Miyamoto Said Casual Gamers Are Pathetic. Or Did He?

[The Legendary Zoltan]

EDIT: I'm having second thoughts about how correct I am in this. There is room for debate about the translation though.

He didn't.

But the short of it is that the word was harshly mistranslated in his interview with Edge Magazine. Everyone else seems to be running with the "He called them pathetic!" scoop and I wanted to let you all know that it's not true.

Edited September 1, 2014 by The Legendary Zoltan

[Brandon Strader]

He said they are telepathic. Huge difference!

[Garrett Williamson]

whatever, they are kinda pathetic.

I'm really happy that Nintendo is aiming more for the hardcore gamers.

like I'm genuinely getting sick of the attempt to make games a thing everyone can do. Unless everyone wants to actually try, then no. Too many people don't care enough and that's kinda why some games are how they are nowadays, because they're aimed for everyone, including those who don't entirely care.

Of course, this scheme of trying to aim for everyone has a possibility of having a better outcome financially, but I couldn't care less. So I'm so glad that Nintendo is going to be trying to make games more toward legit gamers as they notice that the ones who don't entirely care can just get the "you-don't-entirely-care" games on iPads and iPhones and whatever else.

[JH Sounds]

There's something weirdly exclusionary about the idea of games being focused on "hardcore gamers" or "legit gamers". Generally films don't go about saying "this is for film-buffs only", nor novels "for the bookworm". I thought the whole idea of OCR was to appreciate something that a group of specific people like, and pushing that passion out to the larger audience. With games I think the goal should be not to pander to the wider audience, but to present the supposed "hardcore" games as just games that anyone can play.

[Brandon Strader]

Casual gamers clinging to their pitiful ways!

Zoltan, have you tried using AR Studio with your PS4 yet? You could make some pretty rad videos with that.

[shadowpsyc]

There's something weirdly exclusionary about the idea of games being focused on "hardcore gamers" or "legit gamers". Generally films don't go about saying "this is for film-buffs only", nor novels "for the bookworm". I thought the whole idea of OCR was to appreciate something that a group of specific people like, and pushing that passion out to the larger audience. With games I think the goal should be not to pander to the wider audience, but to present the supposed "hardcore" games as just games that anyone can play.

It might be exclusionary but it's reflexive of Nintendo's reality, they can't try to make the Wii happen again with what the market is now. There's nothing wrong with making something more tailored to a specific demographic, not everything can appeal to everyone even if it is attempted

That said I think marketing influencing the development of the product too much is usually a bad thing, I would hope for developers to simply try to make good games and worry about how to sell it afterward. If you consistently make good things people take notice of this, chasing the next trend constantly is hit or miss

Edited September 1, 2014 by shadowpsyc

[Brushfire]

This thread has a Buzzfeed style headline.

[Brandon Strader]

This thread has a Buzzfeed style headline.

Or does it?

[Bleck]

the concept of 'casual vs hardcore' is in itself pathetic

[Nabeel Ansari]

"legit gamers"

lol

[lazygecko]

Anyone with even a pinch of knowledge on how different Japanese/Asian languages are could probably figure out pretty quickly that something's been lost in translation here. Controversy-generating headlines are always going to outweigh common sense, though.

[Antonio Pizza]

the concept of 'casual vs hardcore' is in itself pathetic

Ditto that.

[Brandon Strader]

the concept of 'casual vs hardcore' is in itself pathetic

No it's not. If you knew a little about the Japanese game industry, you'd know most of the people responsible for making amazing JRPGs are now making poop-laden iOs games. Many of them are prioritizing this, too, for profits I assume. I'm not saying casual gamers are completely to blame for Final Fantasy XV not being out already or for there being no Lost Odyssey 2 or similar game from Mistwalker, but casual gamers are completely to blame for Final Fantasy XV not being out already or for there being no Lost Odyssey 2 or similar game from Mistwalker. The bigger problem is that you all don't buy games when they are new, so the sales margins on games are too low.

[Eino Keskitalo]

Yeah, damn those casual gamers for gaming. Keep your dirrrty hands off my hobby. How dare you make up a market for game companies.

