Miyamoto doesn't like Haze's drug focus.

[Bodhesatva]

naznatips said:

ckmlb said:

I have no problem with what he said but I have a problem with the usual BS from people on here about how violent games are automatically less creative and only selling cause of the violence in them.

Please stop talking nonsense and go look up how many great games there are that are considered the best around creatively and in originality and are violent.

Like it or not, GTA III was more creative than most of what Nintendo made last generation, if not all.

Crapping on games just because they are violent is the same as crapping on games and calling them 'kiddie' just because they aren't violent.

This is the other side of the coin, and Nintendo fans go with this all the time even though the complain about fan boys calling Nintendo games kiddie, they call violent games stupid and uncreative and mindless....

Edit: If you have a PC or a 360, go buy Bioshock or rent it later this month and play a game that is both very violent and one of the most creative games I've seen. You probably do have a gamecube or a Wii so go buy Killer 7 or the new No More Heroes and see how violence and creativity can go hand in hand.

This whole idea about violence and sex selling products as some sort of bad side effect of consumerist society and the negative side of games is pretty silly when throughout time man has been driven by both subjects in all his endeavors. Most works of art and music have violence and/or sex as some if not all the inspiration.

Cut out the puritanical nonsense about how games should be all clean and shiny, games should be of all kinds and flavors. Leaving violence out of games makes them even less serious because you are leaving out one of the key things that drives humanity. Same reason why there should be more sexual topics in games, because 'cleaning' them of this is pretty stupid when this is one of the most important topics in human life.

Asking games, movies, or music for less violence and sex is equal to the people who persecuted artists and writers and thinkers of old because their topics were taboo.

Exactly! I completely agree with almost everything you wrote here. A game having adult appeal has nothing to do with it's rating. A game rated E and a game rated M both have equal opportunities to show mature themes. Saying all E rated games are mature is stupid (go play Hannah Montana and come back and say that), but conversely, to claim all M rated games are mature (in the classical sense of the word, rather than the ESRB rating) is just as stupid.

Examples of Mature, and violent games:

Killer 7; had a lot of creativity and some mature political themes. It was not a game for kids, despite being gorey. Most teens would have gotten bored with it (or not understood it).

Bioshock; is another perfect example of a violent but mature game. It has dark themes of morality that are far above what the standard teenager looking for mindless killing will be able to tolerate.

Metroid Prime; this isn't a game for the simple minded. The puzzles and themes are again, far too complex for some teen looking for a simple violent shooter.

However, a game that has an E rating can appeal to adults too. For example: Wii Sports, Viva Pinata, Zelda, and Mario. These are games that anyone can play, and that's what Miyamoto appreciates. He wants games that appeal to adults and children, not one or the other exclussively, and I believe in this respect he has been largely successful. If anyone really things Mario Galaxy is just a kids game, I pity them.

I largely agree with both of you, but I think this is about tendencies. Generalities.

I generally believe that most violence in video games is used as a crutch to be cool. Mortal Kombat started it, and most games are using it in the same fashion today. Keep in mind that this is most -- which is to say, there are counter examples.

The easiest parallel would be movies. Violence in movies has a bell curve; you don't watch it much when you're young (because you aren't allowed to), you watch a ton of it when you're a teenager (the "fascination with the abomination," as Joseph Conrad put it), and then interest in violence tends to wane or even become an aversion as one gets older. Again, generally speaking. Because there are counter examples; some (serious) war films and dramas do contain violence, although it's usually displayed in a very serious manner.

Blowing away hundreds of aliens with a laser or people with an uzzi in the course of a twenty hour game... is not serious. It's banal and bourgeois.

So my stand would be this: violent games tend to be aimed largely at the 14-25 year old male demographic. Non-violent games can be aimed at everyone else: boys, girls, adults, or the elderly. Thus, one should note that non-violence can be both kiddie or adult-ish or both; one should also note that these are just tendencies, and shouldn't be taken as hard-and-fast rules.