Pacman Creator Toru Iwatani Sends Cautionary Message To The Industry

Game Career Guide has an elucidating interview with Pacman creator, Toru Iwatani, in which the designer talks speaks about Pacman and game design. What stood out to me was his rationale for sharing his thoughts on how to design a well thought out game: it’s a part of his ‘message’ to the industry.

“Having this sort of very detailed, yet neat and approachable design was one of the main points I wanted to get across at my talk at GDC this year. The reason I want to emphasize this is that starting last year or so, you’ve had this flood of very simple games on the iPhone and social networks and so forth. They’re very “easy” games, and by easy I mean easy to design and to pump out by the dozen. I think more thought needs to go toward how games present themselves to the user, to how they can be made more fun, and so my GDC presentation was a sort of cautionary message for the industry as a whole.”

Iwatani goes further, and says that most mobile or social games today will not have a long-standing impact. “They may just be seen as social games or mobile games, but the hardware’s going to do nothing but advance, and more and more things are going to be possible. Making games with this well-thought-out approach to design will help them become loved and fondly remembered for a longer time. When you look at games coming out today, it’s doubtful that any of us will be talking about them in ten years’ time. We have to focus on making games that people will remember a decade from now, or else we’ll lose our audience, probably.”

Will people remember games like Angry Birds 10 years from now, or will it get lost in the flood of mobile games? Is the social games bubble just going to burst one of these days? Who knows! Let’s just hope that Google takes Iwatani’s message to heart when designing their own games.