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Sakurai's Famitsu Column - Latest: "I don't need this, I don't need that."


Wraith

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So for a few years now Sakurai has been doing a bi weekly column in famitsu where he talks about pretty much anything involving games. From giving us insight on the development process and decision making in his games to just his musings on design decisions. These have been getting translated consistently by Source Gaming recently, and I always find them to be an interesting read. It's nice to get the designer's perspective on a lot of things.

Here's the latest one:

Many years ago, a certain game review organization awarded unnaturally high marks to a thoroughly unremarkable and uninterestingly simple puzzle game. It was the epitome of the demerit system: in other words, because the game had no extraneous features warranting demerits, it ended up earning a high score.

One could hardly call this the proper way to review a game. Suppose a convenience store stopped selling all beverages other than water. Even if we don’t like everything they have for sale, I think we’d all like to see some variety.

The rest: http://www.sourcegaming.info/2015/08/07/dont-need-this-dont-need-that-sakurais-famitsu-column-vol-485/

 

Thoughts on this? 

I feel like I need to remind myself to not get upset over extra content too often.  Fire Emblem Fates is kind of a special case because the face rubbing thing is just really questoinable, but I guess you don't really HAVE to use it.

 

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I still hate you for this.

Sakurai's point on extra features is kinda fucking perfect.:

[In response to skinship in Fire Emblem: Fates]

One such feature users commented on was the ability to invite your companions into your house and stroke their heads and faces to raise your affinity level. Basically, you bring them into your room—regardless of whether you’re married or not—and give them a rubdown. Even I chuckled to myself the first time I played: “What is this, Pokémon? Nintendogs!?” Some reviewers, however, went one step further and said, “We don’t need this!”

I’m not a big fan of dating sims myself, so I can’t say I don’t understand their disinterest to a certain extent. At the same time, however, the feature in question doesn’t have any impact on one’s ability to complete the game, so if it bothers you so much, then don’t use that feature.

95.gif 

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I'm normally with Sakurai on this but I'm sorry face rubbing is just far too questionable for me to accept it. It's pandering trash that shouldn't be in FE. 

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I would agree that the whole Fire Emblem Fates thing is more complicated than how Sakurai put it there, but he does have a point in that you can just play the game and never even bother with the feature. There's no punishment for NOT doing it. 

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I would agree that the whole Fire Emblem Fates thing is more complicated than how Sakurai put it there, but he does have a point in that you can just play the game and never even bother with the feature. There's no punishment for NOT doing it. 

Yeah I guess you can just ignore it, but it feels like the extension of FE's general shift to being more animu to sell copies to stay alive, which I'm not big on to begin with (Awakening was fine with it but then Fates comes along....). It's kind of annoying in that regard. 

Edited by Chaos Warp
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It seems to me that the real issue behind this disparity is the reviewing of short, simple games on the same scale as long and complex ones.  Sure, the short and simple ones have fewer things to get wrong - but we wouldn't want all games to be like that.  There's nothing wrong with long games, and there's nothing wrong with short games; to each their own.  Indeed, it can be a valid criticism that something was shorter than it could have been or longer than it could manage.  But are we really saying a ten out of ten for a mobile game is the same as a ten out of ten for a complex console game?

Additionally I think there's a big difference - or rather, there should be - between "this didn't work as well as intended" and "this shouldn't have been in the game at all."  You can dislike a feature but respect the reasons behind its inclusion... or, depending on the feature, you can feel contempt for those reasons as well.

There's definitely some debates on whether a feature added is useful or not. Sometimes, people may dislike a feature because it, justifiably, would've taken away from other elements in a game.

I think the main reasoning for this, of course, would be "Is the rest of the game fine without this?"

 

Under the condition that yes, the game is fine without this feature, I don't think there'd be nearly as much backlash than if there's a lot of missed potential in other parts of the game.

A huge example of this? In Sakurai's own game, Smash Tour.

 

Smash Tour... I've barely seen any people that actually like this mode. A lot of people would've probably preferred just having a Wii U version of Smash Run than the clusterf*** that is Smash Tour. Other parts of the game are also criticized, such as lack of single player modes, and some of the modes, like Classic Mode, simply not being all that enjoyable compared to past titles.

 

When a mode or feature in a game is seen in a way that could be "Well, if this stupid useless mode didn't exist, other parts of the game may have fared a lot better", I think that's a good example of when this argument has a valid point. I definitely don't think Sakurai's straight answer works in every scenario.

 

Speaking of the Ami thing, its again not a straight up example, as everyone here has already stated. The concern is with the overall feel of the game, and why the mode exists in the first place. You don't have to do it, but it does beg the question: "Why the f*** does this mode exist?!"

The game as a whole still looks great, but I do have to question their sanity when creating that mode...

