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Miyamoto “Concerned” with Videogame Violence
Shigeru Miyamoto has voiced his concerns with how some game developers focus on using excessive videogame violence.
In an interview with Channel 4 during his visit to
The renowned Nintendo creative director, one of only a handful of game developers who have been inducted as a Chevalier into the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, added: "I believe that here are more ways of grabbing players' attention than violence alone."
Miyamoto also called for parental responsibility. "I also hope that parents take advantage of age ratings when letting their children play," he said.
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Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court 30 Monmouth Street Bath, UK BA1 2BW
England and Wales company registration number 2008885
I think a lot of people are reading more into what Miyamoto said than what he actually said, and to be fair the headline on this article doesn't help. If you read the full quote he is "concerned that many developers focus just on excessive violence in order to stimulate people's minds." That's not speaking out against the use of violence in videogames, more the over-reliance on violence as a central tool for exciting and engaging the player, and he's not necessarily wrong.
@ Rider_on_the_Storm: Whilst age ratings may be ignored by parents, that doesn't mean we shouldn't write them off as useless, we should continue to use them and try to educate parents about what they mean and why certain games aren't always suitable for a younger audience.
Excessive violence according to whom? Who's gonna determine what is excessive? Shame on you, Miyamoto.
This is true, there are more ways to attract people than with violence.... but then again..... wii music??? who honestly wants to play that? there are plenty of non-violent games that i love to play. I have BK: Nuts and bolts on pre-order and can't wait! Then again I have gears 2 and Fallout 3 on pre-order as well. I personally have the hopes for more adult/mature story lines to accompany that violence. I don't buy games for the violence. A great example of a non-violent adult game is Evil Twin (dreamcast, never released in the US..only in Europe... worth importing though). Great game, very dark game, dark humor, adult oriented jokes, etc.... it played like a mario 64 type game though. The only weapon you had was a slingshot.... oh yeah, and you could throw pies at people.
Miyamoto is “Concerned” with Videogame Violence, yet there is a huge Left 4 Dead advert (at the time of writing) on the right hand side of this page. lol
When did Nintendo buy Edge Online?
I love to fish, what can I say, never played zelda... At that time in my life I was traveling around the the USA in a 73 Nova trying to find myself.
There are more ways to stimulate, and they don't have to look like cartoons either.
If my grandbaby finds my dirty mags, it's because I didn't take the time to put them away. But the picture of the babe in the bathing suit holding a fishing rod, stays up.
Haha, what's up with you and fishing? Were you one of the people that fished a lot in Zelda?
I respect everyone's opinion in this matter, I do. But I have to point out one glaring problem with this. Violence is nothing new in entertainment mediums. And is it really a surprise that some games use violence as a selling point? I'm actually surprised that nudity and language aren't more excessively used in games. Not that that is what I want, I'm fine with that either way. But movies have been using violence and nudity as marketing tools forever. There is an obvious market for that kind of stuff. You notice most movies now come out with an "unrated" version on DVD because that makes people feel like there will be more of what they want in there whether its violence, blood, language, nudity, etc. There's a gazillion movies out there that basically say, "Hey, this movie is about blood, guts, nudity, and we're not going to pretend to be something more than that, so enjoy what you see." Why is it such a big deal when video games do that? And I hate it when people say this, but I'm going to say it myself, if you don't like games like those don't buy them, if no one buys them, they'll stop making them.
MPAA rates movies and anything above an R in theatres is considered dead (like AO rated video games) but once those movies hit DVD, having the movie be so bad that it doesn't even classify for a rating (at least that's how they want it to sound) is a marketing tool. So, that just shows that a lot of people don't want to be seen in public liking certain things, but once in the comfort of their own home, they'll eat that shit up. People are hypocrites when it comes to that kind of thing, they don't want to be judged for actually liking (gasp!) nudity.
Games like Gears have great graphics, decent game play, but I'm sorry, they used violence and blood as a marketing tool just like everyone else does. I mean, chain sawing people in half, now you can chain saw them from their "taint" up? Maybe the game is about war so it falls into the context of the game, but that doesn't mean they don't get carried away. Halo 3 is about war, but you can't even decapitate people in that game with a huge energy sword, and there's hardly any blood in that game.
These things are here to stay, and everyone (especially us gamers) need to relax about the whole violence thing and stop making a big deal out of it or else we may find ourselves the only form of entertainment that censors itself (I didn't say rate, I said censor).
Of course Miyamoto will be the last to support violent games, but what he says makes sense to me. I don't think what he meant was to censor gaming violence -- but rather a concern that some developers simply focus on violence itself.
The GTA series is to me an excellent example of justified use of violence. The central theme of the games is criminality and thus without violence it would just be absurd. Also, the violence itself isn't just a marketing trick, as the game is in fact well-made.
Postal (yeah, I did go there), however, is one of those titles that just gives the industry a bad reputation. The game itself sucks, and the only reason it has been given so much publicity is because of its content. I will never understand how anyone could find the humor in Postal fun, but that's a whole different matter. My point is that a game like Postal just uses excessive violence to market itself.
