For years and years Miyamoto envisioned a video game that didn't require players to watch a television screen. This dream came to fruition with Wii Music, where participants can have fun by simply looking at one another during play. Miyamoto admits that some people have had difficulty classifying Wii Music because it lacks a clear cut objective. Miyamoto himself describes the game as "a music creation tool" that encourages players of all ages to express themselves.
However, Miyamoto worried about "the possibility that people will mistake [Wii Music] for being educational software or a way to teach music to children … neither of which is the case." In contrast, Miyamoto believes that music games have been successful because "music is one of those experiences that everyone can identify with and relate to."
In the future, Miyamoto believes that a greater number of games will utilize user-generated content. He pointed out that the Mii Channel and Wii Music are already giving gamers the opportunity to share the content that they've created. In development for the DSi is a piece of software that lets players create animations from their own sketches and photographs.
Since E3 2008, core gamers have worried that Nintendo is abandoning them. While Miyamoto expressed his desire to continue creating games to get broader audiences into the videogame experience, he also stated that a number of games for "loyal Nintendo fans" are in the works. "Those are the types of games that my career is based on," said Miyamoto, "and we're going to continue to make those types of games."
I like user created content in games. Level editors, create-a-wrestler, custom tracks. It's good stuff. Anyone ever play the PC game Stunts? I spent years designing tracks in that game.
Though I fear this will become too much of a game design fad and will get corrupted by greed. DLC is a pretty cool concept, eh? You can make new content for an older game so it keeps it fresh! But then you can also withhold content that is ready on release day and charge extra for it. You can charge for things gamers USED to get for free like difficulty levels. Or you can charge to merely unlock stuff already in the game. It's a good concept in theory but it's been corrupted by corporate greed.
User created content might suffer the same fate. Instead of going to all the trouble to make a full game why not just allow the users to create it for themselves? Hey, we just saved tons of money in game development but we get to charge you the same 60 bucks!
I'm sure as TYP pointed out Miyamoto isn't talking about anything outside of Nintendo's limited view. When we talk about user created content we're talking about stuff like Little Big Planet or Lode Runner. "User generated content" from Nintendo's perspective is likely not at all what we're thinking of. They live in their own world and if Wii Music is their idea of "user generated content" then I'm not only not on the same page as them but reading a different book. When I think of a "user generated content" in a music game I'm expecting the ability to create your own songs like (ironically) Mario Paint did way back when.
This is becoming somewhat of an industry fad and buzzword and Nintendo NEVER is on the ball with that sort of stuff. They may talk about something using a similar term but they never know what's going on unless they came up with the concept in the first place. They're either on the cutting edge or completely out-of-touch.
and "core game" as Animal Crossing, which... is umm... curious, much as I love the game.
They did not make that term up, it's defined in the disruption strategy, the core market is the old market that the competitors are in and that the disruptor is trying to pretty much destroy (as it is the territory of the incumbent) by slowly going upmarket and shrinking the core market while absorbing former core customers into the expanded market. It's people on the internet who made some arbitrary "hardcore" terminology up and then wonder why it doesn't match Nintendo's usage.
Yeah, this UGC push of LBP is funny since games with extensive UGC have been released before (e.g. Blastworks...). What's even more, people seem to only count games with very simple WYSIWYG editing tools built in for the UGC label but Doom and Quake had extensive UGC already and many modern PC games still do, it's just MORE user generated than the usual UGC that's pretty much pieced together from prefabs provided by the game developer. When I make UGC for Blastworks I have to use their layman-friendly editor with all its limitations, I have to obey the rules of the game, etc. When I make UGC for Spring I use software like Blender that is so much more advanced than the primitive editors you find in games it's not funny. When I don't like the rules of the game I write code and change them instead of trying to bend the rules by using some WYSIWYG elements connected together in a way that hackily circumvents the rules. Yeah, I know, most people can't handle the advanced tools but you only have to learn that once but you'll suffer from inadequate tools forever.
Should Nintendo make up words to describe things that already have names?
I'm not arguing that any one definition is right. I'm just trying to point out that when you're dealing with Nintendo, you have to check your assumptions about such terminology at the door. You can't afford to be lazy... which, really, is a good thing.
