Topic: Satoru Iwata To Speak at GDC

[LassePalle]

Nintendo's president will share his thoughts on the industry at the 2005 Game Developers Conference.

NINTENDO CO., LTD. PRESIDENT SATORU IWATA TO KEYNOTE 2005 GAME DEVELOPERS CONFERENCE

Legendary Game Creator to Assess the Current State of Industry; Discuss Nintendo's Future Direction

San Francisco – Feb. 7, 2005 – Nintendo Co., Ltd. president, Satoru Iwata, will address the thousands of game professionals attending the 19th annual Game Developers Conference (GDC). GDC, the world's largest event exclusively devoted to the art of game creation, will take place Monday through Friday, March 7-11 in San Francisco.

In the Nintendo keynote, entitled "The Heart of a Gamer," Iwata will assess where the games business stands today, predict how it will develop over the next several years, and the manner in which it will help decide future Nintendo hardware and software development.

Iwata will also discuss the strategic thinking behind the development of the wildly popular Nintendo DS - touching on how designing games based on understanding gamers' emotional reactions to interactive gameplay will play a major role in Nintendo's future plans.

"Satoru Iwata is a global icon in the game industry and we are honored to have him share his knowledge and experience with the entire game community," said Jamil Moledina, director, Game Developers Conference. "The GDC strives to deliver the best the industry has to offer and Mr. Iwata certainly brings us to that level."

Iwata is a unique executive within the games business. His background is not finance, law, or marketing, but rather videogame creation. His game credits include the classic character Kirby, as well as the globally popular Earthbound and Super Smash Brothers series. In addition to heading one of the world's best-known entertainment companies, Iwata maintains a daily role in overseeing the development of games created by Nintendo and its creative partners.

The Heart of a Gamer keynote is scheduled for Thursday, March 10, from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. in the Grand Ballroom of Moscone West. The keynote is central to GDC's new Vision Track, which is designed to empower developers to anticipate the future of interactive entertainment.

The GDC will feature more than 300 lectures, panels, tutorials and roundtable discussions across seven content tracks. For a complete list of GDC 2005 event information visit www.gdconf.com.  President Satoru Iwata To Keynote 2005 Game Developers Conference.

[Bill Aurion]

Oh nice, just another reason to look forward to March for me...Hopefully he adds some tidbits about Ninty's future plans to change the gaming industry...

[Avinash_Tyagi]

I'm certain he will speak on Ninty's future, but will he say anything we have not heard before, is the real question.

[Bill Aurion]

And that's exactly what I'm hoping for... ^_^

[Ian Sane]

Share his thoughts on the industry huh?  I think we already know what he's going to say.

-The current model is broken.
-We can't just keep upgrading hardware specs.
-We need to introduce new types of gaming.
-We need to expand to non-gamers.
-Online is bad.

Nintendo pretty much gives their thoughts on the industry everytime they talk about the DS or the Revolution.  They think the current model is broken, no one else does because the industry keeps growing in America, etc.  I doubt we'll hear anything new until the Revolution is shown and that will be at E3 or some wacky independent Nintendo show.

[Avinash_Tyagi]

Well just because the industry is growing doesn't mean its not broken, remember prior to the first gaming crash(I say first because I believe another is coming) the industry was growing, then it collapsed

[Savior]

Ian Sane, Dont forget the GTA is a Dead End Street, Mario doesnt Kill hookers thing.  

[Avinash_Tyagi]

For me the violence of GTA turns me off, I don't mind the open ended thing but the whole random killing and stealing...meh, doesn't intrest me.

So Iwata not caring for GTA doesn't concern me, others may like it but that doesn't mean not including it is a bad thing

[Bill Aurion]

Quote
Originally posted by: Savior
Ian Sane, Dont forget the GTA is a Dead End Street, Mario doesnt Kill hookers thing.

Um, no...Miyamoto himself lauded the open-endedness of GTA...But yes, the violence is pointless...

[nickmitch]

We all know what he'll say but there's still a lot of truth to it besides there might be new things to be said and that could be something to look forward to.

[pyrokamileon]

I played the original GTA but what I didn't like about it was the controls and the unrealistic 2D over the the top Zelda view.  When they finally brought it into 3D and made it more real feeling I had basically lost interest because of the direction the series was headed: i.e. stuff like the whole killing hookers thing.  So, no, I've never played the newer GTA's but I really wonder what all this opened ended stuff everyone else is talking about.  Does that game really have something in it (besides the orientation to violence) that no other game has!?  I mean is that some way of saying that the game doesn't care what you do?  that it doesn't have missions, goals, objectives or whatever?  no other game has that?  therefore this game is the future of gaming because it does?

[Bill Aurion]

Yes, the game doesn't care about what you do, and that's its appeal...Though it's funny since the Zelda series has been doing that since its introduction...

[Jonnyboy117]

GTA is brilliant not for any one thing it does, but for how it does everything, and surprisingly well at that.  It's a milestone game because it condenses so many gameplay elements and makes them work together in one believable world.

[Famicom]

It's akin to OoT being my all time favorite game due to FISHING! Wheee, fond memories....

[Gamefreak]

Actually jonnyboy I can think of think GTA IS brilliant for what it does that no other games seem to do... Something it borrows from the Simspons. It's hilarious parody world that it creates through the environment, characters, and radio stations. The writing is so amazing in the GTA games... I mean they are just brilliant, and I love the inside jokes that carry through the series and seeing the characters at different points in their lives. You know I think the writing to the GTA games is probably better than any other game series. It's larger in scope than No One Lives Forever, hasn't managed to turn into a nonsensical anachronological mess like Metal Gear Solid, and is funnier than just about everything you can watch on TV or play on your consoles or computer.



