Malstrom har altid ret

The Differentiation of Content and Value

From the Investor Q and A from Activision Blizzard we hear:

And so we want to make sure we continue to offer our players, not only the best content but also the best value.

The comment is made in a reply to the Diablo 3 and WoW promotion (“Subscribe for WoW for a year and get Diablo 3 free”).

Why am I mentioning this?

Two reasons. One, people think I made up this word called ‘content’. But it is a term that has always been used in entertainment. Content is to entertainment as food is to a restaurant. A restaurant can attempt to sell through environments, through friendly staff, cheap prices, but at the end of the day it is all about the food. In the same way, entertainment can try to sell itself with jingles, pretty ladies, and grand introductions, but at the end of the day it is about the content. People do not read books because of their covers. The cover is not the content of the book.

Second, Reggie Fils-Aime said that ‘by content, he means value’ which is not the case. Nintendo does not believe in content. They only believe in the process of the gameplay, not the big picture of what that gameplay represents. Nintendo would be unable to make Super Mario Brothers today.

Gasps go out from the audience.

Content was the primary reason why Super Mario Brothers, Legend of Zelda, and Metroid sold so well back in the 1980s. With Zelda and Metroid, it is obvious. There is so much game in there. Zelda and Metroid had vast, vast worlds hidden in their cartridges unlike any other game.

Super Mario Brothers had a massive number of stages at the time (1985) with eight worlds with four stages each being 32 levels! And there was so much diversity among the levels! One stage, you are underground. Another, you are in the sky. And yet another, you are underwater. Or you are on bridges dodging flying fish. Or you’re in a castle. While the game mechanics were very important, it is undeniable that Super Mario Brothers kept tickling one’s imagination. Where did those pipes go? Did they lead to interesting rooms or lands like that one pipe did? What is this Mushroom Kingdom? Just by using sprites hinting at more, Nintendo made a billion dollars. It was hinting at a coherent universe. Super Mario Brothers 3 is loved not because of the tanooki suit but because it clarified this coherent universe with maps and better exploration of the unique worlds. Games like Ocarina of Time also are so loved because it hinted at a coherent universe. As Nintendo games deal only with ‘gameplay processes’ and away from content, the universe disintegrates as does fans’ passion. Zelda is going the way of bargain bin PC adventure games (mostly because the director loves those type of games). Metroid has disintegrated. And Mario is moving in that direction with things that do not make sense in the Mario Universe like ‘Miis’ or games set in space.

I’d honestly like to know why Miyamoto is hostile to the idea that games are about content. What does the huge success of GTA 3 show? Or World of Warcraft? It is that players go crazy over much quality content. It is no different when we first played Legend of Zelda for the first time and saw this HUGE WORLD on the NES (it may not seem that way today, but compare Zelda to any other NES game or any video game prior made to that. And there were TWO QUESTS). Metroid seemed to scroll on forever and we were convinced there was a secret world in it. Super Mario Brothers was just massive.

But once upon a time, Miyamoto sold the idea of Super Mario Brothers using five worlds when he actually wanted eight. And once upon a time, Miyamoto said in an interview published by Nintendo Power that Super Mario Brothers 3 was about the further exploration of the Mushroom Worlds introduced in Mario 1. So at the height of his career, Miyamoto thought content was very important.

Iwata interrupts the blog post to say, “But content is very expensive.”

No, it isn’t. It is only expensive if you try to detail every blade of grass and every snot in a pig’s snout. Artists are the biggest enemies to content. Artists always want ‘more detail, more detail’ where it is better for a game to have more content even if it isn’t as detailed.

“But what about Twilight Princess? Certainly, it has much content.”

No, it doesn’t. Empty fields and boring dungeons are an example not of content but of diluted content. The final dungeon was so disappointingly small. Content is the substance. Pouring water into a drink does not make more of a drink. It just dilutes it. It becomes ‘watered down’. Everyone would rather have a drink that isn’t watered down than a drink, that has more liquid in it, that had water placed in it.

“Why does content matter?”

If you wish to prosper, you must allow the customer to prosper. Content feels like the customer is prospering. They feel they got so much for so little. They then tell all their friends, and it spreads.