If I am not completely wrong, this is what Miyamoto meant too. He is not for censoring violence, but rather worried that developers use it simply because it's a publicity-magnet. This not only brings down the quality of games, but it also attracts the attention of kids and such gives gaming bad reputation among parents and such. I'm not very conservative, but I still wouldn't want my kid to laugh at the humor in Postal, pissing on corpses or shoveling dogs to death -- and if it was my choice, I would rather see children play no games at all than Postal (which is probably how parents reason).
The debate as to where to draw a line between what's necessary violence and just obscene is a total different matter -- although Miyamoto's stand point in that is pretty obvious too.
When ir ead stories, like the one a few months back about a group of kids going out and....it was either shooting or bombing stuff, can't quite remember, and once apprehended, they said they wanted to see if it was as easy in real life as it is in GTAIV, I can't help but agree somewhat with him. Shouldn't get rid of ALL violence, but toning it down in certain titles wouldn't hurt society as a whole...same with movies and music too, not just games. But, that's just me.
Ozzy, Ozzy, Ozzy, you disappoint me. You're the last person I'd think would say something like that.
We can't blame video games/movies/music for people being idiots. Those people are already messed up to begin with; they are capable of doing dumb things before they touch a video game controller. To even consider that they were influenced enough by a video game to do that is just ludicrous. How many millions of people play video games and how many acts like these actually happen? And for someone really that wrong in the head, do they even have enough credibility to be believed that's why they did it in the first place? And this society (US) is so screwed up, liars, hypocrites, deceivers, selfish, greedy, etc that gory video games are the least of our worries.
We can't let this tiny fraction of idiots effect the games we can play, we can't enable them like that, as we shouldn't.
While i agree that retards like this are going to do stupid things regardless, maybe it's overly violent content in media that is giviing them ways to express their stupidity and, without them, they would be too dumb to do things like this without a "model to follow" so to speak. If we toned it down a bit, maybe they wouldn't do such overly stupid things.
But, the more I think about your point, these people are going to find something to be idiots over, whether it be in games, movies or even copying something they read or hear about in the news (assuming they're smart enough to read). So really, there'll NEVER be a way to get these people away from such stupid ideas, there'll always be something they'll latch on to, so why fight it? We can't win. I guess I just wish people could be entertained by something a little more "enriching" and "beneficial" to society then running over virtual hookers in virtual cars. *sigh* But, different strokes for different folks. Live and let live.
Good point. I'm sure people do learn at least more creative ways to commit crimes/murders from entertainment mediums. Sometimes I wonder how hijack movies or prison break movies affect actual criminals giving them new ideas on how to escape or hijack stuff? Or movies like saw, it takes a creative mind to come up with something so elaborate, and how easy would it be to just "borrow" those ideas for their own?
Yeah...you're right. I don't know why violence dominates (typically) in sales. From the time we're little kids watching the road runner and the Coyote, or tweedy bird and that cat, Tom and Jerry, there's always this violent theme that goes with it. There's this kind of obsession with violence, maybe it’s our nature as humans who knows. I think games like Portal are awesome in that they don't really contain violence per se. Or games like Braid or Ico (although I’ve never played Ico, I’ve read and heard enough about it to know love is one of the larger aspects of the game). Those games were amazing, games with beautiful art, music, and love as themes; we could use more games like those.
Yes, I'm totally shocked that Miyamoto is 'concerned' about violence. Of course he's going to squawk about violence...WiiMusic is on it's way, along with a boat load of more super-happy-make-a-friend-shovel-ware for the Nintendo.
I'm also equally shocked that he hopes 'that parents take advantage of age ratings when letting their children play" Golly-gee, if only there was a console that had games that whole family could play. Thanks Shiggy, we get it.
If only you could see the rest of the picture where Nintendo's marketing department are holding the strings...I imagine they are cackling and thinking up further atrocities while they make him dance.
Perhaps these games that feature "excessive violence" may be of some benefit to Miyamoto-san. When comparing his titles to these games, his would garner more favourable publicity in the widestream press.
I just think that if all games were 'family friendly', his titles wouldn't stand out so much.
People like Miyamoto should relax regarding videogames violence because as long as it's used in context with the rest of the game i.e. to support narrative, mission objectives, etc, then i personally don't see a problem. Anyway, it's not as if the industry is short of non-violent titles.
Regarding game/age ratings, personally i don't believe in them, they don't work and never will. To cut a long story short: When i was 11 years old (well over a decade ago, 'im now 30) i asked for the movies The Terminator and The Running Man for Chirstmas, my parents got me the movies (regardless of the 18 rating of the films) which i thought were excellent. My point is, it's all to do with how parents bring their kid/s up.
No age rating is going to have more influence than the parents themselves and that's a living fact!
"No age rating is going to have more influence than the parents themselves and that's a living fact!"
No it's not, it's opinion presented as fact, the fact would be that no age rating currently has more influence than the parents themselves.
You disagree with All Powerful Miyamoto? Blasphemy!