Topic: Nintendo is Lazy and Doesn't Care?

WaltzElf, you're a winner. I just thought you should know that
Why people complain that Nintendo chose two of the series' most popular characters (the toads) as side characters is beyond me. It's not lazy, it just makes sense. The toads have been in Mario games since the first Mario game. They show up as a playable character and people flip a crap.

This is one of the big reasons why the Zelda series has been so successful. In Zelda games you get to name your character. The characters don't have voices because, hey, maybe the player has a certain idea of what the player should sound like. It's like when a book becomes a movie: you see how the director cast the main character and you think "Whoa, I always imagined him as looking like [blank] and sounding like [blank]". The reader has an idea of what a character looks and sounds like, and it goes the same way with videogames. I don't have any idea how any of this fits into the argument at hand but...there you go.

And it's utterly nuts - a pointless argument that achieves nothing.

Look. I have very little interest in discussing whether Nintendo is a lazy company. In terms of business (and I am a business journalist), it is not a lazy company in the slightest. I couldn't care less what a gamer thinks of the company - it's simply not relevant if someone is personally unhappy with what Nintendo is doing.

This IGN article is horrible and misses everything.

Well, I don't know that I'd go so far as to say it is a significant reason behind Zelda's success. I really don't think any of this is a big deal. I prefer minimalism when it comes to characterization and storytelling personally. What makes a game is that you can play it. The more cutscenes you insert, the less it's a game. I want to learn about the world and create the characters through playing, not by the terrible writing that generally comes out of the video game industry. But really, if a game is fun, people will put up with any story or characters thrown at them. Metal Gear Solid is a successful series, and it's certainly not known for coherent stories.

Y'know, for people that don't wanna argue about "one stupid little thing", you guys are arguing a lot about it.

Let's just end the thread here. This thread will go on forever unless you people agree to 3 things:

#1. Opinions are opinions.
#2. One small, completely unimportant thing that doesn't change a game at all DOES NOT make the game horrible.
#3. Didn't we already settle this conversation a generation ago? Nintendo fans will still be Nintendo fans while non-Nintendo fans will still be non-Nintendo fans.

And it's insane to think that Nintendo should custom-cater everything they do just for us personally. The person who wrote that IGN Article (I'm guessing it was Matt) is selfish, as are gamers in general. They forget that the Wii has been founded on being a console that everyone can enjoy--and they try to act like there's something wrong with that. If you don't like it, fine, but don't call Nintendo lazy. Nintendo has deadlines just like everybody else; people say "Oh if they would've just spent another couple months in development this title could've been [whatever]". Well maybe Nintendo didn't have a couple months. "Nintendo should've included an online mode in NSMBW". Besides the fact that it wouldn't have worked very well, did they consider the fact that Nintendo might've just run out of time? That doesn't make them lazy, that makes them smart businessmen. Release the game on time, release the biggest game of the year on a major holiday.

You forgot the overriding counter-argument:
Debating is fun

V8, Waltz speaks only for himself, don't lump us all in by saying "you guys." I realize how insignificant the discussion is. I've never imagined anything I've said on this forum was anything approaching important. I know what an opinion is. I just enjoy talking about games. Hopefully Sneaker and the others feel the same way. The only way the discussion will go on forever is if it remains interesting forever, which is highly unlikely for any conversation, especially this one.

Edit: Of course, Kid A puts it less ramblingly than I do, but now you have the option of the short version and the long version. It's your lucky day.

Love this comment - it's perfect

What people don't realise is that Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Wii Music and other such games really are good, quality stuff. No, they don't appeal to the hardcore crowd (Wii Fit requires too much movement ), but targetting the casual market is not easy. A lot of technological design had to go into the balance board - creating the right exercises, presenting them in an easy-to-digest medium and making sure people don't get lost in the game requires a lot of work.

Creating a game for a hardcore gamer is relatively easy - you can make assumptions. You can assume the gamer is able to handle a harder difficulty level, you can assume the gamer already has a sense of how games are controlled and played. You can assume a gamer can handle a higher degree of interactivity.

You can't assume anything of the sort with the kind of audience the Wii XXXX games target. It is so much harder creating a game for someone who may well have never played a game before.

A lazy company could never pull of what Nintendo has done for the casual crowd. That's not an opinion - that's an analysis of Nintendo's go-to-market strategy.

I don't know what to bring up. The OctoCamo innovation, or the new Drebin Points System, or the fresh cameras/perspectives that change the series' fundamentals, or the number of crouch positions, or the Mark II, or Online, or the more varied arsenal and weapons system, or.... well... You get the point. What about MGS' latest made you feel like it hadn't changed in a decade?

I love the Metal Gear games, but just to bring it up. You do the same thing in MGS4 that you did in MGS1. You can shoot enemies if you want, however; for the game's sake, it is frowned upon. You still hide from the enemies. The same traps (magazines, wall taps) will still distract enemies. It's just that the stealth system flows better now, and there have been more weapons added.

I already posted earlier about how any game can seem the same, redundant, or whatever if you make it that way. I'll not repeat that.

@Adam: A few posts back, you said that Luigi was just a simple color swap. Well, the ads shows that Nintendo know what they wanted the Luigi character to be. And everybody who have played the games now just know what kind of guy Luigi is. Back then, they didn't. If someone only plays this game, then maybe thay don't, but fans of the serie know who Luigi is.

