that's my paper from the class Intro to the Game Industry. it's a bio of a game designer. Actually, the term my teacher used was 'game god'. which sounds dorky. Though they are like gods.
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
"How High can You Go?": the Games of Shigeru Miyamoto
Shigeru Miyamoto is the designer of many of the world's most popular games. Games that started genres all their own. Games like Donkey Kong. Super Mario Bros. Mario 64. The Legend of Zelda.He rides his bike to work every day and plays acoustic guitar and banjo for fun. Who is this guy?
To begin at the beginning, he was born in 1952 in Sonebe, a rural village near Kyoto, Japan. Not having any video games, young Shigeru grew up running, playing and exploring in the fields and forests outside his house.
"And whenever we are making this kind of thing, what we always keep in mind is 'what was important for us when we were children'? What was fun then? That is the core of many of my games."
He did programming, art, and music on his first game for Nintendo, Donkey Kong. Not really that uncommon at the time, games being as small as they were. Donkey Kong is a game structured like a story- a goal, a protagonist, an antagonist, and obstacles to that goal. In 1980, Nintendo of America had released an arcade game called Radarscope, which was a flop. And so they had all these arcade consoles they didn't know what to do with. Young Miyamoto, with his freshly minted degree in industrial design, was assigned to make a game on the existing hardware. He consulted with Nintendo's engineers to figure out the hardware, but as mentioned before, he did everything himself. The results made video game history. Interesting that his first game was intended for the American market, with a villian modeled on an American movie(Kong), and an Italian carpenter (Jumpman, later renamed Mario (and retrained as a plumber)after the landlord at Nintendo's American headquarters).
"For me, game creation is like expression through music. When I am working as a director on a game, while I always try to hit upon new plots, I place great importance on the tempo of the game and the sound effects. I feel that those directors who have been able to incorporate rhythm and emotional stimuli in their games have been successful."
Super Mario Bros. was the first game franchise. Not a sequel, but an entirely different game from Donkey Kong, using the same player character- Mario. It was the first side-scrolling, platform-jumping game. It was much copied, so much that it became its own genre. It was also specifically made for the home system, the Nintendo Entertainment System(NES). It had long levels and many more of them, as well as the elements of exploration, discovery, and breaking of boundaries. It was meant to give much more play time than an arcade game, where time is money. I don't need to say that it was wildly successful.
"but of course, with the evolution of the technology, the graphics will get even better, clearer, and yet that's not the only cause we should aim for. Rather, we should put more emphasis on the ideas-- new ideas-- unprecedented, unique ideas. Ideas that aren't connected to the available technology. I would like to encourage everybody to think that way, otherwise we will not find a new way to further explorer and adventure in this unprecedented media called video games."
Miyamoto again defined where the industry was to go with Super Mario 64, the first Mario game in 3-D. Controlling a character in a 3-D world was entirely novel, and the techniques used to control Mario were easy to learn, yet had depth and complexity to them. I've noticed that no two people control Mario alike. Simply going from place to place in the world is fun and expressive. Every 3-D action game since takes at least some paradigms from Mario 64, but no game since has duplicated the sheer fun and complexity-in-simplicity of this pioneering title. It's still fun today.
How is he able to do it? How does he make games that are both original and popular, games that transcend time? I don't know, but I'll close with a final Miyamoto quote that may shed some light:
" I have never created a game that has been of a level that I could be satisfied with."
To begin at the beginning, he was born in 1952 in Sonebe, a rural village near Kyoto, Japan. Not having any video games, young Shigeru grew up running, playing and exploring in the fields and forests outside his house.
"And whenever we are making this kind of thing, what we always keep in mind is 'what was important for us when we were children'? What was fun then? That is the core of many of my games."
He did programming, art, and music on his first game for Nintendo, Donkey Kong. Not really that uncommon at the time, games being as small as they were. Donkey Kong is a game structured like a story- a goal, a protagonist, an antagonist, and obstacles to that goal. In 1980, Nintendo of America had released an arcade game called Radarscope, which was a flop. And so they had all these arcade consoles they didn't know what to do with. Young Miyamoto, with his freshly minted degree in industrial design, was assigned to make a game on the existing hardware. He consulted with Nintendo's engineers to figure out the hardware, but as mentioned before, he did everything himself. The results made video game history. Interesting that his first game was intended for the American market, with a villian modeled on an American movie(Kong), and an Italian carpenter (Jumpman, later renamed Mario (and retrained as a plumber)after the landlord at Nintendo's American headquarters).
