Shigeru Miyamoto wants to create a kinder world
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
And this is why I like Nintendo games.
Miyamoto has had plenty of misses—Star Fox Zero comes to mind—but I never feel as though his games are trying to waste my time, much less manipulate me into wasting my time, as is so common nowadays.
This is also why Nintendo never had much success on mobile. Mario Run was a legitimately great game—it's just that it was short, and cost $10, and we're used to mobile games that are "free" and rely on whales to subsidize the cost.
I suspect Fire Emblem Heroes is a result of competing interests inside Nintendo. Miyamoto has said publically several times that he doesn't think they should be making games like that—even after Fire Emblem's success: https://gamedaily.biz/article/197/nintendos-shigeru-miyamoto...
I think it has been financially successful—but when the WiiU was failing, Nintendo needed a backup plan, badly. Now that the Switch is incredibly successful, they’re not as desperate for a Plan B, and so mobile ports are mostly a distraction, even if a profitable one. But their biggest bottleneck is time and developers, not money.
I'd -gladly- write games (and software) for the switch if it was a more accessible platform to develop for.
Developing software for Nintendos previous platforms was difficult for anyone who didnt have 'connections' in the industry.
It’s also an approach Nintendo has finally begun to avoid in the past few years, with games like Breath of the Wild.
I'll take it you didn't play Skyward Sword? :P
I think Animal Crossing is also a bit different—it's an experience that's designed to slow you down and make you relax. The speed is a part of what makes it comforting.
I think Skyward Sword gets a bad rap. It's one of my favourite games, probably tied for my 3rd favourite Zelda game.
The tutorials are super annoying.
It will be interesting to replay the game in Dolphin some day with a more accurate motion controller.
Actually, it appears possible to use Switch controllers with Dolphin using this[1]. I may have to set this up in the near future.
Skyward Sword's overworld is oozing with rich and evocative atmosphere, too. If you take away the Gothic veneer, Twilight Princess is almost sterile in comparison.
It's a great game that gets blamed for small pitfalls.
I do also love the dungeons/bosses and atmosphere in Skyward Sword however, and have to agree that it is where bosses peaked.
Notably, if you read interviews with the developers, this is precisely what they were going for with the overworld.
It was a great idea that didn't pan out because, for whatever reason, the over-world areas simply weren't as well designed as the real dungeons. Fi interrupting you every 30 seconds didn't help either, of course.
I think if I hadn't been able to do either one of those, I would have gotten really frustrated though.
Between it being incredibly uncomfortable to play (in my situation) and Fi coming up every five minutes to hand-hold me, it was not my favourite thing.
BotW felt freer. I could explore at my own pace and defeat enemies in many more ways than using my weapons. I could use Sheikah Slate abilities, push rocks, send them marching off cliffs, freeze them then plonk them in deep water, etc.
Skyward Sword punished me for sitting still at a desk. BotW didn't. I gave up on Skyward Sword partway during the first temple — which took two four-hour streams to arrive at!
But I miss being able to break into a sprint, then at the right moment, jerk my left hand to roll through an enemy's legs and get behind them, spin around and draw my sword while they're figuring out where I went. Or chase them off a cliff with my little remote controlled dronebug. The combat does eventually get a lot more creative than at the start, and the enemies in Skyward Sword (bokoblins especially) felt like they had a lot more personality.
Here's a decent article on the topic: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/london-undeground-wi-fi
When I was living in Asia, even in poorer countries and/or rural areas, there was mobile internet. $1/mo for 4G 1GB. People took it for granted at a level that would be impossible in Germany, because here you can still be without even 3G just a few km outside of city centers.
Also, mobile internet repeaters for tunnels are a solved problem. Singapore had no offline areas in their underground metro. Germany has lots of em.
True. Unfortunately in Canada (Toronto at least) the big 4 telco oligopoly can't agree on pricing for this one. The result is a single company offers subway coverage!
Nevermind that data here is more expensive than even the US.
Where's that Silicon Valley disruption spirit for the telco oligopolies worldwide?
Like replaying entire games because they won't let you back their console up?
> And this is why I like Nintendo games.
Really? Nintendo is absolutely notorious for stuff like this.
> And this is why I like Nintendo games.
