Gundam Creator Thinks "Games Are Evil"

[Keane Ng]

Gundam Creator Thinks "Games Are Evil"

Mobile Suit Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino thinks "videogames are evil," but he doesn't mean it in a bad way. He just thinks we could all do much better.

The audiences for Japanese megafranchise Gundam and videogames tend to intersect. I'm willing to bet that a decent amount of people who like Gundam like videogames. Hell, we've got someone who fits that description to a tee on The Escapist staff, our very own model robot hobbyist and overall Gundam nerd John Funk [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/profiles/view/CantFaketheFunk].

But the man who made Gundam what it is today - creator Yoshiyuki Tomino - doesn't seem to have much love for games at all.

"I think that video games are evil," Tomino said during his keynote at a Japanese game developers' conference. "[Gaming] is not a type of activity that provides any support to our daily lives, and all these consoles are just consuming electricity! Let's say we have about three billion people on this planet wasting their time, bringing no productivity at all. Add 10 billion more people, and what would happen to our planet? Video games are assisting the death of our planet!"

Harsh words, but it seems that Tomino means it to be tough love more than anything else. "You have to find the median -- that games are not evil, perhaps not necessarily good either, but something that can be considered a pastime," he said. "What would make people enjoy a game? How do you make them feel like it is not just a waste of time...this is what I want to tell you: I want you to create a game that does not negatively affect our daily lives and is something that is considered more productive."

Of course, as Gamasutra [http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25118] rightly points out, Tomino has probably raked in a decent amount of cash from the countless videogames that have been created from Gundam. And as awesome as Gundam is, can you really consider it something that has benefited society in the way he wants games to? Let's not get too defensive, though. Tomino sees plenty of flaws in his own industry as well, and likens them to those facing the progress of games development.

"People working on CG have become caught up with how to use these tools, but do not give a thought on creating content that will be relevant 10 years from now," Tomino said. "As long as we remember to ask ourselves the question, I believe that a hint towards the next step can be seen"

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[ZeroMachine]

I have one thing to say to that: Organized Sports.

How are they contributing to society? The only difference between the two is that one consumes electricity and the other wastes millions of dollars on players.

 

[JRCB]

I have one thing to say to that: Organized Sports.

How are they contributing to society? The only difference between the two is that one consumes electricity and the other wastes millions of dollars on players.

They make people drink a lot of shitty beer and cause murders.
Videogames make people eat a lot of shitty food and cause mass murders.

ONE IS OBVIOUSLY WORSE

One of these things is not like the other....

Back on topic: What about people who watch TV? They don't do much, either. Many video games allow you to communicate with other people. All video games require thinking of some sort. Puzzle games can cause you to think hard about the problem at hand, and feeling awesome when you defeat the challenge. Some video games can tell amazing stories, competing with many great novels or other stories. TV, you just sit there and watch. No interaction.

 

[Ancientgamer]

arguably anything which creates jobs is a productive industry.

 

[Jeronus]

No wonder Gundam video games suck! He is trying to veer gamers away from their favorite pastime by making crappy titles like Dynasty Warriors: Gundam. Watching Gundam wastes electricity and how exactly is watching the Gundam series supposed to make me any more productive in life.

 

[ZeroMachine]

I have one thing to say to that: Organized Sports.

How are they contributing to society? The only difference between the two is that one consumes electricity and the other wastes millions of dollars on players.

They make people drink a lot of shitty beer and cause murders.
Videogames make people eat a lot of shitty food and cause mass murders.

ONE IS OBVIOUSLY WORSE

It's the one with the beer, right?

 

[kaiser_what]

Awesome, hearing this from a guy nicknamed "kill 'em all".