Well they tell it's Peach's birthday in text. Like that wasn't obvious by all the presents, the decorations and the huge cake. Still Nintendo thought it would be neccesary to tell it anyhow. The problem I have is that Mario and Luigi are already established characters that everybody know. They need no introductions. Maybe people would like to call them different, but that doesn't matter. They are Mario and Luigi. The Koopalings all have names the toads in other Mario games have names. Maybe people wanted another name, but Nintendo still named them anyway. Those two toad however are just that. Those two toads. Sure I can come up with some random names for those two, but I don't understand why Nintendo are making characters, giving them names (like Toad and Toadette) and then just throw in two generic, nameless Toads that nobody knows.

@Kid_A: I don't care if a toad is a playable character. I would be fine with playing with Toad and Toadette or some of the other known Toads that have been named in this and other threads. But just two unknown toads is what boggles me.

@WaltzElf: Then your perspective is completely different from mine, gamers and the IGN article. Sure Nintendo prints money thanks to reaching the new audience that have never gamed before. But that's not what the article of IGN is about.

@V8+Ninja:
I agree with Kid_A and Adam, it's just fun to talk and discuss about games, as long it is done in a friendly matter.

And, as I said before - while it's nice to say everyone's entitled to an opinion, the reality is that not all opinions are legitimate. Claiming Nintendo is lazy is categorically incorrect, because you can't have an argument about a business without looking at what it is doing as a business.

And just like that, WaltzElf became my favorite Nintendo Life user

@WaltzElf: IGN's article is from a hardcore Nintendo fan's point of view. And when you read the article like that, they only make valid points. When you read the article they never say that Nintendo isn't succesful as a company, they even praise it and it's strategy, but that's not the reason why they wrote the article.

The entire Mario Brothers series has completely downplayed personality. Mario's last console side-scroller was SMW or SMW2, depending on if you count Yoshi's Island as a true Mario game. Either way though, in none of these games did Luigi have personality. You would not have to have played only this game. You could play a lot of Mario games and know no better. His in-game personality is only really developed in RPGs and other spin-offs. Galaxy is the first main series game to give Luigi a personality (or was he in a Sunshine cutscene? I don't remember. It was a small part if so). We have accepted his lack of in-game characterization for a long time. No reason to suddenly rebel about it or two other near-identical characters.

As for Peach's birthday, the text does tell us whose birthday it is, so while it still is unnecessary, it is not nearly as pointless as "Oh no, the princess." The Toads' inane babblings tell us enough of their reaction, really, to know that they are thinking this.

As for the Koopalings, they are not a representation of the player. They are something other, something external, so it wouldn't make sense to leave them to the player. While I'm sure there is a rare example out there someone can throw at me, you generally do not name the enemies. Actually, I'm not sure they even are named in this game. I don't recall seeing their names at any point in the game. There's a reason people don't mind Ganon talking but would throw a fit if Link ever got dialog, at least more than he got in Zelda II.

Edit: @Waltz, I don't see why Nintendo can't be lazy, categorically. They are just suggesting that Nintendo does not go the extra mile for its long time fans, not that it isn't doing all it can to make the most money possible. The best business move can sometimes be something lazy. I think Capcom's approach to Street Fighter II, incrementally updating the game constantly instead of starting development on a full sequel right away was lazy but successful. I know some disagree with my opinion that that was in fact lazy, but that's another argument.

In LittleBigPlanet you play as a random Sackboy. Just a random avatar with no backstory. You play as the exact same character whether you're player 1, 2, 3, or 4. Now, granted, you can give them costumes and stuff, but I didn't here anyone complant that LittleBigPlanet's characters had a lack of context. Why? Because it's a 2-D platformer. You don't need to give your avatar's names, or even personalities. Because the joy isn't in the characters, it's in the platforming itself. THIS is why the toad argument makes no sense: because in the end, it doesn't effing matter. Luigi is a color swap or Mario (in this game he is. Sure he may have a personality in Luigi's Mansion or Mario&Luigi, but in this game he's just an avatar) and Blue Toad is a swap or Yellow toad. How this makes Nintendo lazy is beyond me.

Man, if you could customize Mario like Sackboy, that'd be awesome. The character editor was so much better than the level editor, sadly. But I'm not sure if it's fair to compare with Mario in the first place. Mario is set within a specific universe. Sackboy is placed in a universe the users create. Sackboy requires imagination. Mario encourages it, but you could force it into a strict narrative if you for some reason wanted to, as some few do. Of course, Mario's world is completely uninteresting to me in this way, so I'm glad Nintendo uses as little text as it does, even foregoing character names in some cases.

The whole palette swap argument seems kinda lame to me. Sure, Luigi was originally a palette swap, but since then Nintendo's built both brothers' personalities in many of their games. Just throwing in two random toads with different colored spots was really lame of them imo, and I do think it was lazy.

Not to get off topic, but I think Mario games would lend itself much better to a level editor than LittleBigPlanet. LPB had the annoying aspect of having to put things in one of three different planes, and you had to create your own enemies, items, etc. Mario platformers are so much simpler, so it'd be a lot easier to make an accessable level editor that actually worked. I don't see a customizable Mario thing working out very well