Makonero said:
People are defensive when their favored genres are seemingly "attacked." They are worried that more diversity means less shooters.
haha, jesus. Do you have any evidence with this view?
So you're saying the current franchises don't do that.
That's probably where we disagree.
You keep mentioning how tired of the Mushroom Kingdom, and others you are, but personally:
If I beat 3D World, and then play TTYD. Technically it's still the "Mushroom Kingdom" but the Themes, Art Direction, Gameplay, Worlds, Aesthetic, Characters, Writing (well, one actually has writing), are all completely different. I suppose both games have goombas and bright colors, but if that makes them samey and stale to you....well I dunno. Seems like a stretch imo.
And after that if I played something like Woolly World next, technically it's Mushroom Kingdom still, but again, the Themes, World, Art, Music, etc are all completely different than the other 2. If I play those 3 games, I really don't feel like I'm in the same thing over and over again. All 3 are completely different and convey different styles.
Or for Zelda, if I played WW, then TP, then SS, technically it's all Hyrule, but all 3 games are a completely different experience and the worlds, art, music, and everything are unique. But that's all one franchise so they'd have some slack. (I haven't played ALBW but I would give you that of feeling similar to ALttP)
That eariler picture of NSMB games could easily show Nathan Drake in a similar location in 3 games, or Kratos in a similar area in however many games. Any franchise with the same protagonist could have a picture like that, to be honest.
And are you acting like they don't experiment with art directions as well? What other large franchises completely change their graphical aesthetic from one iteration to another. There's probably some. FF shifts some, but 3D FF seems to stay relatively realistic. Borderlands made a big switch I guess.
All in all, I don't really agree with your points. Maybe just play different Nintendo games if you're tired of Mario and the Mush Kingdom.
Nintendo does their best to try to stretch the concepts as far as they'll go within the structure of these same-y worlds, themes and characters, granted. But at the end of the day the second I'm buying a game related to Mario, I know there's tons of associated expectations with that. It immediately diminishes some of my excitement for experiencing that game, because I know to expect certain things.
For example, TTYD and Mario 3D World are obviously different in distinctive art styles and gameplay. Those two elements therefore are new: the art style, and the gameplay. But other elements are not new. There's Mario and he's not speaking but he's making his trademark whoops and trademark jumps. The jumps might be slightly different, the physics might be different in many ways, but I know it's a Mario game, so I'm expecting him to look the way he does, act the way he does, and of course jump. Sometimes he'll also use power ups. Immediately therefore just on Mario alone my excitement of discovery has been shrunk a bit.
Then you look at music. Many Mario games recycle some themes. Mario 3D World and TTYD share tons of similar enemies. Sure, they're painted in a different style, but it's removed some of my sense of joy of discovery of new enemy types. That aspect is not new. Look at the different power ups, many are shared between the games. Look at the characters that Mario meets, many also are shared between games.
It's all about a scale.
If on one end of the scale is a game that is completely new, that is to say a new IP with unique approach to gameplay, totally unseen before characters, enemies and themes, that would be like "completely new."
| <not new at all> ----------------------------------------------- <completely new> |
On this scale, you'd be placed in various positions depending on what you do. Mario games would be somewhere dead in the center. Usually I can expect experimentation with gameplay, and sometimes art style. Sometimes a few new characters are introduced within these worlds. But most of the time I'm dealing with many of the same rehashed characters, same rehashed enemies (how many times am I facing Bowser again?), and many of the same themes (how many times am I in ice world or fire worldor grass world or visiting the mushroom castle?).
Since I view all elements on this scale in this evaluation, the more new a title has, the further it'd be toward the completely new side.
Nintendo's games focus primarily on being "new" with the gameplay, and sometimes they toy with new approaches to the visual style. But much of the rest is stuff we've seen a billion times before in a billion different Mario games.
Some of the games of course will be a little bit further in the new side, and others a little bit further in the not new at all side. But if we're going to establish that games being 'too same-y' is a problem, then we have to address all elements of games and truly strive for freshness.
Oersted said:
Are we discussing if Nintendo is part of the problem, while he never excluded Ninty and was never shy of critizing Nintendo? Seems pointless...
Even his initial point is wrong, because there is so much diversity in games it's insane. Indies are just as much games as AAAs. And no where in his comment can I see he's just talking about AAAs. I earlier asked for someone to show me where he said it was just about AAAs, but nobody did. Additionally, every industry has its highest budget elements, and those highest budget elements are always the most risk-averse. IF he is just talking about AAAs, my question is why he thinks gaming is going to be the first industry to avoid such a problem (or even that it should). The more money something requires, the more risk-averse a company is going to be with the game that requires that money. That's why there's a huge vibrant industry of indie games and indie movies, because that's where people who want to experiment go to share their ideas. Why is there a seemingly big problem for Miyamoto if the issue of diversity is being addressed by another segment of games?
My focus here, despite ZombiePlatypus' passive aggressive nonsense post above, is to illustrate that if Miyamoto is going to say it's a big problem that games are the same, he should return to Nintendo and focus on pushing for a more complete sense of difference within their own products. He's not very self aware when it comes to this at all, since I can't tell you the number of times I've read in interviews that they keep pushing some old Nintendo character on one of their "new gameplay ideas."
