GAME DESIGNERS MUST DIE NOW!!

Thursday, March 10, 2005 » gaming link thought

One of the panels at this week's Game Developers Conference prompted three big-name game designers, Will Wright, Peter Molyneux, and Clint Hocking, to design a game based on the poetry of Emily Dickinson. What they came up with: The Sims, Bonzi Buddy, Mortal Kombat, and something that can only be described as Peter Molyneux's Conceptual Art Barfstravaganza. Appropriately, the panel's moderator opened the session saying the industry is in a "creative crisis."

The concepts presented are actually less troubling to me than the whole spirit of the challenge itself, which seems like the product of the industry's ever-growing obsession with grabbing licences and, to a lesser degree, milking existing franchises. Actually, I have to give Molyneux credit for coming up with a pretty original idea. It was just his embellishment of it that sounded a little too art-school.

If they wanted to make things really interesting, they should have invited Shigeru Miyamoto, Hideo Kojima, and, I dunno, maybe Shinji Mikami, and they would all have to design their game for the Nintendo DS. GO TEAM GO