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We do have to recognize that there's another factor at play here as well, that haunting "what could have been" lurking behind complaints to this effect. When people take issue with things like the Fire Emblem Amie thing, or the aforementioned Smash Tour, it's not just the feature itself that goes under fire, but the team gets raked on hot coals for spending that time developing said feature instead of... something. Sometimes this feature-that-might-have-been is something concrete and logical, whose absence in the game causes genuine problems (e.g. the time and money that went into Feature X could have gone into fixing a ton of bugs and errors that the game possesses). On the opposite end of things, we have a feature-that-might-have-been is so abstract and faraway that the critic is essentially manifesting problems for the game out of thin air (e.g. the time and money that went into Feature X could have been used to completely rewrite the ending to not be so dumb!). Usually, an issue of this type sits in-between these two poles, and the validity of the complaint can change depending on the nature, effort, and cost of the particular feature in question.

Let's take the Fire Emblem Amie thing, for example. The nature of the feature is for fanservice, and though it does indeed have its fans, a good number of people would consider the thing absurd or unsettling for any number of reasons. The nature of the feature, thus, is a valid point of contention. However, it's clear that (relatively) little effort or cost was devoted to the thing, and so Intelligent Systems wouldn't really be able to implement anything particularly substantial in its place. Thus, the argument that the feature could have been such-and-such is a rather nil one.

In conclusion, I should say that I agree with Sakurai. Though I'm one of those who finds themselves incredulous when it comes to the Fire Emblem Amie, it's ultimately a rather fruitless exercise to say that it could have been something else, as it's a superfluous use of superfluous money. Here we do have a case for "don't like, don't use."

 

But it's still friggin creepy.

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Yeah I do have mixed views on this.  I wish he had gone into more detail on "that's not how it works" when addressing the fact that game design does not work as "if this thing didn't exist, something else would", etc.  We're not talking extra bonuses like clone characters here, Smash Tour would have had detailed planning and programming behind it as a planned feature from early on, surely?

It's also a case of tone.  We can complain about Smash Tour but as a concept, yeah it fits.  Smash Bros is as much a party game as it is a Fighter, the basic concept of a board game mode to contextualise more gimmicky one-off fights makes perfect sense even if the execution was boring/frustrating/overly-complicated/luck-based.  Pokémon amie and Nintendogs, yeah petting characters on-screen makes sense since they're like real pets, which we also communicate with via simple vocalisations and touch.  But in what fresh hell do humans communicate with each other in the same way they'd communicate with a pet!?

 

So yeah it really depends on the game and feature really.  It IS also a case of personal bias in a way too.  You couldn't really critique the bonus missions in the Sonic Adventure games since they provide additional gameplay that doesn't deviate from the game's basic concepts.  But there is a certain sidegame feature in the Sonic Adventure games that Sonic fans would defend to the end of the earth despite it having nothing to do with the real Sonic gameplay really.

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Yeah I do have mixed views on this.  I wish he had gone into more detail on "that's not how it works" when addressing the fact that game design does not work as "if this thing didn't exist, something else would", etc.  We're not talking extra bonuses like clone characters here, Smash Tour would have had detailed planning and programming behind it as a planned feature from early on, surely?

It's also a case of tone.  We can complain about Smash Tour but as a concept, yeah it fits.  Smash Bros is as much a party game as it is a Fighter, the basic concept of a board game mode to contextualise more gimmicky one-off fights makes perfect sense even if the execution was boring/frustrating/overly-complicated/luck-based.  Pokémon amie and Nintendogs, yeah petting characters on-screen makes sense since they're like real pets, which we also communicate with via simple vocalisations and touch.  But in what fresh hell do humans communicate with each other in the same way they'd communicate with a pet!?

 

So yeah it really depends on the game and feature really.  It IS also a case of personal bias in a way too.  You couldn't really critique the bonus missions in the Sonic Adventure games since they provide additional gameplay that doesn't deviate from the game's basic concepts.  But there is a certain sidegame feature in the Sonic Adventure games that Sonic fans would defend to the end of the earth despite it having nothing to do with the real Sonic gameplay really.

That's why in my analysis, my critique was on Smash Run simply not being as good as other options. The way its handled is atrocious. I loved the idea of a Board Game Smash mode, I really did, but the execution... Random things happen causing random things happen that gives you random items which can help you get random characters, or lose random characters in such a random way that sucks out all the possible joy that could have happened.

Meanwhile, we could have gotten Smash Run instead, which really doesn't feel like a mode that -needs- to be 3DS exclusive (they could've gone with split screen on Wii U where you have a much larger screen), or we could've, say, gotten a better Classic Mode.

 

Obviously I don't think it could've given us more characters (maybe if they cut both Smash Run and Smash Tour, but then Smash 3DS has less game modes to deal with), but other game modes certainly could've used some improvement.

