Dear Malstrom

It’s good to see such good content from you. Enjoying Starcraft 2? My brother got me into it, and I’m having a lot of fun. It is defiantly tough. I’ve had a bit of a losing streak, but now I’m back on top. But I didn’t e-mail you to talk about Starcraft (as awesome as it is). I wanted to point out something you (and perhaps your readers) will find interesting.

Sales numbers are thrown around a lot, and a lot of people disagree with your stance that Nintendo needs to embrace the old school games based on the fact sales numbers usually show the newer games higher then older ones (like Ocarina of Time over the first Legend of Zelda game). I want to argue that. You mentioned before that games of yesterday didn’t do as well as they weren’t global. The NES and SNES titles didn’t do as hot in Europe, and else where, as you may know. So, I decided to look at sales without Europe and the other regions. One thing Accounting has taught me is that you have to compare apple to apples. This is the reason GAAP (General Accepted Accounting Principles) exist. So that you can look at Nintendo’s income statement and then look at Capcom’s and make sense of it. Since Other M is a hot topic, I’ll start with the Metroid sales (By the way, all this data comes from VGChartz. I know it’s not professional, but I’m not sure of a source with sales this far back or as easy to find).

Metroid sales US Japan (in millions)
Metroid: 2.36 (2.73)
Metroid Prime: 2.1(2.83)
Metroid 2: 1.42 (1.76)
Super Metroid: 1.29 (1.42)
Metroid Fusion: 1.26 (1.55)
Metroid Prime 3: .96 (1.56)
Metroid Prime 2: .91 (1.29)
*(Numbers in parantheses are the same including Europe)

I couldn’t find any hard data on it, but Zero Mission sold .5 million in Japan and the US, putting it below every other Metroid game that is not a spin off. Despite Prime selling the best overall, the original Metroid is still the best selling game. Also, while Prime is below the first game, it did have higher sales in the US over the original, but declined over Japan. The first person view probably helped sell the game to a US audience. Now, let’s looks at Zelda.

Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time: 5.54 (7.6)
Legend of Zelda: 5.49 (6.51)
*The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: 4.88 (7.21)
The Legend of Zelda 2: Link’s Adventure: 3.83 (4.38)
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: 3.62 (4.61)
The Legend of Zelda: Windwaker: 3.47 (4.55)
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass: 2.82 (4.7)
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening: 2.78 (3.38)
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask: 2.63 (3.36)
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks: 1.72 (2.47)
*Includes sales for both the Gamecube and Wii versions

I’m going to skip a lot of the other games. These were all the major Nintendo developed ones. The Legend of Zelda has defiantly been a product of selling in new regions. Ocarina of Time only beats out the first game by a few thousand, despite the total sales have a difference of a million. It’s also interesting that A Link to the Past and Link’s Adventure beat most of the games. Only Twilight Princess can keep up, which is more of a product of being on the Wii then being a good game. Overall, the old games are doing better (not to mention there was a shortage of Link’s Adventure).

The point of this was to try and show the growth in the old regions, the ones Nintendo always sold to. This shows that both Metroid and The Legend of Zelda have had no growth in the US and Japan, or it has been very little. It only proves what you have been saying: If these series are to survive, then need to recapture what they had in the NES days.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I hope you found it interesting. Hope to see some articles from you. Take care!

What sales data does not show is social phenomenons. There were MANY new games made by Nintendo. However, only three were social phenomenons: Mario, Zelda, and Metroid. There were other wonderful Nintendo games such as Kid Icarus and Star Tropics, but they didn’t create a phenomenon.

If you show someone Super Mario Brothers today, they will say, “Ohh, ,this game sucks. Look how archaic it is!” They would not understand how the game was a massive social phenomenon. Even some of the sequels where phenomenons on lesser scales. “It was just marketing.” Are you sure? It certainly had something to do with the game itself.

Zelda did not become popular with Ocarina of Time. Zelda became popular with the very first Zelda. All the Zelda games were pretty popular back then. Today, Zelda is not that popular. So I have to ask, “What has changed between then and today?” When you compare the old school Zelda and new school Zelda, there are some drastic gameplay differences between the two. Perhaps this is the problem?

