Focusing only on recent successes leads to a fad mentality, which is why things that are somehow revolutionary like "the cover mechanic" just get watered down and endlessly repeated. Now, i'm not trying to trash Epic Games here, as there was one thing Cliffy B knew, and that was game design. Bad designers, and believe me that these are the majority of today's game designers (and yesterday's, but that's just Sturgeon's law at work). Cliffy B made the cover mechanic because it worked for Gears of War, because he knows his history and gets what really makes games tick. Gamers, critics, and bad game designers alike just look at it and see "cover mechanic. Now required for 3rd person shooters."

This is because the fundamentals of good gameplay design do not evolve, just as the fundamentals of good movie design do not evolve. We get better tools, more bells and whistles and different ways to deliver the experience, but the core drive, that thrill, the thing that brings you back to a game again and again, is the same, which is why the first person to get it *right*, which in gaming comes down to the masters of the 80s and 90s, depending on the genre, really Nintendo, Squaresoft, EA, iD, and Capcom to a lesser degree, and their contributions shall always be the most significant, and should be the closest-studied.

Going back to movies, let's look at Star Wars. George Lucas' work on the original trilogy was better because he respected the fundamentals and was not consumed by his own ego. He was ripping off the fundamentals, left and right, from epic movie stories of his day, from Westerns and World War II movies and Kurosawa-type Samurai movies. What made the prequel trilogy as iffy (or bad, but we're not here to fight that) was that he was essentially trying to top himself, setting his new work against his old work rather than looking beyond that to the base elements that made the old work good.

Square Enix, i should say, is in the same predicament. They build new Final Fantasy games trying to top the last Final Fantasy, or one of the "great" FF's, like 6 through 10, which allows them to lose sight of the core ideals which are encapsulated in Final Fantasy 1.

Yeah because a developer making an FPS could learn a lot from Mario .....

Is he trying to get picked up by Nintendo? Won't surprise me if true, Capcom is probably being a dick to him over Mighty Number 9.

I remember something comparable, a couple of years ago, with the Ninja Gaiden developer or was it within Konami?

I can't argue with his logic. Super Mario Bros. is a cornerstone game.

Mario is simple part of gaming history, just because you don't like it doesn't mean game designers should ignore it. Is the same as artists, every artist have seen the Mona Lisa, Birth of Venus, The Scream, etc. What that artist does may be completely different from this paintings, more modern and "original", but is simple part of the media they love and dedicated their life to. It's the same as video games, games like Grim Fandango, M.U.L.E, Space Invaders, Pacman, Super Mario, etc. are part of this history and any game designer this days should look at this games and what they represent to the media. 

You are looking at it at the wrong angle, in his opinion, Mario is the equivalent of Beethoven (first musician that came to mind, could be any other), but that doesn't stop death metal bands or rappers for taking inspiration in his music and what it represents. 

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.

It is impossible to underestimate the importance of Nintendo franchises in the Industry. They helpd shape most of the genres and serve as a basis for excellent gamplay design!

As a character ? A specific sub-IP ?

You can´t just make a drive by jab like this without at least beeing a tad bit more precise !

Is he being serious?! A good game creator is limited by whether you play mario or not, lol.