Gamasutra Comments Of The Week: Zelda, 'Gamers' And The Profit Motive

[Every Friday, Gamasutra community manager Kyle Orland shares some of the most interesting and thought-provoking comments running on Gamasutra's news, features and blog posts, granting the winning commenter a prize from his box o' gaming swag.] Out winning comment this week comes from Tim Tavernier, who offers a concise analysis of Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda series from a historical literature perspective: Anthropologists have found out that all ancient stories (from which Zelda borrows heavy) always have a cyclic nature. This is of course caused by the cyclic nature of our surroundings (day/night, eating, seasons, recurring holidays). This is also not so ancient, Christian society was heavily cyclic. The hero restores order to the world after an villain disrupts it, life and death, birth-childhood-adulthood-death and so forth. All the powerful themes in Zelda are actually cyclic ones and this where the real power comes from. People respond extremely well to it because of functional feedback in our brains. We recognize a pattern that's very alike to the patterns we come across in real-life, so we give that pattern a very heavy functional character. Much like how when something was put on paper, it would become sacred in the Medieval times. This was because in early medieval times, the only text was the Bible...The Text sort of. We still have the tendency today to uphold things higher that are on paper (or the Internet these days). For his comment, Tim wins the pictured, only slightly out-of-date "Be My Valen-slime" shirt from Square Enix. Honorable Mentions Commenter Ephraim Knight compares the overly broad characterization of "gamers" to the stratification of other hobbies: Yes, everyone who plays catch plays baseball. They play according to a standard set of rules found in the game of baseball. Some people play at different levels of the game, but they are all still playing baseball to a degree. So you have your Major Leagues, Minor Leagues, college Baseball, High school, Junior High, Elementary, T-ball, Backyard and Catch. Everyone who plays in any of those capacities is a baseball player. Same goes for cooks and chefs. Same goes for gamers. Just because someone does not play video games for 3+ hours a day does not make them any less of a gamer than those who do. If someone decides to play a bit of Bejewelled on their Cell phone during a commute rather than check their email, yes they are a gamer because they chose to play a game rather than doing something else with that time. If that is the only time they play said game, they are still a gamer. Bart Stewart reacts to a comment on the Chinese industry's profit focus to worry about the artistry of game design: This is the old "it's all just widgets" mentality, which considers everything to be mere "product" that can be squeezed out by easily-replaceable "resources." This is the mindset by which Apple replaced Steve Jobs with Pepsi CEO John Sculley -- remind me again how that worked out? Entertainment requires making things that people will enjoy. The fact that this is not merely a business function is demonstrated in the chart that shows investment versus revenue for some selected games. If the content didn't matter, then the more "resources" spent to make some "product," the more successful that product should be. But it clearly doesn't work that way. No one has a magic formula for knowing which content sells... but it's certain that Content is a factor in the equation. Perhaps that's the "innovation" alluded to elsewhere in the interview. In which case, maybe Western developers don't need to be learning Chinese just yet. But it does mean that Western publishers can't just keep funding sequels. A willingness and ability to invest in fresh new ideas -- in novel content -- is crucial if competing for consumer dollars still matters. A piece on a buyout and layoffs at Lego Universe developer NetDevil led Martain Chandler to offer a somewhat depressing anecdote: A Long Time Ago my son wanted to be a game designer like his ole dad, so I suggested he read Gamasutra. After years of reading how game companies relentlessly mistreat their employees, he's decided to try robotic engineering. He's doing quite well, and, frankly, I'm relieved. Martain Chandler And finally, Lindsay Gaines puts on her hurt face in responding to a story headlined "Interview: Building A Brand New Pokemon Universe With Black And White": Did anyone else think this article was going to be about a Pokemon game based on Peter Molyneux's Black & White? You've raised my expectations and dashed them quite expertly, sir.