal measure. Shakespeare knew more than poetry and theater. He knew law. He knew history. He knew botany. He couldn’t’ have been Shakespeare without knowing that.
I find the idea of ‘game design’ courses at universities to be horrendous, not because they exist, but because it is the perception that those courses will lead to being Grand Game Designer. In order to build the towers of your craft, no matter what it is, you must build the foundation. The stronger the foundation, the taller the tower that can be built.
If the young developer doesn’t want to go into the timeless classics and areas not related to gaming, that is fine. But he should not complain when someone else does and ends up building a taller and grander tower. The greatest investment you have in life is not of money but time. You can always get more money, but you cannot get more time. Invest it wisely.
-What are your thoughts in the new Zelda? I know that we only have a couple of short interviews with Miyamoto and a concept art but I think the hints they’ve been giving away are big and they doen’t feel all that great at all, which worries me, being a big Zelda fanboy. Ever since Majora’s Mask I have felt the Zelda charm to be slipping away little by little, even though some of them haven’t been all that bad, like The Wind Waker, but with Twilight Princess it has been too obvious to me. It feels, ironically I would say, that it’s going on the path of “Alice on Wonderland on crack”, that so many RPGs suffer from (I know Zelda it’s not an RPG), all thanks to FFVII. And if the gameplay (which Zelda is very famous for) has not only felt a bit stagnant or even backwards (Twilight Princess), the prospect of this particular swordless Link sounds like even more steps backwards. It’s like C. S. Lewis once said, that if you want to make progress, you can’t walk foward in the wrong direction, you have to turn around and go back (going backwards) to the starting point (going back to the roots) in order to start making progress. And this has definitely been done by the New Super Mario Bros and Mario Kart DS.
We simply don’t know much about the next Zelda. In Kohler’s interview with Miyamoto, the comments about narrative could be coming from Kohler and not Miyamoto. Miyamoto will want the new Zelda to appeal to as many people as possible. It isn’t going to be like Twilight Princess or Wind Waker, for sure.
The sword-less Link does worry me. However, I suspect this is being done because of the motion controls. Miyamoto is left handed and realizes the problem of sword combat if you aren’t right handed.
The Zoro in the picture confirms this will be a watery Zelda. Zelda appears to be doing element themes. Wind Waker is obviously wind themed, for example. (Could Twilight Princess have been earth themed?)
What gives me great hope is Miyamoto saying that he wants to incorporate Wii Sports Resort type gameplay into Zelda Wii. I think this absolutely needs to be done. People bought a Wii expecting a motion based Zelda (and Twilight Princess didn’t count). I would love the gameplay of combat be established first and then make the game around it. This is how the earlier Zeldas were done. With the latter Zeldas, it feels as if the formula is maintained and everything else is shoehorned to keep the formula intact.
I would greatly prefer a more action based Zelda as with the earlier Zeldas (including Ocarina. That was very action based). I literally fall asleep in the latter Zeldas. I don’t care about talking to the characters. I just want a sword, and I want to attack some monsters!
Miyamoto’s purpose with the Zelda drawing and his ‘revelations’ about the sword-less Link and motion plus gameplay was the equivalent of Miyamoto dipping his toe into the water. It was about market testing. Wind Waker had a huge backlash which was revealed in its sales. Nintendo wants to avoid a repeat of that. This is why the picture was shown (so everyone knows what the art style would be). Nintendo was also carefully gauging Zelda fans’ reactions to a sword-less Link and motion plus game.
If the Zelda team realizes they can’t write worth anything, that their dialogue and narratives are amateurish and cheesy, and that they leave all those ‘cutscenes’ out, I think Zelda Wii could be surprisingly good.
-Are you going to completely shut off the blog? I don’t mind if you stop writing about videogames as long as you can keep blogging because I find your comments very insightful.
Eventually, yes. Although, it is hard to be insightful when there is no news! E3 is over. 70% of all game news happens then. But Malstrom, himself, will eventually go away. I’ve been doing this for three years already! I’ll need to focus that time on my real business pursuits.
You’ll likely see me go on sabbaticals and disappear for a few months. Though, I will be going sabbatical very soon. Also, if you think I’ll be blogging and all when that new 2d Mario game comes out, you’ve got to be kidding! Nothing is going to keep me away from the first 2d Mario game released for console in twenty years!
-Last thing, have you seen this video? http://www.destructoid.com/stephen-colbert-demoes-the-ex-xbox-136889.phtml I think the satire shows very well what you said in one of your articles about birdmen. Now it’s not only “casual” games but “motion” controls and I say to myself “again they got it wrong”.
Hope you get to read this mail sooner than later but in any case, thanks for your attention.
Birdman is all about thinking the so-called ‘casual’ gamers are retarded. Therefore, they should be easy to manipulate and sell to, right? Nope.
When someone keeps saying, “They are worthless!” and that “Those are bad games!” over and over and over again, they begin to really believe the audience is stupid and that the games are really bad in quality. When you have contempt for someone, you really begin to truly think they are worthless. It is fun to watch Microsoft’s advertising stunt go down in flames. No one is falling for it.
Lately, Microsoft is regrouping. Project Natal was only one tactic. The strategy is wild new interfaces. So we will see Microsoft parade a variety of new interfaces about our noses, each declared to be the MOST REVOLUTIONARY THING EVER. They are now currently trying to salvage the Natal marketing blitz by saying Natal will unleash ‘augmented reality’ (which is something the PS3 has been doing for a while).
Project Natal should confirm to people that Microsoft is not a software company, Microsoft is a marketing company. Windows 7 is actually Windows 6.1 internally. But it is Windows 7 because version numbers are defined by the marketing department. I bet that the marketing department decided to go with Natal, not the game developers or engineers at Microsoft.
This is why Xbox 360s still haven’t gotten their hardware problems fixed. All the money got sent to marketing.
In 2006, a senior developer for the Halo series went bonkers when I said, on the message forum we were on, that Microsoft was primarily a marketing company. Apparently, they are very sensitive to this accusation.
PS- Before someone sends me an email going, “Malstrom is using Mac ads to attack Microsoft! What a hack!” I know people don’t like reading walls of text. The video clips I include in the posts are to help break that wall of text. Plus, they are funny. Cheer up.