Inafune:‘If a Creator Hasn’t Played Mario, They’re Probably not a good Creator’

[Mr Khan]

Pristine20 said:

Mr Khan said:

Yes you shouldn't be allowed to drive cars if you haven't driven a model T, or at least taken one apart and put it back together (more important to car design). At least if you're devising consumer cars, anyway. Because if you don't understand why the people of the past succeeded, you will not succeed. If you don't understand why the Model T got millions of skeptical people in town and country alike to take a chance on this mysterious horseless carriage, you are removed from a design that will make your company succeed.

Younger folks can always play these games (type in Super Mario Bros into Google and you too could be playing in the next 15 seconds. If you want to go legal and own a 3DS, Wii, or Wii U, hop onto the Shop Channel, take you 5 minutes to start). The entire problem with the industry is that newer designers *aren't* playing these games. The earliest games are important because these are the games that got people to start gaming in the first place, so they must have done something right. There is this conceit in the development community currently (and your post buys into it as well, with the comment about there being more options today) that people want to play video games so somebody will play what they make because what else are they going to do? This is wrong thinking. Super Mario Bros wasn't so universally popular because nobody had anything else to play at the time. Super Mario Bros was so universally popular because it compelled people to get off their asses, go to a friend's house and play, beg their parents for an NES and start playing. It got people to play because it was that good. Understanding why, understanding what mystical hold this game (and others, i'm just floating it out as an example) had to hook people in, to bring them into a whole new medium, is the very essence of good game design, and if you do not understand how the medium created a space for itself, you are doomed to eternal mediocrity as a game designer, and certainly any hope of growing the medium and making your own mark on it will forever be out of your reach.

Madden 25 is a bad example. There are simply enough people that want to play a real NFL sim and Madden is their only option. EA (the bad new EA, not the good old EA that made Ultima and actually contributed to the industry instead of just leeching off of it and cannibalizing it) has created a monopoly, so their designers get the privelege of existing in a bubble where they can just shit out anything and people will play it because there is nothing else that meets that need.

I would argue that using old ford designs as a recipe for making a modern car is just asking for a disaster. Why not use a successful modern car then as some of the tech used back then is obsolete or downright outlawed nowadays. NES did not necessarily get people to play because it was that good IMO. I played the original mario too and now, I just couldn't go back as it bores me to tears. At some point, NES was pretty much the only meaningful player in the industry so if you wanted to try videogames, there was no other option. Similar situation to madden if you want to use that argument about football sims. Lots prefer FIFA to other "soccer" offerins if you think EA flatout sucks. Any "mystical hold" you think Mario had is just imaginative. i'd make the argument that the negative outlook of women in games started from mario as well and Miyamoto's characters have no development whatsoever, just walking stereotypes i.e problematic direction for people to be emulating when joining the industry.

You argue that these early games got people into gaming but they really only got your generation into gaming not "everyone". I know people who got into gaming thanks to the games we all love to hate like COD. So is it then wrong for a developer to study COD instead to figure out why it's so popular? Why does it have to be the old school stuff? Does Justin Bieber need to study Beethoven to make better music? I'd argue that he's doing plenty fine without doing that .

How do we decide what game "contributes" to the industry and what doesn't. Is it by first to get there or who is most popular?

You've managed to miss most of my points spectacularly.

Can anyone else explain this better?