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Nostalgia driven nerd who is mainly in love with music and (PC) gaming. PC hardware enthusiast. EN/FR/ES, learning 日本語.

[🍉 @athanatiestee]

🕹 Thread of video games finished in 2024 🎮

[Katsuhiro Harada @Harada_TEKKEN]

From my perspective, Miyazaki is a rather unique, yet extremely serious game developer.

His career did not begin in the game industry. In fact, he didn’t become a game developer until he was almost thirty years old.

Even among developers of my generation (those of us born in the 1970s), I think it’s remarkable that someone who wasn’t even a game developer during the dawn of the polygon era eventually became one of Japan’s most representative game creators. (In other words, compared to the rest of us from the same generation—including myself—his career path is exceptionally unusual. Most notably, unlike many of us, he was not working at one of the major development studios that held a significant technological advantage during the early polygon era. That, more than anything else, is what makes his path so unique.)

Next, regarding my impression of Dark Souls.

People often focus on its difficulty as a game, but I believe Miyazaki’s true creativity shines through in the world he created. (By the way, I personally think Dark Souls has fairly simple action mechanics, and I don’t actually consider it to be an especially difficult game.)

If you look into my own career, you’ll see that I was personally involved with the Dark Souls series and Elden Ring as the General Manager overseeing both production and marketing (Just to clarify, I wasn't part of the development team itself. My involvement was simply as the General Manager of the publisher-side department overseeing production and marketing). From that perspective, I can say that Dark Souls didn’t suddenly become a massive success overnight. It was the result of everything Miyazaki and his team had built up through their previous titles.

Today, he receives offers from all over the world, but when I think back to the days when he and his team were struggling the most, many of those offers seem like they’re coming from people who only know who they are today. Some of them almost feel like complete reversals in attitude. Well, that’s just my personal perspective.

Personally, I had grown tired of people who would simply compare games by saying things like, “That title cost X billion yen to make and sold Y million copies,” and then use nothing but those numbers to judge them against other games. There were so many people who couldn’t appreciate the journey or the growth of the developers themselves. Anyone can look at the current numbers—they’re available to everyone. Whenever I heard those kinds of opinions, I always thought, “That’s exactly what you’d expect from someone who’s never actually developed games.”
What surprised me even more was that, even if people couldn’t properly evaluate that journey, almost nobody even seemed interested in trying to understand the process of how those developers gradually reached where they are today.
(I'm NOT talking about the fan community).

Now, going back to Miyazaki, there are two things about him that have always stayed with me.

The first was back when I was developing Summer Lesson for VR, around the time it was generating a lot of buzz.

One day, he came to try an early build of Summer Lesson along with people from several other game companies.

While everyone else was laughing, chatting, and having fun with it, Miyazaki alone played it with incredible seriousness. Then, after everyone had finished and started discussing their impressions, he remained completely silent, staring intently at the preview monitor, deep in thought.

Everyone became curious and finally asked him, “Miyazaki, what are you thinking about?”

He suddenly smiled and said,

“Oh… I got completely absorbed in thinking about what I would do if I were making this, and what kind of game I’d create.”

What he talked about after that was, in the best possible sense, completely insane.

It was one of those rare moments when I caught a glimpse of what I’d call his “mad scientist” side—his deeply serious, obsessive approach to creativity.

The other thing that left a strong impression on me was that he generally dislikes video interviews (including live streaming).

I once asked him about it by email, and he replied with quite a long explanation. After reading it, I completely understood where he was coming from.

Simply put, he doesn’t like watching himself moving around on video. (Psychologically speaking, it’s actually a bit more complicated than that.)

But there was another reason.

According to him, there are naturally many people in this industry who know games far better than he does. Whenever he listens to those people speak, he realizes that his own understanding is still shallow, and it makes him feel that he’s not yet in a position to be the one talking about games.

I mean… it’s common for well-known developers to say, “I still have a long way to go.”

But whenever someone like him says that, my reaction is always,

“Come on… if you say you’re still not there yet, then the rest of us won’t feel qualified to talk about games at all.” (laugh)

Anyway, that’s one of the reasons why video interviews with Miyazaki are extremely rare. And conversations with him on camera—especially long-form discussions with another developer—are even rarer. They almost don’t exist at all.

By the way, the other game developer in that photo is Masahiro Sakurai.

If you ask me, he’s basically:

“A Saiyan who genuinely believes he’s just another ordinary human.”

Every now and then, when the rest of us are struggling with some problem, he’ll say something that sounds exactly like Goku saying,

“Well… why don’t you just fly?”

And I’ll reply,

“Because we humans can’t use Flight Technique.”

Then he just stares at me with a completely puzzled look.

