Not too long ago I was speaking with a friend of mine who’s a game developer, responsible for creating some very big XBox/PS2/PC titles. I was telling him about my experiences with the Wii, and he blurted out in response “I’m not much of a Nintendo guy.” He could appreciate the platform from an intellectual standpoint, but it inspired little passion in him to develop new titles for the Wii first.
Cut to Chris Hecker’s now-infamous “The Wii is a piece of @#$%” rant at GDC, where he dismissed the platform as little more than “two GameCubes stuck together with duct tape.” Putting aside the obvious childishness of a profanity-laced tirade, his point was kind of interesting - that Nintendo’s focus on gaming as “fun” undercuts the continuous efforts by developers to make gaming an “art form.” (Come to think of it - and yes, I know it was supposed to be a “rant” - anybody who wants to be recognized as an “artist” doesn’t help their cause by saying a console “sucks a@#.” To his credit, he apologized the next day.)
In any case, it’s obvious that the Wii divides large swaths of the gaming community. Nintendo has the most loyal fan base around, but at the same time the gaming “elite” crinkle their collective noses at the very idea of developing titles for a platform with less graphic and CPU horsepower.
But, of course, there’s a massive contradiction in this POV. The chips and graphics engines powering today’s Wii only have less “oomph” compared to the other next-gen consoles. But not too many years ago, they would’ve been considered the technology gold standard. Were titles built to maximize the latest technology in 2001 incapable of being “art?” Or, to put it another way, when the next next-gen comes out in 2009/2010, do the best titles developed for today’s high-end platforms somehow get demoted from the status of “art?”
The obvious answer is “no.” That’s because “art” as it applies to gaming (or anything else, for that matter) isn’t merely about utilizing the shiniest and newest tools at your disposal to create richer environments, more subtle AI, more detailed worlds. It’s about creating something that connects with people at an emotional level. It’s about bringing new people into gaming and opening their eyes to the possibilities. When you’re doing all that, you’re building something that’s “fun,” too.
And, as we all know, great art withstands the test of time.
So some friendly advice to aesthetically ambitious game developers. When you see a quote like:
“The Wii has been a big hit in an Illinois retirement home, where the inmates are organizing Wii Bowling tournaments and showing up their grandkids.”
don’t recoil in abject horror. Embrace the Wii as a platform with its own rules, limitations - and surprises and opportunities. Great “art” can be developed anywhere, for any medium. And the happiest coincidence of all is that, now that the Wii is the world’s fastest-selling next-gen console, producing great games for the Wii - games that can ascend to the level of “art” - can make you lots more money, too.
And what’s not to love about that?
![[Valid Atom 1.0]](/valid-atom.png "Validate my Atom 1.0 feed"){kind=small}