Likewise, Metroid did not become popular with Super Metroid. Metroid became popular with the very first Metroid. Why? There were other numerous science fiction games where you shot aliens (in fact, most games had this setting). So it wasn’t the setting that did it. But yet, I cannot point to any game around that time and say it was like Metroid. It was a unique experience. This experience wasn’t that well represented in Super Metroid and has failed to show up in Metroids since then. When I say something like ‘Super Metroid failed’, what I mean is that Super Metroid did not create the Metroid social phenomenon that occurred on the NES. Why? I don’t know. I’m trying to figure it out. But after Super Metroid, none of the Metroid games have really duplicated even that experience. Why? My hypothesis is that Super Metroid had a ‘piece’ of what NES Metroid had and that was lost as the series went on.

A big clue is that Nintendo developers (Miyamoto, Aonuma, Sakamoto) have no desire to make the gameplay skeleton that made up the earlier games. Iwata has described gamers such as myself who stopped playing games as Gamer Drift. But I am turning it around and saying the problem is Developer Drift.

When Sakamoto described the consumer experience of the early Metroid games, he said that people put up with the ‘repetitive’ gameplay only for the immersion and storyline. I look at that and go, “WTF!” He’s got it exactly backwards. The gameplay was awesome. No one cared about the storyline.

When Miyamoto described the consumer experience for Mario games, he said that people play the game because of Mario, not because of the platforming gameplay. So the gameplay of Mario has radically changed as the series went into 3d. When 2d Mario came out on the DS, it outsold every Mario game except the original NES one. When 2d Mario came out on the Wii, it created a phenomenon, and Nintendo sold out of Wii hardware. I got the impression as if Miyamoto was trying to convince himself that it is about the ‘controls’ and ‘accessibility’ was why people chose 2d Mario and not 3d Mario. Then Mario Galaxy 2 came out designed to be more accessible and all. And Mario Galaxy 2 was as flat as Galaxy 1. More importantly, Galaxy 2 didn’t push up the hardware. Wii Party is selling more Wii systems than either Mario Galaxy did. Ultimately, the reason why gamers like myself drifted away has more to do than ‘accessibility’. It had to do with the content and gameplay of the games themselves.

Take Wind Waker for example. Nintendo likely looks at Wind Waker’s lower sales and say, “The art style kept players away.” That may be true, but it is not the only thing. Wind Waker was a game where you could not die because it was sooo easy. Could that also have a part to play in the consumer experience?

Aside from New Super Mario Brothers games selling very well, there are other examples of Nintendo adopting old school values to create new phenomenons. When Mario Kart DS was made, the designer went back to study the gameplay of Super Mario Kart and was his personal mission to ‘beat’ that game. Mario Kart DS sold EXTREMELY well. And Mario Kart Wii was based very much off of Mario Kart DS. Another example was when Nintendo tried to replicate the old school sports games on the NES with motion controls. They even placed golf courses from the NES title into the Wii title. The game was called ‘Wii Sports’ and was a huge phenomenon. People say the phenomenon was because of the motion controls. That could be part of it. But a major part is definitely in the gameplay of the game. This could be a reason why so many game companies tried to jump on the Wii motion controller bandwagon and didn’t find success. They missed those old school elements in Wii Sports.

I am not saying Nintendo should only make games with old school elements. Games like Wii Fit are truly new. No one used the Power Pad like how people use Wii Fit. And it is definitely a new phenomenon.

But there is a sickness infesting Nintendo’s core market triumvirate of Mario, Zelda, and Metroid. The antidote to stop the decline, I believe, are the old school values. For example, Mario used to be extremely popular and cool. He stopped being cool and began to be made fun of. Due to 2d Mario on the DS and Wii, the popularity of Mario has risen.

So why not make a Zelda or Metroid game with ‘old school elements’? “You can’t do that!” some people might say. But why not? After all, they have made a Zelda game with trains. They have made a Metroid game with maternal instincts. What is so radical about the series getting back to why they became a series in the first place? I’m not asking Zelda to be different than what Zelda was. Nor am I asking Metroid to be something that it never was.

I believe social phenomenons can be re-created. And there is evidence of this through Mario 5, Wii Sports, and Mario Kart Wii. And it all is about basing the motivation of the developers to be about the fundamentals instead of ‘tricks’ or ‘doodads’ (like narratives or puzzles).

There are three reasons why I think the small minority of gamers oppose the return of the old school elements…

1) The Best Games Are In Our Childhood- There is a saying with science fiction authors that the ‘magical moments’ are when a child is 10-13 as that is when science fiction is ‘golden’. Any book they read at that time period is ‘golden’.

