Seriously, Nintendo is not THAT Important

[Pristine20]

TornadoCreator said:

Pristine20 said:

Interestingly, I haven't bought a nintendo product since the SNES was around and somehow, I've been gaming since. I guess I'm not a real gamer huh? How do "we" need nintendo again?  Say "I need nintendo badly" next time and your rant may sound more objective instead of a nostalgic mess.

Read my post again, you clearly missed the point.

Nintendo's influence is such that without ever picking up a Nintendo product, if you're gaming you're playing Nintendo. Nintendo drives the games industry to do things they wouldn't normally do. Things outside of the mainstream. Without Nintendo there would be no real platformers for example. Without something like Mario, there wouldn't be games like Little Big Planet or Ratchet & Clank. Why? Because they're not mainstream enough and the other companies all tend towards homogeny. Look at the teams of old. Crash Bandicoot and Spyro The Dragon stopped why? Because those developers and production companies felt they'd be better off making games like Uncharted, Killzone and Resistance. The platformer stopped to make way for more shooting. Now is this a bad thing, not at all, if you like shooters that is.

The fact is "gamer" used to mean something. It used to be a small niche hobby and it could tell you about the likes and dislikes of a person. Just like how a "film buff" is someone who enjoys film in a way most people don't, and "bookworm" enjoys books in a way most people don't. If you watch Hollywood blockbusters you're not a film buff, you're just an ordinary person; you don't need a label because everyone watches Hollywood blockbusters. If you read the Harry Potter books, or The Hunger Games, or even something like The Da Vinci Code, you're not a bookworm, you're just an ordinary person; after all you can't get more mainstream than Harry Potter, Hunger Games and Dan Brown novels. The same is true now of gamers. If you play Call Of Duty, Fifa, and GTA5, you're not a gamer, you're just an ordinary person; everyone plays those games... they're literally the most popular forms of media in the fucking world. If everyone who plays those games is a gamer; EVERYONE is a gamer and the label loses all meaning and purpose. Have you noticed though, most film buffs dislike Hollywood Blockbusters like the Transformers films. Most bookworms consider the Harry Potter books and Dan Brown's novels to be badly written and trite... and... wait for it, most actual gamers, find Call Of Duty and Fifa uninteresting and disconnected from the larger culture that video games are built on.

Call Of Duty and Fifa are not made for gamers, for "geeks", they're games that appeal to the "jocks", and that's OK. There's nothing wrong with them having games too. My point is that they're no more gamers now than they where in the late 80's, and there's plenty of reason for antagony here.

Nintendo still perpetuate games for gamers, and them doing so pushes others to do the same, if only to compete with Nintendo because that's how capitalism works. That said, if Nintendo didn't make those games, would the other companies bother? Would they have the connection to the medium that Nintendo had to create these games intependently. I'd bet not. This is why we need Nintendo; for the same reason that we need the Sundance Film Festival, because just as film buffs honestly don't give a shit about mainstream films, gamers don't give a shit about "mainstream" games and that's what Sony and Microsoft are pushing.

I think you're reaching to give nintendo credit they don't deserve.  I'm an RPG fan mostly, huge on SRPGs (a very niche genre), JRPGs and WRPGs. What exactly has nintendo done to influence my interests? Save for the fire emblem games, nothing they have done since SNES has made me think...man, I'd like to play that. I do not disagree with your assessment of gamers but your mistake is in thinking that those who do not like nintendo games are into blockbusters. I've never bought a FIFA or GTA game and the only Call of Duty game I've bought is COD4, mostly because at the time it released in november 2007, there was absolutely nothing else to play on ps3. BTW, my definition of 'gamer' does parallel yours in the sense that I don't consider anyone who only knows heavily advertised games, a gamer.

Some of my favorite games include the likes of Disgaea 3 and 4, Parasite Eve II, SMT: Nocturne, Valkyria Chronicles, Vagrant Story, Wild Arms XF, Dragon's Dogma, Resonance of Fate, Dragon Age Origins, Shining Force EXA, Arc the Lad : Twilight of the Spirits, etc...not exactly household names. You may think nintendo somehow influenced these games but I'm sorry, I'm not buying it.  Nintendo themselves are overtly reliant on blockbusters. Why slap the Mario name on everything? When you've been stuck in ninty's closed ecosystem for so long, it's easy to start believing there's no light outside. Broaden your horizons a bit and you may be surprised.