The Era of Japan’s All-Powerful Videogame Designers Is Over | Hacker News Reader

The Era of Japan’s All-Powerful Videogame Designers Is Over

wired.com

40 pointsagonzalezro21 comments

I don't understand how any article with this title can get by without mention of Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto. He's probably the most famous of all of Japan's 'rockstar' executive producers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shigeru_Miyamoto

I wondered the same thing myself. For an even more in-depth look into how truly brilliant this man is, read his interview over at the New Yorker[1].

[1] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/12/20/master-of-play

There are rumors of him retiring as well. Though I doubt this changes the way Nintendo will do things by much since like Apple, Nintendo is different.

Yeah, you can't put a period on the era of powerful Japanese designers without first Miyamoto calling it quits.

That would never happen though because Nintendo has built him up too much as the mastermind behind everything they ever did. He's part of their company identity now.

Probably because it doesn't feed into the narrative he's trying to make.

Nintendo have been pretty much been releasing highly memorable and praised games year-on-year. Most of which have a big designer behind it or at least providing advice, whether it's Miyamoto, Sakurai, Aonuma or whoever.

But of course, times are changing. These people have been in the industry for decades. A new generation will need to take its place so they'll gradually move into coaching roles to pass on their knowledge and experiences.

Also, most games developed by large companies are hardly ever attributed to a single person. It's a lot more collaborative now as studios get bigger and more people are involved compared to back then (where most well-known designers got their popularity from) when it was couple of developers writing assembly.

    Probably because it doesn't feed into the
    narrative he's trying to make.

Right, that's my point: Miyamoto undermines the thesis of the article.

I'm not knowledgeable enough on this topic: can you explain what you mean? I am interested.

might want to get knowledgeable on miyamoto as well as read the article for starters. Not really appropriate to ask a person to consolidate the current state of video games when plenty of knowledge is available on the internet easily.

Miyamoto's creations:

* Mario

* Luigi

* Peach

* Bowser

* Donkey Kong

* Link

* Ganondorf

* Zelda

* Fox McCloud

* Olimar (and Pikmin)

He's still around and is one of the major players of Nintendo. Another major figure is Masahiro Sakurai, who was the creator of Kirby and Super Smash Bros.

Unfortunately, Miyamoto is spinning down his work and involvement in Nintendo.

And much like other rockstar developers, his company isn't profitable.

Miyazaki is a rising star at From Software. Also Kojima isn't dead. I don't expect him to stop making games just because he broke up with Konami. I have no doubt he'll land on his feet.

Kojima isn't dead, and I'm sure we'll see another game from him eventually, but is he going to once again be in a position where he yields unquestioned authority over a top Japanese publisher? Not likely.

Agreed on Miyazaki, he's got (at least) three phenomenal games under his belt in Demon Souls, Dark Souls and Bloodborne, and the fans are baying for more.

Maybe this is where crowd funding steps in. It's hit or miss because some times the demand really isn't there, but you can get AAA level bankrolling from crowd funding.

If you can't maybe it's time to learn to manage scope and deliver iteratively.

I don't know about AAA-level bankrolling[1], as current-generation AAA budgets are in the tens of millions, but Keiji Inafune's new company, Comcept, was able to raise almost $4mm to fund his spiritual successor to Mega Man[2]

Edit: I didn't realize Star Citizen had managed to raise over $50mm via (non-Kickstarter, mostly) crowdfunding. Wow.

[1] http://kotaku.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-big-video-...

[2] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mightyno9/mighty-no-9

I guess you are right. The only AAA level crowd funding was Star Citizen. It's a shame there isn't similar demand in other genres.

Star Citizen is being manned by Chris Roberts, who _was_ the rockstar developer behind Wing Commander.

All the 90s kids have grown up and have money now. They want another Chris Roberts realistic space sim.

You can't even get close to AAA-levels of funding through crowdfunding. The only exception is Star Citizen which has raised $80 million by promising to be all things to anyone who wants to fly around space and do things.

The highest-funded video games on kickstarter barely crack $3-4 million, not even close to what you'd need to make a fully-fledged AAA game for current consoles.

To be honest, I don't really care for the games made on AAA budget.

For past two years I have mostly played FTL, Shadowrun Returns, Transistor and Heartstone.

Two of those were made mostly on kick-starter money. Rest of them are far from AAA budgets :-)

When mr. Kojima leaves Konami and decides to create a small, tightly budgeted stealth game, I might give it a shot.

Great article. I remember going out and buying a PS2 the day FF 10 part 2 came out. (I had played all of them up to this point, just didn't have my own PS2)

That was the biggest piece of shit. They took some of the original places in 10, and added shitty boring minigames to do. That was the entire game. Oh, i guess the girls could all change into different swimsuits or something, but the plot was they were going to be rock star girls or something.

Final Fantasy took a nose dive right after 10 imo.

I am not sure that I agree with the article that the age of the video game auteur is over. There are so many shifting elements in video gaming that it seems like it is hard to tell what will emerge. I imagine that, no matter what platforms exist, just like in the music and movie industries, a singular individual vision will always work its way to the top.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com