Not that long ago Yoshiyuki Tomino, the father of the Gundam saga, weighed in on games; declaring them to be “evil” relative to their creative worth. Unfortunately, many people seemed to ignore the context of his statements (and the fact he made Overman King Gainer, which features mecha games in a particularly positive manner). However, Mark Simmons recently interviewed Tomino and dutifully quizzed him again on this issue. It’s suitably thought provoking at the very least and part of me thinks he’s saying this so that the games industry can try to prove him wrong.
Here’s something a lot of people have mentioned to me. You recently gave a keynote at a video game conference, where I believe you said that video games are evil.
Yes, they’re evil. Because they just steal people’s time.
Do you think the people who make video games could change them into something more meaningful or worthwhile?
I don’t think they can. But in the twenty-year history of video games, one good thing is that the technology they’ve produced feeds back to the real world. Video game hardware is endurance-tested by hundreds of thousands of people, and that helps establish computer systems that can be used in the real world. So the fact that video game hardware still exists isn’t meaningless.
I don’t know much about technical things, but I think at the very least, it’s thanks to computer games that we were able to develop the programs and hardware to make mobile phones as small as they are now. The fact that the game industry has taken on so many technological challenges has been a big help to the computer industry. Although the games themselves are worthless, in that sense they’ve been a good thing.
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so he WASN’T kidding afterall.
I gotta say, this has made me lose a lot of respect for him.
I don’t think he was kidding in the original keynote either but there was more to what he said, which wasn’t covered. At least Mark has a good understanding of how Tomino works, as he’s covered Gundam for years, and was shrewd enough to get him to qualify his statements. I do think Tomino is trying to instigate some kind of gaming renaissance though, as King Gainer was very positive about the benefits of gaming. He’s trying to challenge the medium into proving him wrong.
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Haha wow, that’s a pretty big call.
That being said, I never walk away from watching an anime series having wasted my time (With the exception of the last episode of King Gainer, ironically… Which when you think about it might have been the point he was trying to make all along) than I do from playing some games…