And about Iwata... something tells me he isn't going to say anything of any use to us, and it's all going to be all that crap he always says, an hour of fluff and nonsense about an impending gaming apocalypse and how Nintendo will rise from the ashes with it's single button controller and usher a new era of game playing old grandpas and the return of gaming to the good old days before Sony and MS ruined gaming with pretty graphics, hard drives, the internet, and other such transgressions.


Bill, if Zelda didn't care what you did, you could chop up NPC's, kill chickens, and throw Epona into the fires of Mt. Doom from whence she came! Or Death Mtn., whatever it was. Anyway, am I the only one who doesn't think GTA is that violent? It's nowhere near as violent as Manhunt or something. Anyway, no one who plays GTA runs around randomly shooting people. It gets old quick and the police will just come kill you... As far as the missions go, unlike say Halo, where you do one thing (kill things), GTA is fun and varied and while there are plenty of missions where you have to kill someone there are just as much where you have to buy real estate, sell pizza, protect help a rock band diffuse a terrorist bomb from their limo, and so on. Take one mission from Vice City. Once you buy the Kauffman Cab company you'll be competing with the big Taxi company. After a bunch of missions dropping people off in your cab the rival company will dispatch a sqaud of Taxis to assassinate you. You get trapped in your cab in this little area in the airport with 20 taxis chasing you and you have to survice for a certain amount of time. It's pretty hilarious. Then the boss, a Tiger striped taxi comes in, and you must defeat it in one on one Taxi Combat.
I mean, that's pretty ridiculous stuff. There's nothing wrong with GTA and it's definatley not overly violent, and the game actively discourages violence. People take it way too seriously.

[Bill Aurion]

Bill, if Zelda didn't care what you did, you could chop up NPC's, kill chickens, and throw Epona into the fires of Mt. Doom from whence she came! Or Death Mtn., whatever it was. Anyway, am I the only one who doesn't think GTA is that violent?

Obviously I was talking about the open-ended aspect of Zelda, not the shallow violence that GTA includes...

[Savior]

Quote
? that it doesn't have missions, goals

It does, but your given the opportunity to simply ignore them.  Its not that violent if you make it non violent. When i played San Andreas all i did was go to the gym... and race cars.. not kill hookers.  The open endess of the game is very influential. Just look at Spiderman 2 the game, its extremely influenced by GTA.  

[Djunknown]

Quote
-Online is bad.

He won't have that argument anymore, I remember it was you Ian, where you had a thread talking about how Square Enix was profitable with Online gaming. MS brags time and time again about its 1.4 million users on Live. Unless he's in a corporate bubble or simply in denial, he probably should just skirt the issue.

The rest of the bullets are on point. Same old song and dance. Remember last year they teased with Wind Waker 2 in the Zelda timeline, only to surprise the world at E3, so I wouldn't expect any Segat0ns....

[KDR_11k]

Square isn't profitable with standard online, they're profitable with MMO. Different business model.

What I think people like about GTA is how it doesn't have any real consequences. You kill a few people, die, respawn. You get arrested, you respawn. Games like X with full consequences (blow up a few ships and you're permanently marked as hostile by that faction, build a new factory and screw up the economy in a sector, blast a factory and see the whole economy react, etc) flop. In X you couldn't drive around with a huge ship killing everything because then everything would be out to kill you and you'd have a large-scale war on the other side. In GTA you can do that and don't have to worry about being an outlaw for the rest of the game.

[nemo_83]

The title of the speech makes me happy that they have the gamers in mind.  The heart of the gamer is what the gamer wants to do in the virtual world that the gamer cannot do in this world.  For me that includes several things that start with a solid game design like any Zelda game with interesting quests and fantasy world with great physics and responsive controls (GTA has terrible controls and boring missions).  Once beyond meeting standards one must them implement into a game the things that will seperate that game from others.  Things I want to do in games include being able to box in Punch Out or swing a sword in Zelda.  I want a game with similarly simple controls and game design to Mario or Zelda but with action focused on the freedom to fly, not just glide or float, rather than running everywhere or riding an animal, boat, or car.

GTA does let you be a bad guy, something you can't be in Zelda, and the world reacts appropriately to you being a bad guy by sending cops.  In Zelda if you choped off an old lady's head in front of people would you need to kill the witnesses so to preserve your hero status or suffer for the rest of the game from the spread of your new reputation and constant harrasing from other "good guys."  I kill people in GTA in order to get the cops to come after me so I can do things like make a stand or just see how long I can escape capture.  I also like to invent my own minigames/quests in GTA like stand on the back of a truck sniping civilians in their cars while I ride down the road; or jerk people out of their cars just to kill them or let them go according to whether they whimp out or not.  Some games let you do detailed things like beat someone with someone elses decapitated head, but lack the backbone of game design to make it fun.  What is fun is not the violence in GTA but the ability to cut loose to do things like search for stunts to perform or follow the law and stop at the red light.  

[xts3]

Personally I really have to wonder if some people in this generation of gamers is totally fad driven.  I agree about that the next generation of console gaming is going to get interesting thats for sure, I really an leary about the next generation because so many companies are rehashing and milking games to death without focusing on the fun.  

[pyrokamileon]

ok, so say i'm sold on the GTA thing, which game would you recommend?  I mean I doubt Nintendo will come out with something quite like that (although some sort of Zelda version would be sweet).  and I know there's a simpsons version as well...