"For me, game creation is like expression through music. When I am working as a director on a game, while I always try to hit upon new plots, I place great importance on the tempo of the game and the sound effects. I feel that those directors who have been able to incorporate rhythm and emotional stimuli in their games have been successful."
Super Mario Bros. was the first game franchise. Not a sequel, but an entirely different game from Donkey Kong, using the same player character- Mario. It was the first side-scrolling, platform-jumping game. It was much copied, so much that it became its own genre. It was also specifically made for the home system, the Nintendo Entertainment System(NES). It had long levels and many more of them, as well as the elements of exploration, discovery, and breaking of boundaries. It was meant to give much more play time than an arcade game, where time is money. I don't need to say that it was wildly successful.
"but of course, with the evolution of the technology, the graphics will get even better, clearer, and yet that's not the only cause we should aim for. Rather, we should put more emphasis on the ideas-- new ideas-- unprecedented, unique ideas. Ideas that aren't connected to the available technology. I would like to encourage everybody to think that way, otherwise we will not find a new way to further explorer and adventure in this unprecedented media called video games."
Miyamoto again defined where the industry was to go with Super Mario 64, the first Mario game in 3-D. Controlling a character in a 3-D world was entirely novel, and the techniques used to control Mario were easy to learn, yet had depth and complexity to them. I've noticed that no two people control Mario alike. Simply going from place to place in the world is fun and expressive. Every 3-D action game since takes at least some paradigms from Mario 64, but no game since has duplicated the sheer fun and complexity-in-simplicity of this pioneering title. It's still fun today.
How is he able to do it? How does he make games that are both original and popular, games that transcend time? I don't know, but I'll close with a final Miyamoto quote that may shed some light:
" I have never created a game that has been of a level that I could be satisfied with."
Monday, August 16, 2004
gaming journalism sinks to a new low
sad.
if the guy had used the time he spent photoshopping his face onto one of the monsters to actually write an article, maybe we could have learned something about the game.
if the guy had used the time he spent photoshopping his face onto one of the monsters to actually write an article, maybe we could have learned something about the game.
Friday, August 13, 2004
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Saturday, August 07, 2004
game design class
we had a great assignment yesterday in my intro to game design class. it was to design a game for Pamela Anderson. Based on the intellectual (stretching the meaning of that word a little bit)property of Pamela Anderson, as it were.
it was a good assignment because it's real-world experience. Sometimes you have to work on things you don't like. it was based on an actual event. My teacher had to submit proposals for actual Pamela Anderson games to his company when she (the actress in question) was shopping around for something to spend money on. She thought a game might be cool. She eventually ended up going with Stan Lee's production company to make an animation called Stripperella. i haven't seen it, as i don't have cable and can't watch Spike, the station for men. cheez. Anyway, it might be cool. i gotta think she made the right choice, especially based on the concepts my teacher said they submitted to her.
Pamela Anderson Racing? What a horrible idea.
i hope my instructor doesn't read this.
Anyway, the class split into two groups, and we hashed out game proposals given the constraints of one year to release and low budget. The other team had a really cool concept of a sort of Hollywood RPG, where you come to the big city as a nobody and try to make it as an actress. Winning an Oscar was the goal. It had a real cynical edge to it- you could get parts by sleeping with producers and you had to choose your clothes carefully to keep people interested in you and your fame meter up. They didn't really seem to have an idea of what the gameplay itself would consist of.
i'll tell you what our team did next time. i have to shut down this machine because the printer is going wonky. thing's got a mind of its own. fucking haunted printer.
it was a good assignment because it's real-world experience. Sometimes you have to work on things you don't like. it was based on an actual event. My teacher had to submit proposals for actual Pamela Anderson games to his company when she (the actress in question) was shopping around for something to spend money on. She thought a game might be cool. She eventually ended up going with Stan Lee's production company to make an animation called Stripperella. i haven't seen it, as i don't have cable and can't watch Spike, the station for men. cheez. Anyway, it might be cool. i gotta think she made the right choice, especially based on the concepts my teacher said they submitted to her.
