Shigeru Miyamoto x Shigesato Itoi (1989) - shmuplations.com
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This lengthy interview captures a high-level meeting of the minds between Shigesato Itoi, Shigeru Miyamoto, and author Seiko Itou.

This lengthy interview, originally published in Gamer Handbook, captures a high-level meeting of the minds between Shigesato Itoi, Shigeru Miyamoto, and author Seikou Itou. Conducted a few months after the release of the original MOTHER, the conversation quickly turns to philosophical (and comical) musings about realism, creative exhaustion, the moral panic over kids and gaming, and Miyamoto’s visionary notions of how gameplay will evolve in the future.

  • slimerancher@lemmy.worldMEnglish
    6·
    2 months ago

    There are lots of interesting bits. Somethings that didn’t age too well, for instance, these comments about voice acting in games:

    Itou: It’s about how weird you can get. Realistic sounds are just boring, you know?

    Itoi: On the PC Engine CD-ROM, the games use actual human voices, but it’s really lame.

    Itou: It ruins the immersion. You lose the ability to project yourself into the character because you’re forced to hear this other distinct voice.

    Itoi: Imagine if the Flying Men’s lines in MOTHER were read by a human voice… wouldn’t that be awful?

    Itou: That’d be terrible. Everyone is already reading those lines in their own heads, giving him their own version of a frail, delicate voice.

    Miyamoto: In my head, I don’t picture most game characters as Japanese. The protagonist always has blue eyes, right?

    But then there are lots of other interesting discussions of how the games will evolve when they don’t have to worry about the memory etc, and games where you don’t have a goal, how to keep people engaged in such a game. One example for a new game genre / design:

    Miyamoto: I think there are still plenty of possibilities in game design. For instance, imagine a game where you input something, and when you check back a month later, it’s transformed into something totally unexpected. We don’t have anything like that, do we?

    Or, take how people living in apartments today can’t keep pets. If someone who was obsessed with the joy of having a pet made a game that captured that feeling, I think it would become a huge craze. And since it’s a simulation, you could even include the “unfortunate” parts, like the pet eventually passing away, as part of the experience.