Shigeru Miyamoto – the creator of many of Nintendo’s most successful franchises and all-round lovable guy – recently delivered a keynote speech for the 2018 Computer Entertainment Developers Conference held in Yokohama, Japan. We actually covered the news not that long ago, but some new information regarding his speech has since come to light.
Alongside talk of smartphone gaming culture, praise towards Minecraft – which he apparently wishes he had created himself, and general words of wisdom, Miyamoto-san shared his thoughts on the genre of MMORPGs. If you’re unfamiliar, massively multiplayer online role-playing games – to give them their full title – take an awful lot of work to develop and maintain. Titles such as World of Warcraft – which now has over 100 million user accounts attached to it – need constant monitoring, updates, and more to stay relevant as the game continues to evolve online.
Here’s a snippet of what he had to say:
“A few years ago, when MMORPGs were coming into fashion, I didn’t want to make one. Since I get tired of things easily, I don’t want to keep making one game.”
He went on to explain that, while the free-to-play business model is something that he’s not particularly keen on – and would put him off creating an MMORPG regardless – it’s actually his personal working style that causes the bigger issue. He said that once a game has been developed, he wants to instantly move on to the next project rather than being stuck on the same title; having to push out new updates and keep on top of maintenance doesn’t suit his personality.
So there you have it – if you were hoping for a new, Miyamoto-created take on the MMORPG genre, you’re probably out of luck. Still, the Nintendo legend has mastered so many other genres in his lifetime that we can definitely let him off on this one.