I agree with Sakurai's stance to an extent, but his statement doesn't really take into consideration the contexts of certain optional features and why people get annoyed with their inclusions.

 

As far as Chao Gardens are concerned, a lot of people enjoyed them, but many were pissed off at the fact that you HAD to raise chao to get all Emblems.

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I take issue with FE Amie being off-the-wall creepy. All of If gives me this vibe. There is a cutscene where you run face-first into some girl's boobs. The only gay options are legitimately horrible people. The fanservicey clothing for women is bizarrely out of place. Why does this game exist

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I would say it exists due to Japan being...well...Japan. Though I have to say it's certainly an incredibly weird thing to see in a Nintendo game; uncomfortable too.

Edited by Conando
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I see his point, but in regards to the Fire Emblem thing people can still knock on it. It's weird, out of place, forced and it panders to weird people. It's blown a bit out of proportion and it's optional, but it certainly doesn't make the franchise look good.   

I still hate you for this.

Sakurai's point on extra features is kinda fucking perfect.:

95.gif 

dwayne "the rock" Johnson would not sanction this weebery i just cannot believe this disrespect right now

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I think you also have to take into the account the nature of the extra content in any game. It's true most extra content is optional, it's also true it's probably a small little bonus thing that developers may have wanted people to appreciate, although there could still be people that dislike this feature, most don't defame the game for it as a whole. Now, what I mean by the nature of the extra content is that what kind of context it has beside the rest of the game. Is it some silly off-camera, non-canon type of thing where we see the characters act in ways they usually wouldn't? Is it some sort of minigame fest? Is it an extra side story from a new point of view that still goes with the main game?

Smash Tour is essentially the regular game but with extremely random battles and a game board plastered over it. Sure not many people like it, but it goes with the rest of the game in most ways. You're still smashing, you're still fighting on the same stages, you're using all of the roster, you're playing with items, equipment, and special rules (it just happens to be all randomized). It's still pretty much in line with the rest of the game, it just takes the RNG to the ultimate level.

 

Fire Emblem Fates isn't so clear-cut. It's presented as a unit coming into your private quarters as you requested of them, and then suddenly they are totally submissive to the prospect of you molesting their face. No matter if they're super kawaii desu girls or "manly" (as manly as any of the men in Fates can get anyway, but I digress) men. They get temporary boosted stats from this rubdown, which you may find helpful, but most would run scared from this kind of feature. The characters somewhat keep their personalities aside from well, what's happening to their faces. These sections are also voiced if I remember right, and if you stumbled upon this feature it's a seamless transition from the normal game to this, and it's almost nothing like the rest of the game in tone. (or I hope it isn't)

 

Both of these things are clearly optional extras in a game, and it's true you don't have to play either of them, but it's not a black and white kind of thing. Many people will take heed of any extra content because games are kind of an expensive hobby, most want more bang for their buck. But when things like Fates has extra content like that, as blown out of proportions it is, it does influence people's perception of the game. the rest of this game better be good oh my good god

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Luckily the Amie thing is only a optional thing that can be easily ignored, it's not required for Support grinding and stuff like that. In fact, all you get from max hearts in My Room is Toga outfits for Kamui/Corrin and their spouse, not really worth the effort unless your trying to get every clothing gear. But still, it is rather odd that IS added that in. I'd rather have the FE 9 & 10 Base conversations back personally.

Them My Room resources could've been better spent on something else.

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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinship#Skinship

According to Wikipedia, in Japan the skinship thing isn't inherently sexual. Take that as you will.

Except that skinship refers to hugging and being intimate with -someone you are in an intimate relationship with-, and not caressing random people's faces. I'm pretty sure the latter is, however, the international tradition for sexual harassment.

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Except that skinship refers to hugging and being intimate with -someone you are in an intimate relationship with-, and not caressing random people's faces. I'm pretty sure the latter is, however, the international tradition for sexual harassment.

If we're going into specifics, I could say that there already is a level of intimacy between Kamui and the other units, if they're willing to follow and trust him/her and risk their lives on the battlefield.

THAT, or Japan is just extremely weird which is more likely

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  • 1 month later...

Another one of these. It's not the latest one but apparantly these are only translated once they all come out in book format in "Volumes" 

http://www.sourcegaming.info/2015/09/18/cero-and-palutenas-censorship/

 

Sakurai: Precisely. Super Smash Bros. for Wii U almost didn’t make its scheduled release date because of ratings issues. We had to revise Palutena and Wonder Pink’s models over and over again.

Interviewer: All because you might be able to see up their skirts? Seriously?

Sakurai: We had Palutena wearing shorts and made the inside of Wonder Pink’s skirt too dark to see anything. Nevertheless, CERO told us the designs were “sexually provocative.” They were being ridiculous and frankly quite juvenile.

 

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