In a similar way, the games that a gamer grows up with are always the best. It is because they are your childhood. Using Wind Waker again, there are kids who grew up with that game. They think that game is fantastic! Now, the kids are not ‘wrong’. But when we put on our business hats, we see another picture. We see Wind Waker being a big decline in Zelda sales and rapid erosion of reputation for the series. It was the wrong game in the ‘business sense’.

The first games in these series not only often sold the most, they were huge social phenomenons, and they created a series which the company could exploit for decades to come. Without a doubt, in the business sense, the first games are the most important. (However, this isn’t true with all games. With the Street Fighter series, it is Street Fighter 2 that is important, not the first game. Ditto with Mega Man. With Grand Theft Auto, it was Grand Theft Auto 3 that made it big.)

If someone grew up with Super Mario World, they will think that is the best Mario game. They are not wrong, of course. Childhood is a ‘magical time’ for gaming. But in the business sense, they are not correct. The original Super Mario Brothers would be the best Mario game in the business sense.

When I talk about the old school values, it sounds like I am being a ‘video game critic’ which isn’t the case. It is product advice. I am saying, “Your products are in decline because they do not perform the same job they used to do.” And I try to figure out reasons why.

What I think rattles people is how absolute I sound. Instead of saying, “My opinion on this is…” I am more or less saying, “And this is the way it is.” But I am not acting as a critic. I am acting as someone commenting on what will make the game sell more.

If Nintendo announced they were going to make a Spirit Tracks 2, I would viciously mock it because I know it would not sell well. And then I would go on a tear about how Zelda needs to ‘get back to its roots’ and begin talking gloriously about older Zelda games. It all has to do about sales and social phenomenons. If Nintendo cannot repair the sinking of their triumvirate of Mario, Zelda, and Metroid, not only will we not see new series, Nintendo will be in grave trouble as the audience will be easily plucked off by competitors (as it has been for the SNES to Gamecube).

2) The Games Will Actually Require Skill to Beat. Gaming has gotten significantly easier. Gamer behavior has radically changed with gamers saying how many hours they are into a game instead of saying what level they are (time investment versus skills needed). This is a big reason why games have gotten so damn long is because of pandering to this minority audience. Old school games, even games like Wii Sports, do not take any time at all. They just take some skill to play well.

Let us say there are two groups. There is a group that feels entitled to beat every game if they just put in the time. And there is another group that thinks games are boring unless they are skills based. Which group is larger? I would say it is the skills based. The reasoning why is that almost every huge phenomenon game has been a skills based game. FPS games sell today pretty much because of that reason.

The problem with time investment for the gaming experience is that it competes with movies. Saying “thirty minutes in” is something you say about the experience when watching a movie. You aren’t supposed to say that about playing a video game.

3) Lack of understanding the teleological point of view. Most people who talk about art today know nothing of art. As the saying goes, “You shall know the tree by its fruit.” Most modern artists produce nothing that can stand to the test of time. It is the modern myth of ‘creativity’.

The very expression of ‘dignity of man’, even when Pico della Mirandola coined it in the fifteenth century, had a blasphemous ring to it.  Man was not seen as dignified. God had dignity, and whatever dignity man had was because he was made in God’s image or because he was the rational animal whose reason could grasp the whole of nature and was akin to that whole. The ‘dignity of man’ means he is the ‘highest of beings’ which is emphatically denied in both Aristotle and the Bible. Man is elevated and alone. If this is to be plausible, man must be free- not in the sense of ancient philosophy, according to which a free man is one who participates in a regime where he rules as well as is ruled; nor in the sense of Hobbes and Locke, according to whom a free man is one who can follow his reason without having to obey God or man- but free in a much grander sense, that of legislating to himself and to nature without guidance from Nature.

(Keep in mind I am describing how art was thought centuries and centuries ago. Much of literature, such as from Dante or Homer, or music such as Bach, was about capturing the essence of ‘God’ or ‘gods’ or Nature. Shakespeare described his work as holding a mirror up to Nature.)