But yeah, support the stuff you want to see by buying it, definitely. If I wanted to blame something, how about the ever-increasing demand for production values, eye candy and technological progress and the upward-spiraling budgets that come with that? I personally happen to like that "retro" stuff & gameplay focusing game developers, which doesn't demand so much money thrown at production values. In my areas of interest there seems to be just more and more killer stuff coming out all the time.

[Nabeel Ansari]

No it's not. If you knew a little about the Japanese game industry, you'd know most of the people responsible for making amazing JRPGs are now making poop-laden iOs games. Many of them are prioritizing this, too, for profits I assume. I'm not saying casual gamers are completely to blame for Final Fantasy XV not being out already or for there being no Lost Odyssey 2 or similar game from Mistwalker, but casual gamers are completely to blame for Final Fantasy XV not being out already or for there being no Lost Odyssey 2 or similar game from Mistwalker. The bigger problem is that you all don't buy games when they are new, so the sales margins on games are too low.

This isn't really a problem since we don't need new JRPG's. The genre is as saturated as FPS games.

[The Legendary Zoltan]

I agree with Brandon Strader.

[Thalzon]

No it's not. If you knew a little about the Japanese game industry, you'd know most of the people responsible for making amazing JRPGs are now making poop-laden iOs games. Many of them are prioritizing this, too, for profits I assume. I'm not saying casual gamers are completely to blame for Final Fantasy XV not being out already or for there being no Lost Odyssey 2 or similar game from Mistwalker, but casual gamers are completely to blame for Final Fantasy XV not being out already or for there being no Lost Odyssey 2 or similar game from Mistwalker. The bigger problem is that you all don't buy games when they are new, so the sales margins on games are too low.

I try to support devs whose games I like/am excited for, but we can't deny that game budgets have become ludicrously bloated, leaving no room for failure. If developers want higher margins, then they need to step back a little from the "bleeding edge" as it were.

On the other hand, there is clear and present pressure for consoles to perform... Something they, uh, aren't doing lately. Modern consoles by and large are gimped PCs with the most minor of graphical leaps over the previous generation, and what's worse is most games for them are also coming to PC anyway, so consoles are even more marginalized. The result is consoles are an unhappy medium between the cheap, low-cost production of mobile devices and the raw power available through PCs.

So what this means is, in the context of the thread topic, that Miyamoto and Nintendo in general saw the writing on the wall back in 2005 or so. There was no way for them to compete on power -- they tried with the GameCube -- so they swung the other way in an attempt to expand their market.

But that's not all -- they were also attempting to lure in this big casual market, in the hopes they'd buy their more traditional offerings. NSMB was and always has been an attempt to rope in the casual market for stuff like Mario Galaxy. By making the controls dependent on motion rather than arbitrary buttons, they hoped people would push a little further and seek out something more challenging.

That didn't happen. Casuals bought the Wii, played Wii Sports, played Wii Fit, and then left it at that. Obviously this frustrated Miyamoto because he spent a lot of time and effort trying to bridge this gap. Now, for all his attempts, he's pretty much given up. He doesn't want to bother trying to please such a fickle market.

It means (hopefully) good things for us, but still, I can't help but feel bad for them. They put up a lot of effort and now don't have much to show for it.

[Brandon Strader]

I agree Square-Enix could step back. If they made a game like FF9, at that quality, with cell-shaded graphics or even just painted graphics (think like Dragon's Crown but with 3D movement obviously) it would still be successful, probably moreso than FF15 will be. I look forward to FF15 though and I think the added graphical quality will be amazing. But I'd appreciate a new game like FF9 just as much. I think people embraced Bravely Default here despite it being handheld and having "dated" graphics because it's an amazing RPG and a return to classic Ps1 era FF RPGs.

I love JRPGs and FPS games, I think I'd prefer to have some JRPGs. I don't think it's overly saturated especially with there barely being any JRPGs in the last gen and very few coming to the PS4 at the moment. I have to broaden my gaming horizons to include series I wouldn't have previously played like Persona 5 and Ys. I'm starting to think even FF15 might not cure my JRPG itch because it's an action game. We'll have to wait and see.

But I can tell you one thing Deadmans Cross was poop. And Mistwalker's Terra Battle will probably be not particularly fun but I'm going to download it anyway because if they get 2 million downloads they're going to make a PS4 version, which will probably be an actual game instead of the phone version.