More Miyamoto

Nick Paumgarten at the New Yorker has written a quite extensive profile on Shigeru Miyamoto: Master of Play: The many worlds of a video-game artist.

Unlike most of the better-known game designers, Miyamoto doesn’t have a particular niche. His games have spanned many genres. He’s also been at the forefront of three major phases: the side-scrolling game; the free-roaming 3-D game, like Super Mario 64 and Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, to which Grand Theft Auto and its ilk owe their existence; and, with the Wii, the motion-capture game, now the prevailing paradigm. (Consider Kinect, the new Microsoft toy.) The only big shift he missed, perhaps, is the push toward hyperrealistic graphics.

“I recognize that there are certain types of games for which the photorealistic graphics are suited,” he said. “But what I don’t like is that any and all games are supposed to be photorealistic.” He prefers to direct his team’s efforts and resources toward the quality of the gameplay—the choices and challenges inherent in the game, also known as the game mechanics.

Oh, the profile also cites yours truly a few times and mentions the concept of “the pull” that I discussed in A Casual Revolution.

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