A Nintendo patent filed by Shigeru Miyamoto last year, but unearthed today by a bevy of news sites, could be the beginning of a resurgence for the now defunct Nintendo Power feature Counselor’s Corner.
As a refresher for you youngins, Corner was a place where fledgling gamers could write for hints and tips on Nintendo games. Nintendo Power actually had on staff a bunch of lucky guys who got to play games all day and answer questions about them. The best questions and answers would get published in the magazine.
This new patent could be that service, updated and modernized for an online, hyper-connected era.
Here’s a nice synopsis provided by the chaps at Kotaku:
The new system, described in a patent filed by Nintendo Creative Director Shigeru Miyamoto on June 30, 2008, but made public today, looks to solve the issue of casual gamers losing interest in a game before they complete it, while still maintaining the interest of hardcore gamers.
The solution would turn a game into a full-length cut scene of sorts, allowing players to jump into and out of the action whenever they wanted. But when played this way, gamers would not be able to save their progress, maintaining the challenge of completing a game without skipping or cheating. It would also allow players to bring up in-game hint videos and skip directly to particular scenes in games.
While the patent doesn’t describe how the automated gameplay (referred to as “digest moving image” in the patent) would be presented to gamers, either as a true cut-scene or as a recorded play-through, it does state that the playthrough will likely come from a game developers playing of the game.
If this becomes a reality, and is implemented carefully, it could very well entice non-traditional gamers into the “mature game” fold. Games like Fallout 3, or even Twilight Princess for that matter, would become more accessible. Experienced gamers, used to spending hours on end level grinding and the like, wouldn’t even notice, because the system is designed to function in the background (if I read it over carefully enough anyway).
Counselor’s Corner 2.0. Live and in your face whenever you want it. Developers on your wing, like geeky little gaming angels, walking you through that. Exact. Spot. All with videos and commentary and whatever else they can think of. Could be cool, so long as it doesn’t turn gaming into one long Metal Gear Solid 4 interactive cutscene.
I think this is kind of interesting since I have been thinking how Nintendo could make all those moms that bought Wii fit buy other type of games. For example, my native language is Spanish and I remember playing Monkey Island II long time ago and was stuck with the monkey wrench puzzle for a long time because monkey wrench makes no sense in Spanish and what some might consider as a problem that shouldn't be there to me is something that I will never forget.
My mom played Monkey Island III because it gave her the option to play it the easy way (skipping most of the puzzles) and to this day I think she lost a lot of the fun that the game had. But if this idea is done right she would be able to see everything the game has to offer and maybe try to resolve some of the puzzles without any help once she gets the idea of how the game works instead of skipping it entirely.
This idea sounds like it could potentially destroy the fun factor of most games. Half of the fun is overcoming the puzzle yourself, whether you like it or not. Being selective of which puzzles you do and don't want to solve ruins the "must-do" nature of the puzzles themselves. In a way, this development promotes laziness. Why play a game if it can play itself?
But, if Miyamoto is behind it, I'm sure he'll have an ingenious way of implementing it into several future 5-star games.
AS long as this is a optional, and has an on-off switch, I think its a great idea.
@ Stan
It's not like optional sidequests HAD to be played to progress, by definition in fact. "Being selective of which puzzles you do and don't want to solve ruins the “must-do†nature of the puzzles themselves. In a way, this development promotes laziness." It certainly doesn't as 20 odd years of RPG and Puzzle gaming have proven. Playing through the Bombliss puzzles on Tetris 2 + Bombliss is one of my great gaming joys, but I would have destroyed the game in frustration if I hadn't been able to skip say the 19th level out of 100. Creating MUST DO difficult sections of games is one of the best ways to make people put the game down in hurry with a negative last memory.
As I was saying before, if this is some kind of (hopefully optional) player assist/hint and chapter skip that can bridge the gap between a core game and a non-gamer audience, then I'm all for this. Maybe this could be the way forward for preserving our classical game design in the face of a broadening audience without segregating anyone.