I've sold my copy of Animal Crossing because I felt it did just that: wasted my time on meaningless repetitive tasks
I recall reading that preventing 'assembly line' mechanics was a deliberate choice. As a result, in New Horizon you can't do bulk crafting, you need to perform multiple button presses and watch an animation for every single one.
Shopping is equally bad, where buying stock from a visiting NPC takes orders of magnitude longer than it might in an RPG, because you need to button through multiple pages of dialogue after each purchase.
I can attest! Just like a hospital.
You can also see a glimpse of it from the nearby train station. A quiet unsuspecting almost industrial part of Kyoto; away from the more touristy areas. Perhaps for a reason; unlike many parts of Japan it isn't necessarily a convenient walk-to - so better maybe to have a taxi drop you off nearby.
And then when you arrive up close; a sublte Nintendo logo adourns the gated entrance - where the boring square shaped building presents itself.
Also one day, many months later - walking casually in Osaka in an area not too far from the busy Umeda / JR Station. I saw an interesting looking blue and white sign atop a commercial building amongst mostly residential apartments...
I asked my friend at the time what the Kanji meant. To my surprise, "Nintendo" she said. It was neat moment because at the time I was living in the area and had been for fair while - and all that while did not realize my childhood idol Nintendo was right there in the neighbourhood too. I just assumed they always display their romaji logo / classic font name but apparently not for this office, which was quite large as I recall; among the tallest 'medium sized' towers in a rather dense area.
Nintendo's lobby is nothing like a hospital. It looks like a North Korean palace. Sparse with only 2-3 plants. Every wall is marble. At the reception desk are 3 receptionists. The lobby is giant, consuming about 1/2 of the building's footprint. Maybe only 7 sets of low sitting executive style chairs. Absolutly zero Nintendo authored art or decor. Off the lobby to the left are meeting rooms. These meeting rooms are your usual corporate japan meeting rooms minus any large glass windows.
Nintendo is a young japan by Japanese standards combined with being from outside of the two major metro areas they have a chip on their shoulder. They are proud and want to be respected like a proper 500 year old japanese mega corp.
Compare this to the other game company's waiting rooms I've been in. Marvelous was the most "look at what we've made" with tons of products and brand merchandise lining the walls. Square Enix is more reserved, with maybe 10 figures from their brands in a glass case inset into the wall. Sony (near shinagawa) is yet more reserved, no brands, but examples of their hardware, again along the wall. Large logo behind the receptionist desk. Wargaming.net had large props reused from their promotional events, plus the fanciest and branded offices of anyone.
My experience is from the new-nintendo building. The prior Nintendo building, which itself is not the original wooden building you might remember from black and white photos, is a few blocks away. The old building is only QA now from my understanding. The new building is larger with the most premium of japanese features: large open gardens between the building and compound walls.
Apparently, in the building you visited, there is a massive Nintendo museum -- everything they've ever made, all carefully curated.
You get to visit this museum once, and only once: on your first day with the company. From that point forward, you are not allowed to go again.
They do this because Nintendo believes that, while it is vital to understand your roots, to know where you came from, it is equally important to not become mired in the past and rest upon old glories, and instead to look forward to the future.
How much do the Amazon custom doors cost?
To clarify, the North Korean palace you refer to - which is the new building; is the boring blue and gray square shaped hospital looking one (the one I describe with the official sign out front of the gated entrance) ?
Fascinating to hear about it from the inside. I was excited to see the building and lay foot on the sidewalk of the compound but not the type to ask for a tour; I didn't want to be an annoying がいじん. Settled for a selfie and pictures of the outside; Kyoto on its own is has no end of photogenic opportunities so it was one of many.
You must have been to the new building. The old building does not have a large Nintendo sign. The old building has almost no space between the compound walls and the building itself while the new one has a basketball court.
Yeah I must have been at the new building; again to clarify, you were at the new one too?
I checked out / subscribed to updates for Railgrade. Looks great. Hope にほん life has been good for you despite the crazy year; I haven't been back in a while so have been worried that the little things I enjoyed/valued so much there such as the polite hustle and bustle and sea of smiling faces (now covered with masks) has well maybe vanished.
Of course the back drop is I've lived and saved as if the world was always in a recession. Thus when the actual danger hits I was able to expand my business. As PG says, the best time to start a business is during a recession.
Personally I expect Japan to handle COVID economically better than most other countries. Japanese corporations have long be criticized for building cash warchests instead of upping dividends or buybacks. Thus Japan Inc has the balance sheets to leave the recession having acquired foreign assets.
