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Sakurai on the nature of gaming and the industry

by nintendaan
10 October 2013
GN Version 4.0
Questions the industry at large
"Is there any industry that relies so much on reusing and reusing their old titles as much as video games? Compared to other media like movies, dramas, animation, novels and comics, the glut of franchises and remakes is at an unnatural level.''


The nature of gaming
''You have to learn the rules of a game before you can play, and that presents hurdles from the very start. That's why you have a generally unified approach to control methods between titles, and you can usually play one by taking what you already know and adding a feature or two to it -- X means jump, Square means attack, and so on."


On judging at Japan Game Awards, searching for creative spark
"Good games attract fans, and if you have fans, you have an advantage. You try to use that to make the title something bigger, but that doesn't mean it's okay to give up on innovation. Popular, well-made games deserve praise, but titles that have some kind of unique creative spark to them also need to be praised in this way. That's what the judges are trying to do here, and it won't work if it was just popular majority vote. That would lead to people just voting on names and past performances."