This view of man not having to obey anything, not even take guidance from Nature, is the view of freedom called ‘creativity’. When it was first used for man, it had the odor of blasphemy and paradox. God or Nature had been called a creator; and this was the miracle of miracles. However, with ‘creativity’, what defines man is no longer his reason, which is but a tool for his preservation, but his art, for in art man can be said to be creative. There he brings order to chaos. The greatest men are not the knowers but the artists. Art then becomes not imitation of nature but liberation from nature. A man who can generate visions of a cosmos and ideals by which to live is a genius, a mysterious, demonic being. Such a man’s greatest work of art is himself. He who can take his person, a chaos of impressions and desires, a thing whose very unity is doubtful, and give it order and unity, is a personality. He contains in himself the elements of the legislator and the prophet, and has a deeper grasp of the true character of things than the contemplatives, philosophers, and scientists, who take the given order as a permanent and fail to understand man.

When video games were first made, they were made by engineers. You needed engineering skills to program and re-wire the computer boards. Games were fun, and people love to what they think is fun for a living. The sentiment back then was that they felt very lucky they could ‘make games for a living’ instead of getting a ‘real job’.

Today, there is an extremely different sentiment among game makers. They are more interested in making ‘art’, in being ‘creative’. They don’t even care about business realities. In fact, they resist anything that might harm their ‘creativity’ for the reasons above. Many game developers are very smart and could make a ton of money in another field. So why are they making video games in the first place? To express their creativity.

Since the modern delusion of the day is that only the “creative” person can be truly Human, everyone tries to get into the ‘creative mediums’: music, movies, fiction writing, video games.  This also has given birth to ‘Game Gods’ who are ‘fountains of creativity’ and who are ‘personalities’. In fact, every detail about them is supposed to hint at their ‘sublime genius’ from what clothes they wear to what they eat to even what time they use the bathroom.

There are movie people who say Star Wars ‘destroyed movies’. They were so interested in being ‘creative’ in their movies in the 70s that people stopped going to the movies. It was movies like Jaws and Star Wars that brought people back to the movie theater.

In a similar way, there are game makers who say ‘Wii Sports’ destroyed gaming. As many game makers got ‘creative’ in their games, people stopped buying them. And here comes Wii Sports. Is Wii Sports an exercise of artistic creativity? No. There is great gameplay, great engineering with the Wii controller, and contained sports everyone was familiar with. Nintendo did not invent Tennis or Bowling.

Or look at Nintendogs. Nintendo did not invent the dog. The dog existed before Nintendo did. Petting dogs is something that all cultures can relate to. So Nintendogs sold very well. But there really wasn’t anything ‘creative’ about it, was there?

When someone gets ‘creative’ with the game, often big problems occur. Trains in Zelda was ‘creative’, but it is not what the audience wanted. Maternal instincts was ‘creative’ in Metroid, but it is not what the audience had in mind.

I think this is a reason why Miyamoto has such a good track record. He constantly seeks guidance from ‘nature’ or ‘human nature’. He does not see himself as free from Nature. Other game designers would see nature or human nature as ‘infringing on their creativity’.

This is why I so easily dismiss any and all ‘game gods’. It is not their ‘vision’ that matters. It is the audience’s response that matters. If the audience is throwing tomatoes at the stage, it doesn’t matter what ‘vision’ the stage director has.

When I speak about ‘old school elements’, I am referring to the ‘fundamentals’. They are like the natural laws that make any game ‘fun’. We don’t know what they are, exactly. But older games can provide clues.

When someone says, “I don’t like this ‘confession time’ Samus Aran,” and someone responds to it saying, “As if you know Samus better than her creator, Sakamoto!”, you see a conflict of contexts. The Sakamoto cultist believes in this fairy notion of ‘creativity’ and that Sakamoto’s “vision” of Metroid is always right even if it sends Metroid into the abyss.

Way back when I first started talking about disruption and Blue Ocean Strategy, there were people who were enraged. “I don’t want to talk about business!” And they would say this when they were talking about sales. How on earth can you not talk about business if you talk about sales? Sales are business! Why the hostility?

It is the misguided belief that business is a soul-less utilitarian affair (which is why these people will blurt out: “Business is just about making money!”). Business is actually about understanding human nature. The salesman, in particular, knows more about human nature than any poet or artist.

The reason why the fundamentals are opposed, even by many game makers, is because they believe it will take away the ‘creativity of gaming’. To the contrary, getting back to the fundamentals of gaming is exploring the New World. There is more we don’t know about gaming than we do know.

Let’s go exploring.