Yet I wish to press once more, the main worry I have I wish to quelle if you care to elaborate on is regarding daily life. Maybe I'll just ask specifics - like is Tokyo morning, lunch hour and 4 to 6pm rush hour still packed trains? Are the streets less busy? Is the happy go lucky-ness lost now that everyone is wearing masks all the time?
For the exact situation on the street, sorry I cannot speak from experience.
Cross referecing with the building referred to later in Osaka then of course, it is the same blue and white colors with that Kanji. Didn't connect the dots at the time! Just happened to casually bring it up as a curious sight to my friend while walking about on a summer day.
The company name is certainly intended to have semantic meaning, as each character of 任天堂 combines sensibly and logically.
The last character 堂 suggests a kind of sacred space, "a hall, temple, or shrine". The second chatacter 天 means "heaven"; and the first character 任 implies trusting, or leaving things up to, this "heaven".
> The name Nintendo is commonly assumed to mean 'leave luck to heaven', but the assumption lacks historical validation; it can alternatively be translated as "the temple of free hanafuda". (From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo#1889%E2%80%931969:_Ea...)
Overall the name gives a religious or spiritual impression, which feels at odds with the purpose of the company to sell games. I believe this is also intentional, related to the history of these playing cards in Japan as part of illegal gambling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanafuda#History
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This historical photo of the original store is wonderful:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo#/media/File:Nintendo_...
Small correction: 1889.
Well, calling Hanfuda a traditional card game is bit like calling cocaine a traditional stimulant -- before pivoting into family entertainment, Nintendo got its start in life selling cards for illegal gambling to the Yakuza. Earlier, unsuccessful, diversification attempts included love hotels. Apparently the reason Nintendo branched into toys was a lucky accident: company president Yamauchi noticed one of his factory employees, Gunpei Yokoi (who later invented the d-pad and went on to design the game boy) fooled around with an extensible claw he'd built himself during lunch break. Yamauchi ordered him to productionize it, and it became a big hit (that may have saved the company from bankruptcy):
I'm the generation he's describing, and some of the best parts of my life have been on both sides of that interaction. Looking forward to being the grandparent.
Hope to take my nieces to Super Nintendo World in a few years after the pandemic passes and it is built in the US.
Seeing him laugh but also get angry and fail made me choke up and say thank you to Mr. Miyamoto in my head. What a wonderful experience to share and bond over.
https://kotaku.com/at-nintendo-working-all-night-is-mario-ti...
Strange how Nintendo gets no shit for crunch because they're "beloved". Lots of articles about Nintendo USA not crunching but the main office in Japan is still the same
That said, companies like Nintendo bucking the salaryman trend would do a lot to help shift people's perspective towards a healthier work/life balance.
So I'm wondering -- is game industry crunch so popular (majority of game studios seem to be doing it) for reasons that having nothing to do with increasing individual worker output?
In the case of Japan in particular there is also a strong tradition of doing long but very unproductive work hours because presence is prized over productivity .
Or are games really "special" in some way (for example because there is some evidence that people can sustain normally unsustainable productivy/weekly hours ratios for "passion projects")?
Does anyone have any good studies or anectodal evidence from their own experience (focussed 30-50 hour week vs crunch for several weeks)?
2) For a multitude of reasons, usually related to biz dev and budgeting, release windows are set way ahead of time. Then a marketing campaign starts months in advance to build up to release. A marketing campaign is extremely costly, and loses much of its effectiveness if it’s interrupted. it might be impossible to build up the same level of attention a second time, and most companies aren’t willing or can’t afford to take that chance.
3) The work remaining that does require creativity, responding to QA demands, porting, redesigns, bug fixing, etc ends up in a crunch by necessity due to 2).
But the other two points are in a way begging the question: I understand that both poor planning and set-in-stone release/marketing windows are endemic in the industry (and that this creates temptation to overwork people to hit a slipped deadline). But if overworking people is generally a net loss in throughput (as a lot of studies seem to suggest), giving in to this temptation ought to be counterproductive and decrease the likelihood of meeting the deadline. Now of course it's not uncommon for people to really persistently, and en-masse do stupid things that turn out to be highly counterproductive -- like seeing a doctor throughout most of human history. On the other hand, given that the practice seems to be both ubiquitous and universally hated you'd think the first major game studio to figure this out would completely crush its competitors in no time. Since this hasn't happened yet, it's tempting to conclude it must provide some advantage.
