Let the Games Begin
Successful and well-loved game creators are defined as “anyone who contributes to the creative or technical development process of a game. This can include but is not limited to: artists, sound engineers, composers, programmers, planners, designers and producers” are rare or so I read somewhere recently.
They’re not if IGN’s Top Game Creators list is anything to go by. For those hardcore video gamers who wonder which ignorant-rock I just crawled out from under I ask that you bear with me. Gaming doesn’t come naturally to me, I’m decidedly unco and always a slow starter but I come into my own through sheer pig-headedness to master a thing.
IGN Ultimate Game Creators
At the top of IGN’s creation tree of ultimate game creators is Shigeru Miyamoto, a Japanese video game designer and producer who has been called the ‘father of modern video games’ and ‘the Walt Disney of electronic gaming’. His name, in fact he himself is probably less well known (unless you happen to be in the Industry) than the games he helped create or created.
Shigeru Miyamoto
He’s the man who brought the gaming world: Donkey Kong (1981), Super Mario Bros (1985), The Legend of Zelda (1987), Star Fox (1993), Super Mario 64 (1996), The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998), Pikmin (2001) The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2006), Super Mario Galaxy (2007) Star Fox and F-Zero franchises and games such as Nintendogs and Wii Music.”
Me, I’m just your average blog writer so I tend to wear rose-tinted horn-rims that focus in sharply on writers though like everyone else, I can be impressed by the whole graphics wizardry. It can be sublime. In a very short space of time I’ve been bowled over by the work of Kazushige Nojima. Like I said, I’m a slow starter!
“His work as a game scenario writer for series like Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts is among some of the best-loved in all of video game fandom. He worked for Final Fantasy developer Square Enix until 2003 after which time he left to become a freelance game scenario writer and founded his own company, Stellavista.
These days, he’s still working on big-name projects, including games for Square Enix and, recently, the Nintendo fan hit Smash Bros. Brawl, as well as penning the scenario for the upcoming Final Fantasy XIII” due out in the States in April 2010.
Nojima
Nojima’s work on “Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts games is widely acknowledged as having helped produce some of the most classic, most long-lasting series in video game culture but what makes them unique is the complexity and emotional nature of the narrative and character threads that can be traced from game to game, and the scenarios that bring players back.
Gamasutra’s Features Director, Christian Nutt said, “though Nojima’s stories often become overly convoluted, they always have a functioning internal logic that sees them through and, of course, he’s responsible for giving a personality to some of the most iconic characters in gaming.”
Nowadays, with the advent of viral recruitment (I keep farms with Zynga’s Farm Town and Farmville where since June 19 when it was launched FarmVille has reportedly gained over 1 million new players per week) amassing large numbers of users is becoming rather common place. Farmville currently has more than 11 million daily active users.
That’s as many players as FarmVille lead designer Mark Skaggs reached with his work over his entire career with Electronic Arts where he designed successful strategy games like Command & Conquer and The Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth. The story line in both FarmVille and Farm Town is simple: plant, water, grow and harvest the seed.
I take my horn-rims off to Nojima because as one ‘quite new’ to gaming though a little longer in the tooth than your average gamer these days I still hold to the premise that good and great writing is still a recipe for success whether writing for video-gaming, fiction or non fiction, for web/comics, cartoons, animation or screen. People still (even for a moment) want to be delivered out from the dailyness of their lives. Good and great writing is obliging in that way. It delivers us.
