Masahiro Sakurai Quotes

The thing about games is, players often say they don't care about story, but then if you took the story out, what would their reaction be? If no one cared about story, we'd all still be playing Pac-Man. There's nothing wrong with Pac-Man, but the point is, there's a genre of games in which you want to become part of that world.

A good game impresses you with what you're doing. I think that's a fundamental difference that I as a game designer need to recede in the background.

What I'm doing is creating a game. I'm not making a movie. To make the game more enjoyable and captivating, and to make the player feel like he's present in that setting, we need the cinematic element.

One of the things we joke about in the FPS development is it's so hard to get the player to actually bother to look at all the cool stuff you've been doing. You spend a lot of time making really cool things, and usually the player isn't looking where you want them to.

We're growing into an entertainment medium as opposed to 'We make games. We make Mario jump.' We no longer have to focus so hard on the technical hurdles and can ask, as a player, why am I doing this? Why am I making these choices? Games that don't have that strong foundation stumble.

I'm fascinated with video games, though I can't really play them. It's definitely an art form that intrigues me to no end, though.

We want playing our games to entertain people on many different levels. Deeper down, I want to make a connection with the player, and it's the way, to me, of saying to the person playing the game that they're not alone in the world.

The point of view is the biggest problem with games, because what we play must be clearly presented in the best way for me to have an immersive game experience.

With a movie, it's probably easier to sustain intensity and seriousness over the 90-minute duration. But in an open-world game it becomes exhausting, demotivating and even uninteresting for the player.

My goal is to make a player think, 'I want to reenter this world of lies tomorrow.'

The most important thing in games isn't the designer's narrative, but the story the player creates through his experiences.

If you want an MMO, there are plenty out there. The difference with a single player game is that in the same way you lose yourself in a good novel, you can lose yourself in a single player story. You see it in all these games, where you can fill your house with turnips or decorate your armour with a dragon skull.

The letters were universally complimentary, and we designers loved hearing that our games were being enjoyed, but if they weren't sending us a picture of their screens most of those writers would have spent their time playing the game rather than writing letters.

I don't just write a script, and then someone takes it away and builds a game. I am continually getting input in order to create a big suspension field to hold the gameplay together so that the gamers aren't doing arbitrary tasks, so that they are doing things that seem meaningful.

If the game designer produces more content than he can consume per month, some fraction of the people will say more quests, more tests, more challenges, more whatever, and they will be compelled by it.

Video games are a special kind of play, but at root, they're about the same things as other games: embracing particular rules and restrictions in order to develop skills and experience rewards. When a game is well-designed, it's the balance between these factors that engages people on a fundamental level.

Anytime anyone gets passionate over a character you're playing, I think you've done your job well.

You don't really want to talk about 'Duke' in terms of, how many levels are there, how many guns does it have, how many monsters… It's got everything it needs in terms of that, but it's always been about the experience.

That feeling of being rewarded for your curiosity is huge. It's why I play games, this idea of truly existing in a world.

I don't differentiate game design and script; it is one and only document. I think that one of the biggest problem with storytelling in games is that people tend to separate story and interactivity. Both should be conceived as one entity, each using the other.

We believe that we can use interactivity to create meaningful games. Games with emotions and virtual actors telling you something. Resonating with you as a human being, giving you food for thought. We don't need to deliver messages or whatever, just need to create a moment in time that will leave an imprint in your mind.

You turn the computer into the storyteller and the player into the audience, like in the old days when the storyteller would actually respond to the audience, rather than just having the audience respond to the storyteller. I had an enormous amount of fun, actually, working on that.

Games are not about being told things. If you want to tell people things, write a book or make a movie. Games are dialogues - and dialogue requires both parties to take the floor once in a while

When you strip away the genre differences and the technological complexities, all games share four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation.

The moment you start dictating content/themes/story vs. allowing the player to be a participant in the story and carve their own path, you're doing the player a disservice.