Super Mario - Jeff Ryan [107]
There will come a fourth era of video games, which I’ll dub the unified era. This will blend the motion era’s accessibility with the D-pad era’s commitment to epic story and clever refinements of genre conventions. Perhaps it’ll also mix in whatever is the new gaming trend as well: thought-controlled games, say. In TV this era would reflect a Hill Street Blues, which married the police procedural and the soap opera into a synthesis where viewers cared about both the cases being cracked and the personal lives of the officers on duty. In books it would be Oliver Twist, mixing up the bawdy fare of an ongoing narrative with shocking indictments against society’s mistreatment of children: entertainment and information. In the theater it’s Shakespeare, writing to noblemen and commoners using the same pen. In movies it would be none other than Citizen Kane, which merged the theater-perfected melodrama with a fleet of technical camera tricks that made clear this was no filmed teleplay but a motion picture.
The games of the unified era may not come around for another ten years: the societal obstacles are profound. But they will combine the addictiveness of D-pad era games with the accessibility of motion fare. Imagine a football simulation where your perspective doesn’t shift from player to player but focuses on just one person: the running back always trying to get open, the quarterback constantly racing the clock, the linebacker stopping an unstoppable force every single play. (For that matter, imagine giving a hoot about characters in a sports game.) Or a fighting game where the damage you take doesn’t easily heal, where every character is a limping, scarred map of stress points. Or a racing game where you care so much about the other players you watch online matches you’re not in, to root for favorite drivers.
These almost certainly aren’t going to be what the hit games of tomorrow are. I’m not a game designer, and perhaps it shows in these examples. But there are currently two warring tribes consuming video games, and there’s no reason for them to be at war. It will take a few years, some olive-branch releases on both sides, before casual players accept a game with a story, and core players accept an activity without a game. And the first few games that try to bridge these camps may crash and burn, like Nintendo’s 64DD.
But I would like to, cautiously, and with a book’s worth of evidence as backup, make a claim about who will be the designers of the unified era’s first blockbuster title. Shigeru Miyamoto, in one of his last great performances for Nintendo, will use the knowledge gleaned from his shuttle diplomacy missions between the core and casual camps. He’ll understand what lizard-brain types of game play appeal to both groups, and what sort of structure that foundation would best support. Satoru Iwata, continuing a tradition, will premiere another new console like the Wii and the 3DS that makes up for in innovation what it lacks in horsepower. Reggie Fils-Aime will continue to merge the roles of hype man and president, tailoring his sales pitch to what people want to buy, not to what he wants to sell.
Nintendo will need a hook for this new console, a specific game that couldn’t be played, or conceived, on any other platform, even with down-to-the-atom motion sensing or a Beowulf cluster of processing power. But they’ll already have their star lined up. Miyamoto and Iwata and Fils-Aime will call up Nintendo’s most famous character, propelling him once more unto the breach. Super Mario will be back. And he will be as big a star as ever, in this new game that will unite the great schism of gaming. It will take a few years, and maybe a few misfires, but the plumber will reclaim his throne.
THANKS, MARIO, BUT OUR NOTES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ARE IN ANOTHER