To put it in terms of Demon Slayer, I’d describe him as:

"Like Muzan Kibutsuji casually showing up at a drinking party where all the Hashira have gathered, genuinely believing he's just another ordinary guest".

That’s the kind of person he is.

[ཐི𖥔ཋྀ @GenyaTheHag]

final fantasy collection for playstation (1999)

[KAMI @Okami13_]

Hideo Kojima comments on the end of physical game production today in Italy:

"Today you can still download data. But at one point games will make into streaming services like Amazon or Netflix and companies will decide if you can play a game or not [...] At this point I won't have anything of my own [...] the data will be somewhere in a company and I will have the right to access it or not depending on how much this data tap is opened.

The fact that the initial data is not in my possession but is somewhere held by a private company means that I will always have that risk that for any reason, whether commercial or political, the company could prevent access to that data and therefore I will no longer be able to see that film, I will no longer be able to play that game.

This is what's happening next for the world of video games and I fear it will also happen for cinema."

[Gizmo 🏳️‍⚧️ 🇵🇸 @basedgizmo]

Taika Waititi I’ve got a role you’d be freaking sublime for

[Anime Vibes @finalformlab]

"Nocturne" is a gorgeous standalone fine-art piece showcasing the hauntingly beautiful visual style of Yoshitaka Amano

[Armac @Armac_geddon]

En 2 sec y’a autant d’émotions sur son visage que sur toute la carrière de Gal Gadot.

[GamesCage - Hype Guy @GamesCage_]

BRO HASN’T TWEETED IN 3 DAYS LMAAOOOO

[interpretation @materialcritic]

fidel castro in the sierra maestra, during the early days of the cuban revolution

[Besk 💿 @BeskInfinity]

The one and only Solid Snake agrees with us SAVE PHYSICAL GAMES

[TTBNGaming @TTBN_GAMING]

Unironically this is twitter

[Lord Inquisitor Ineptus Astartes @AstartesIneptus]

When PlayStation inevitably come back on social media and try to ignore the omnishambles they've created, it is your civic duty to remind them.

[MBG @xMBGx]

Just to show you how scummy Sony is being with this news.

They anticipated their numbers would drop through people protesting/boycotting by canceling Ps Plus and pre-orders but they won't have to show their numbers to investors until the end of September.

Their next earnings call is July 31st however it only covers up to June 30th. They planned this out perfectly to drop it on July 1st for this very reason. The numbers dip early July, they have over 2 months to watch them HOPEFULLY recover as the deperate gamers crawl back and the investors see that Sony moving away from physical games didn't hurt anything.

Keep this is mind as we move forward. Sony is betting on you caving and crawling back to them in the coming weeks. Oh and so are the investors.

[Pyo 5️⃣ @mrpyo1]

PlayStation has been quiet for 2 days now, I really think their plan is to be quiet and not talk until the ”anger is gone”

When they closed down bluepoint they took 3 days off social media and didn’t care after that.

This time around, keep making your voice heard, don’t let Sony get away with this. Make your voice heard and keep doing it, WE HAVE TO FIGHT THIS OR LOSE PHYSICAL FOREVER!

People, this is literally a situation of now or never!!

[Nathie @NathieVR]

Metal Gear Solid was made for VR

[Leïla Chaibi @leilachaibi]

🎮La fin du jeu physique, la disparition de l'occasion et l'explosion des prix sont tous évitables.

Signez la pétition "Sauvons le jeu vidéo physique" et mobilisez-vous👉https://t.co/6FQRlFtAuF

#playstation #stopkillinggames #gta6 #gaming

[Jean-Luc Mélenchon @JLMelenchon]

Avec la fin du jeu physique, l'industrie du jeu vidéo veut nous imposer un tout-numérique dont l'accès sera conditionnel et limité dans le temps. Les droits de l'acheteur seront niés. C'est le triomphe de la marchandisation totale : vous payez plein pot pour n'avoir qu'un simple droit d'accès révocable.

Ne les laissons pas confisquer notre patrimoine culturel. Reprenons le contrôle !

👉 Signez et partagez la pétition "Sauvons le jeu vidéo physique" : https://t.co/P2FhNvZBzy

[eA shin0a @Shin0a_]

Saying this like it's a bad thing you might be fucking stupid

[Gene Park, Obama’s Skull Face @GenePark]

cutting physical media cuts costs only for the company. they get to save on production, design, shipping and still charge the same thing with nothing being passed on to the consumer

[Radié Naz @Radie_Naz]

Je vois pas mal de monde dans les comm s'étonner que Mélenchon parle de jeux vidéos, ce n'est pourtant pas nouveau de la part du vieux:

(Extrait de 2022)