Also, they've been pretty assertive about DMCA, and they aren't very kind with streamers from what I understand. (Also, they really seem to not be interested in supporting the tournament communities for their games like Smash.)
Given that I find myself strongly compelled to stand up to this ridiculous behavior on the part of Nintendo and I have the time and resources to do so ...
I am going to purchase, on ebay ... what ? A plain old retail Nintendo Switch ?
Then I will send that switch (or two, or three) to ... who ?
Let's say I have a budget of USD $10,000 - who can I pay to do original, clean-room reverse engineering of this device ?
The goal here would be to publish everything that I can pay people to find.
Suggestions ? Who should I be in contact with ?
Like, what are even hoping to achieve? Aren't modders and the like probably already trying to do what you are trying to do?
And why do you think $10k is a significant amount of money to anyone who could achieve what you want done?
You can buy a decent engineer's spare time for two or three months, if they're being generous about it and particularly want to help. Where would one place $10k that it would meaningfully accelerate reverse engineering the Switch?
You either do it for anything but the money, or the money has to be a lot larger than $10k.
I am hoping that Nintendo attempts to stop me from doing this.
In this one in particular, they dont have to be supportive of anything at all. Why would there be an entitlement to get support from them?
Given the recent events in context of the past 2 decades of nintendo's behaviour, the smash scene would love for nintendo to not be involved at all. There is no entitlement whatsoever for nintendo's support (unless "support" literally just means allowing us to run events with no help of any kind from nintendo other than not shutting it down, in which case it really doesn't strike me as too unreasonable).
Recent cancellations of event sponsorships over the use of a hashtag pertaining to Nintendo's actions in a previous event: https://kotaku.com/nintendo-cancels-splatoon-stream-after-te...
Revelations about past Nintendo activity repeatedly extinguishing Smash events both through strategic and tactical measures, disclosed after The Big House cancellation: https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1srfu4r
Nintendo cancelling the independently run The Big House event: https://kotaku.com/nintendo-shuts-down-smash-tournament-over...
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"I follow Nintendo news pretty religiously and for some reason can’t figure out what you’re talking about."
May I ask which sources you follow? I'm surprised none of these were covered.
(For the unfamiliar: basically, the streamers have to get permissions from Nintendo to stream their games. Some famous streaming groups failed to do so and they had to delete all their VODs involving Nintendo's games after Nintendo's warning.
[I assume other game publishers technically/legally can do the same, but I don't see them practice this without causing a huge backlash from the community.])
"""
Q. Games can be labeled as a cause of problems by parents and society alike.
A. Like smartphones and VR goggles, devices themselves are not harmful. It’s unhealthy to become dependent on them. I want children to experience many things, like playing outside, reading books, and learning more. Balance is key. It’s almost as if video games are attributed as a source of crimes, but it’s a result of becoming obsessed or losing touch with people. It’s wrong to blame social problems on a device.
"""
Source: http://rickyreports.com/archives/miyamotoshigeru/
I appreciate his views, but I find it rather ironic that while Miyamoto points out the violence in other video games, even Miyamoto's creations involve some degree of cartoon violence. (e.g. Mario stomping on Goombas, Link stabbing his sword and breaking vases)
> (Miyamoto) expressed sadness at the number of people Bond shoots down, and suggested to him that, during the end credits, he make the player visit each victim in their hospital bed
Hideo Kojima did this in Metal Gear Solid 3. During a boss battle, the boss would conjure up the souls of those who fell to the protagonist Snake. Snake's movement would slow down because of the ghosts surrounding him. One of the most harrowing scenes in video games history.
In neither of these cases however, do any of Miyamoto's player characters kill humans. (Well, until the Yiga clan in BotW).
> Hideo Kojima did this in Metal Gear Solid 3.
The only Kojima game I've played is MGS 1. However, I have massive respect for him both as a person and an artist due to things such as this.
Gerudo Valley, OoT
Another data point: What happens with the highway bandit in Breath of the Wild? They eventually teleport away, they don't explode into a poof of death.
That is violence too? It is not killing, but it is unambiguously violence.
This quote from above suggested to me that it was not combat that bothered Miyamoto, but killing.
