Legend11 said:
If great first person shooters are so easy to make then where are all the "Halo Killers" on the consoles? Hell I played Unreal Tournament for thousands of hours and was never bored, how many people have played 1 particular Nintendo title thousands of hours and never got bored? How many people were challenged in those games like I was with thousands of other players in many of the best clans in the World? A bad or average first person shooter is easy to make, the great ones that people love to play and never get bored of, they're a completely different beast and much harder to make. |
Well if you discount people who played Super Smash Bros, Mario Kart, Mario Sports Games (Tennis, Golf, Soccer), the Mario Party games, Pokemon, and Goldeneye there probably wouldn't be that many games where people spent thousands of hours playing ...
You may doubt how many people are dedicated to many of Nintendo's multiplayer offerings but consider this
There was also a proposal to develop the game in Kyoto at Nintendo headquarters, but the there you'd draw a different people, and I had need to be in Tokyo anyway.
Additionally, there are several people in Tokyo with experience developing Smash Bros., and it was decided that they would join the team. And the name of talented staff members were offered up.
So, development would not be occurring at Hal Labs. But, the code and development environment of Super Smash Bros. Melee, which I had developed in the past, was offered. Having this versus not having this means the efficiency of the development changes dramatically, so I'm thankful.
But we still didn't have enough people. To create a game like Super Smash Bros. Melee, I would want a team with a minimum of 50 people. Getting together that many people would be a back-breaking task.
So it was that Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto introduced me to a "particular team" that had just completed a large-scale game.
Until the day comes when I can announce the team's name, I shall simply refer to them as "The Studio."
"Let's do it. Let's definitely do it!"
The words of The Studio's executive were very simple.
I was surprised when I saw the GameCube controllers they were using. The coating on the analog stick was worn down like an old eraser...
"Our guys have played Smash Bros. more than 10,000 times!"
It had to be a lie.
But when I saw their battle records, it showed a terrible number of matches that were not fabricated.
This was the result of years of uninterrupted playing of Smash Bros. during lunch breaks. There are often cases where your team doesn't understand the content of the game you're making, but that wouldn't be a concern this time.
It was promising.
This had to have been fate.
So, with the members of The Studio as our core, we dramatically increased our staff members.
This sounds unbelieveable to many, but it isn't that uncommon ...
Back in my university days there was the undergraduate mathematics society (basically the wealthiest club in the university being that we had ever math test for 2 decades and sold them to undergraduates) who had a N64 and small TV set up ... From what I gather they had basically played Super Smash Bros almost every day since it had been released nearly 5 years earlier.
