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RK: A couple of points here. One, I think the industry is sucky at writing. There are some shining exceptions, don't get me wrong. But on the whole, our average is pretty low. The other thing that stands out for me is that games so, so, so aren't about writing and so, so, so aren't about story. The more we make them like they are, the more vulnerable we are to Hollywood, because that's what they do for a living, and they're very good at it --whereas we're lousy at it. It's not playing to our strengths. Games are not content. Games are systems that content gets put into. Still, we keep insisting on making these tiny simplistic little systems and spending massively on content. Well, that's a bad recipe for a couple of reasons. One, we're not all that good at it; other people can do that kind of content better. Two is that’s exactly the kind of thing that is dropping in value, the content. There are more and more sources of content, and they're all free. Why are we putting our expertise there, when we should be putting it where we're weak? How about your sensibility as a writer? Has that impacted your work on MMOs? RK: Sure it has, but in some ways it's like saying, “Hey, you're an architect. How does that change your guitar playing?” You're dealing with two completely different mediums. For whatever reason, the games that I make tend to be very systems-centric. I really enjoy writing quests and things like that, I just don't have time to do it. I used to do it more in the MUD days. What fiction there is in Ultima Online, I did a lot of that. I also think my background in writing carries through in my desire for greater emotional depth in the games. Games can cover a much broader thematic subject area, not just triumph and frustration.
As part of your panel presentation, you brought up the America’s current mass importation of culture from Asia–something of a reverse cultural colonialism. Does that apply to games as well? RK: To start with, there's the manga on bookshelves, there's cartoons on television, and frankly, yes, there's the games. We're seeing more and more come from Japanese culture. To have a generation of kids who grew up on Pokemon, that's a very different view than growing up on Bugs Bunny, a different framework, a different mind set. When you're talking about kids — like my kids are nine and ten -- easily half their cultural consumption comes from Asia. Even the stuff that seems like it's Western isn't anymore. As for why, some of it is just plain old globalization. Some of it is related to specific industry factors. Like in the comic book industry, things had grown incredibly small. They were in crisis, so suddenly there was this huge opening of the market and the explosion of manga. It came in with books aimed at girls. There was a vacuum that this rushed into. It also depends on the vibrancy of a given thing, and our cartoons and our comics and our games must have been at least somewhat "eh," otherwise we wouldn't have been getting such a massive influx of games from Asia. So is anything else grinding your gears right now? RK: For one, GDC got way too damn big. I'm serious. I mean big in every sense. It's odd how enormous it is, how E3 glitzy. To me, that's a little worrisome, because it means even more focus on giant media, giant graphics, just big. The whole world is moving to small, and here we are chasing big. It makes me go, “Hey, this industry is like this giant ship that isn't turning fast enough.” To me the themes of the conference were big vs. small, indie vs. established, innovative vs. same-old same-old. I think those are often the themes of the conference. There's a lot of that sort of vibe everywhere. I mean, they were turning people away at the door of the Three Rings presentation. It’s interesting when small studios like Three Rings are the ones that feel like they're driving the agenda. Meanwhile, even Miyamoto's keynote was about small and different. The big corporate announcements are the ones that people are like, “Did you see that?” “Yeah, okay, but oh, the password is ‘tentacular’ at the Three Rings party!” |
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