Except if you hit them with an Ancient Arrow, which completely disintegrates them like any other type of enemy. That's what I did the first time around in the Yiga Clan Hideout.
Also I guess quite a few of the series' villains are human or humanoid, but most tend to become a monstrous form before you actually kill them.
That's a good point. I can think of Zant (from Twilight Princess) at least dies in his humanoid form, although <spoiler>Ur'f abg xvyyrq ol gur cynlre, ohg ol Tnabaqbes</spoiler>. There's Ganondorf in Twilight Princess and Wind Waker. In the former, <spoiler>ur genafvgvbaf vagb n uhzna ng gur ynfg cunfr bs gur svtug</spoiler> and in the later <spoiler>ur bayl nccrnef nf n uhzna</spoiler>.
In the case of both Wind Waker and Twilight Princess however, it's already established in series canon that he is not entirely human.
All spoilers are rot13'd
I think Zant actually kills himself though, as the last act of spite against Ganon for something or another.
For other examples:
Both Astor (Age of Calamity) and Chancellor Cole (Spirit Tracks) get taken over by their demon king rulers before their final battle (Ganon and Malladus respectively).
Vaati becomes his one winged angel form in all games where he's a major villain or final boss.
Master Kohga gets killed by his own idiocy at the end of his boss battle.
And Yuga takes over Ganon, before getting killed in that sort of merged form instead.
At that rate, the only 'human' who doesn't do this is Lady Maud from Tri Force Heroes, and she's neither particularly threatening nor actually dies after the battle.
Every corpse you drop needs to be hauled to a crematorium or any single one will go thermonuclear and end the game. Lethal weapons and explosions will also cause stress to your precious cargo.
MGS5 did not reward violent playthroughs either. Snake would turn demonic, start looking like crap and aggravate fatigue. The point of the game is to build an army; you can't recruit the dead.
Mario throws fire at enemies and burns them alive. How is that not violent? He stomps on their heads and squishes them into juice. He knocks them into lava and watches them melt. And let's not forget that most video game characters, including Miyamoto's loot and steal anything they can. Link walks into a building and empties every container he can.
> I also resist the idea that it’s O.K. to simply kill all monsters. Even monsters have a motive, and a reason for why they are the way they are.
He designed Zelda and Mario where all you do is kill every monster.
I love all those games but they aren't non-violent. They're just violence disguised in cute clothing.
Non-violent might include Animal Crossing, Pilotwings but certainly not ARMS where all you do is punch other people.
You never see Mario's enemies burn, you watch them disappear in a puff of smoke. When enemies are jumped upon, they flatten in a cartoonish manner rather than a realistic. Even in Zelda, where some things can be genuinely gruesome to watch, enemies mainly flash red when they are hit rather than spew blood everywhere — and this is a series where most bosses are to be stabbed in the eye!
> They're just violence disguised in cute clothing
That's called cartoon violence. Yeah, it's still violence, but I don't think it's what Miyamoto was referring to.
For Miyamoto, his characters, his worlds, and even the enemies are all like players on a stage. They play their parts, including being the villains, and bowing out when their time is up. It's as they go off-stage, maybe to participate in a kart racer or a round of tennis.
Many popular games have an element of rivalry; you have to take away the ball, defend or capture a base, get the most points, etc. In a game of tag people chase and touch each other. One could argue that being “caught” or being “jumped on” are violent concepts, but in the context of a game I’d view them as harmless.
Diluting that down to "solving your problems via violence" just completely misses that distinction in favor of a boogeyman.
The reason is most people and your repliers included are unable to identify their biases so they talk about violence but violence is not what actually repulses them or humans in general.
What repulses humans is gore. The more realistic the gore the more we're repulsed. All forms of violence depicted without gore is something humans are completely ok with.
The evidence for what I am saying exists in what we eat. The meat we put in our mouths come from violent houses of slaughter where we kill living things and slice them up for consumption. Most people are totally ok with this, they just don't want to see the actual animal getting killed. But the fact that we raise living things for the sole purpose of slaughtering them later is a something we're totally ok with.
It's not gore specifically that makes us repulsed. It's visually seeing gore that is something we're not ok with. As long as we don't see gore then we're ok with gore actually existing in real life. Nothing illustrates this concept better than video games. In video games and movies... No actual violence is occuring! It's just pretend violence. We're more ok with eating slices of flesh violently hacked off of from living things then we are of seeing movies depict fake violence, where no actual violence occurs!
