World of Guert

Recently I was talking with a friend about the New Super Mario Bros Wii title. It seems that this new opus of the legendary plumber caused quite a stir in my little world. My last blog post was about that particular game andpeople aroundme have diverging opinions about it. Some like it, some hate it, but all seem to agree that it’s not the best Mario created. One little detail to precise here: all those people are over 25 years old.  Of course, I wanted to know more about the development process behind NSMBWand found this interview on Nintendo’s Wii official website.  It seems that the great game designer Shigeru Miyamoto went into enormous lengths to make sure everyone could play and finish the game. He wanted to have a high difficulty level but didn’t want players to feel frustrated enough to quit. It reminded me of a BBC show I watched a few months ago. Charlie Brooker’s Gameswipe (links can be found at the bottom of this post) was a nice, entertaining overview of the world of modern video  games. During the show, the host as well as a guest player, mentions that video games are the only entertainment form where you must work to have the full content of what you bought. The entirety of the product you just acquired is locked by your own skills: if you can’t get past a level, you can never see what’s next.  Also, as a game designer, it’s been clear to me for years that the industry is doing all it can to look friendly and sweet to bring in new blood in order to broaden the market. The phenomenon of “hand-holding”, a design direction that  consists of giving tons of hints to the player as well as a multitude of tutorials for all actions available in the game, can be found in the majority of triple A titles, even those who are targeted at the seasoned players. Heck! The entire Wii console screams gentleness and passiveness to make sure all the members of the family can enjoy a good, clean, aseptic game environment. The numbers don’t lie: the Wii is the best selling console on the market. Still, something bothers me with this direction. Something doesn’t feel quite right.
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Yesterday, I wrote about how I felt when I went to the game store. I scratched the surface of a topic that irritates me a lot these days.  I mentioned that, when I go to a store, I end up feeling as if I’m not doing my job as a designer if I don’t play all the games I see. Am I doing my job even if I’m not playing the entire PS3/XboX360/Wii/DS/PSP/PC game catalogue? Just gazing at the amount of games available makes me wonder if it is even humanly possible to do so. So what am I suppose to do? 
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