 

[enzilewulf]

No wonder Gundam video games suck! He is trying to veer gamers away from their favorite pastime by making crappy titles like Dynasty Warriors: Gundam. Watching Gundam wastes electricity and how exactly is watching the Gundam series supposed to make me any more productive in life.

lol..you got a good point...maybe he wants us to know what to fight for or somthing, maybe he is traing us for gundam combat lol! ...that would be sweet, but anyway your right, but what i always see in his animes are alternative electriscity (i know my spelling sucks) maybe he is trying to tell us that we need to be more concernative.. but you are right watching gundam doesnt prep us for anything, and it wastes electricty

 

[Firia]

Goodness... I cannot help but shake my head at the level of trite garbage that came out of Yoshiyukis' mouth. For one, he's in the Entertainment industry. As creator of Gundam, his lot from the start was to entertain people for a span of time in front of an Idiot-Box, or a [comic] book. His work is so closely related to video games, that the only major difference is interactivity.

So a man of the entertainment industry bashes a medium of the entertainment industry. That makes Yoshiyuki every bit as evil.

(At least now I know why every Gundam game under the sun that's been released to date sucks rancid bananas.)

No wonder Gundam video games suck!

dang, I got ninja'd.

 

[Rigs83]

Didn't some guy burn down his own house [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/93812-Japanese-Man-Burns-Down-House-Over-Gundam-Models] because his mom threw out his Gundam Models!

 

[Bored Tomatoe]

And a show about giant robots is productive and totally doesn't waste electricity.

 

[Therumancer]

Well, if you want to get technical any form of escapism by it's very nature is not productive.

Right now the world is facing an unusual situation on of the fact that the heralded "lost generation" arrived, and like people always do, there was no preparation for it at all, either in reality or mentally.

As a result you have a lot of people who never had a chance (Generation X) sitting around throughout the world consuming escapism and contributing very little to society. It's easy to look at those people as "a waste" or whatever else, but with a global economic crisis, constant downsizing of businesses, and the fact that the people making the criticisms are usually Baby Boomers for whom things worked properly (ie as they grew up their parents generation was slowing down and phasing out) it's pretty easy to see where this is more or less an irresolvable problem.

I'll also be blunt in saying that Gundam seems to have received a lot of criticism in it's own sphere (as the article has pointed out). Gundam-Mania being a big deal in Japan, and the big elements of it being novels, anime, and of course model kits. All of which are mocked as being part of uber-fandom and huge wastes of time and money. I think that by attacking video games (which are a small part of the whole Gundam equasion I'd say, especially given the time the franchise has been around) it helps present him as being fairly responsible.

Probably all of the above isn't very well articulated, but hopefully I get my points accross.


As far as organized team sports and such go, I tend to disagree with them being in the same catagory as video games. To be honest people, especially kids, who get into sports and wind up playing them to emulate athletes wind up exercising a lot which is seem as a positive thing. Athletes also being popular because they are very good at something that "everyone does" just as much as what they do being something people emulate because of them.

It is easy for people with more cereberal forms of escapism to look down on athletics, just as those into athletics look down on the nerds and their mental exercises. Both tend to be somewhat out of context to each other, and honestly those who actually get involved in athletics do wind up with some positive benefits of their fandom. However the fat kid with baseball cards, or the flabby loser who parks in front of the TV, who neither do athletics OR have the brainpower to truely appreciate a lot of the other things that nerds do, are increasingly the stereotype and have no real inherant value to their interests. I guess you can say Jocks are worthy of respect even if they are jerks, but even so look back at the old joke about how "If you don't play sports, be an Athletic Supporter" pretty much summarizes the majority of sports fanboys with no involvement in the actual sport at any level what so ever.

On the original subject if I had to fire back at the Gundam creator, I'd probably go after the model kits which seem to have been the financial bread and butter of the franchise for most of it's existance. They cost a lot of money, involve a lot of sedimentary activity, and produce absolutly nothing but forty billion tons of absolute garbage, the materials of which could have been used for other things.

I don't begrudge anyone modeling as a hobby, but truthfully it can be targeted as a waste as much as gaming is (and oddly has more mainstream acceptance despite being worse, modeling involving everything from robots, to cars, to boats and trains).

>>>----Therumancer--->

 

[AceDiamond]

This is a man who once made a series in which the entire universe got killed.

Also, if we're talking about electricity expenditures, I guess we better turn off all our computers and shut down the internet cause that's a lot of electricity too.

While I can understand some of his points, some of them are just outright silly.