People are unable to separate a response triggered by visual stimuli away from the actual intent of "violence" that usually is associated with such stimuli. In their confusion the mistakenly conflate gore with violence and as a result have a deep misunderstanding of human psychology in general.
Don't try to find logic behind your instincts and emotions. Things like "reactions" from visual stimuli do not exist because the make sense, they exist because such "reactions" at one point in prehistory helped humans survive predation. Making logical sense is not a prerequisite. That is the problem with your repliers when they try to dismiss your response, they are trying to make sense of something that never made sense in the first place.
Either way, congratulations for asking the definitive question and noticing what others are incapable of noticing.
The meta form of violence they are talking about is simply the mechanism of "might makes right" -- if I am not misinterpreting them, it's the idea that violence comes not just from the force but from engagement with the opposing character as a hostile threat to be neutralized rather than an independent agent to be reconciled through diplomacy, and that this is a function of the game design. And so a non-violent game design would entail not just removing gore but removing these kinds of engagement styles completely.
I'm not inclined to agree with this line of reasoning because I think it rests on faulty assumptions. And I think you call out the prime one pretty specifically in your comment:
> People are unable to separate a response triggered by visual stimuli away from the actual intent of "violence" that usually is associated with such stimuli.
It's a subtle but crucial distinction, and I think it gets to the core of what makes people make the conflation. Thanks for bringing it to the fore.
Mario Segale was the owner of a warehouse that Nintendo of America rented in Tukwila, WA.
Nintendo wasn't timely paying the rent, so Segale showed up at the warehouse to collect he money from the then Nintendo of America president Minoru Arakawa. He did so in an aggressive manner, often trash talking everyone.
This is when Nintendo decided to create a game around Jumpman, with its name changed to Mario, after Mario Segale. Because Segale is Italian, they also made Mario Italian, and it's possible that the entire game started as some bizarre parody of Italians made by people that have no idea about Italy, and then was toned down and made more abstract.
And by the way, "Goomba" is a racial slur for Italians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goombah
"Koopa" sounds similar to "Cumpa" which means the same as "Goombah". Basically they made all the enemy names sound like "Goombah" and this is no coincidence.
In the West, Koopas were retroactively changed to be the name of the turtle species with Bowser as their king.
They didn’t make all the enemy names sound like Goombah, just one, Goomba. Koopas having a similar sounding name is coincidence.
The actual name of the Goomba species, however, is likely to be, as you say, a reference to Italians. In Japan, they are called クリボー (kuribo) in reference to their chestnut (栗, kuri) appearance — this is supported by the even more chestnut-like appearance of the subspecies Galoombas (クリボン, kuribon) from Super Mario World.
And if they named the main character after him, it would make sense that they named other characters in the game after things related to him.
King "korean soup" sounds really random to me. The "goombah" hypotheses makes more sense to me. Especially given the presence of "goomba".
Yes, Mario is confirmed to be named after Segale. No, that doesn’t make your theory about Koopas being named to sound similar to Goomba any less ‘random’.
It would also fail to account for the fact that (a) Nintendo is first and foremost a Japanese company, with the American branch relegated to managing marketing, sales, and localization meaning that (B) クッパ as a name predates the English naming of Koopa.
If Nintendo of America had as much influence as you suggest, then the name Koopa would apply consistently to either the great demon king or the turtles, and the turtles wouldn’t be called ノコノコ (nokonoko, in reference to the sound they make when pushed into their shells and bounced around) in Japan.
1: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/02/obituaries/mario-segale-d...
Mr. Miyamoto made a very astute observation here. The average consumer responds far better to simpler emotions when given the choice, and the trend appears to be growing.
I wish I read this point more often.
I would love a game where you had to convince someone to change their mind or get a team of people to help you achieve something by only talking to them (like being a character in a non-violent movie). We're just nowhere close to this level of AI yet.
That's why we have so many games where button press = shoot gun in my opinion. It translates the physical controller actions we have to actions that the game can practically react to in an interesting way, in terms of graphics and gameplay. There's probably a similar mapping to why most TV shows and movies revolve around murder.
"Kinder" means "children" in German, quite appropriately.
Happy New Years yall.