Pamela Anderson Racing? What a horrible idea.
i hope my instructor doesn't read this.
Anyway, the class split into two groups, and we hashed out game proposals given the constraints of one year to release and low budget. The other team had a really cool concept of a sort of Hollywood RPG, where you come to the big city as a nobody and try to make it as an actress. Winning an Oscar was the goal. It had a real cynical edge to it- you could get parts by sleeping with producers and you had to choose your clothes carefully to keep people interested in you and your fame meter up. They didn't really seem to have an idea of what the gameplay itself would consist of.
i'll tell you what our team did next time. i have to shut down this machine because the printer is going wonky. thing's got a mind of its own. fucking haunted printer.
Friday, August 06, 2004
doom3
i am now downloading other special drivers to make doom3 run better. there's no denying it. They've got me.
doom3
um, it's pretty good.
yeah, pretty, um, pretty good...whew
i've been playing it a lot and thnking about it more. Always a sign of a good game. And there's some clever things they do to get information to you, the player. And the more information you get, the deeper the story becomes. which is a wierd thing to say about an id game. I mean, id, right?
i especially like reading people's PDA's, reading through their email. especially knowing that they're the corpse in the room or the zombie you just killed. It's a wierd feeling.
but i especially wanted to talk to you about the graphics. Okay, i'm an artist, so that's my thing, so i'll devote a special post to the graphics.
yeah, pretty, um, pretty good...whew
i've been playing it a lot and thnking about it more. Always a sign of a good game. And there's some clever things they do to get information to you, the player. And the more information you get, the deeper the story becomes. which is a wierd thing to say about an id game. I mean, id, right?
i especially like reading people's PDA's, reading through their email. especially knowing that they're the corpse in the room or the zombie you just killed. It's a wierd feeling.
but i especially wanted to talk to you about the graphics. Okay, i'm an artist, so that's my thing, so i'll devote a special post to the graphics.
Thursday, August 05, 2004
Wednesday, August 04, 2004
i saw one of the programmer's secrets!
i'm so excited! In a popup window that appeared when it was auto-restarting my computer.
The name of the popup box was 'should not see me'.
neat. i saw something i shouldn't
The name of the popup box was 'should not see me'.
neat. i saw something i shouldn't
I could be killing zombies right now. instead i'm just killing time.
Hey, DOOM3! i'm all excited about DOOM3! Gonna get to play DOOM3! Hey, DOOM3!s been announced, it's coming out soon! Oh boy, DOOM3! coming out soon, coming out next week, coming out today! Oh boy, DOOM3! Hey, i got DOOM3! i'm taking it home, i'm reading the box! 'Disturbingly lifelike' it says. Oh boy, DOOM3! Hey, i'm installing DOOM3!Hey, it takes up two gigs. All right,DOOM3! is finally installed, hey i'm running through the menus in DOOM3! Let's play! let's play DOOM3!
...hey, there's my desktop...
why doesn't it work? guess i gotta find out why.
and i can do it, that's not the fucking point. i shouldn't have to do it. i really think this is why console games are so much bigger than PCs and probably always will be: There's a certain class of people who are willing to put up with that shit, hell, some even like it-it's like you have to 'prove yourself worthy' to play, kind of like a sensei, but, most people,they just aren't.
like DVD players. Simple controls. Simple. and they work every time.
(58% of file 1 (of 3)) downloaded)
...hey, there's my desktop...
why doesn't it work? guess i gotta find out why.
and i can do it, that's not the fucking point. i shouldn't have to do it. i really think this is why console games are so much bigger than PCs and probably always will be: There's a certain class of people who are willing to put up with that shit, hell, some even like it-it's like you have to 'prove yourself worthy' to play, kind of like a sensei, but, most people,they just aren't.
like DVD players. Simple controls. Simple. and they work every time.
(58% of file 1 (of 3)) downloaded)
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