The game industry changed with the launch of Grand Theft Auto 3 in 2001. It certainly wasn't the first game with adult content, but its astronomical success helped prove there was a giant audience out there for mature titles. Many major publishers were suddenly a lot more willing to make games that the ESRB would likely slap with an M rating, but there was one notable exception: Nintendo.
"The games industry is broader than ever, and there are many different ways to produce a game these days," Shigeru Miyamoto said in a 2003 interview with the Swedish Superplay Magazine. That interview has had various translations circulating around the internet for years, including this one from the delightfully named Miyamoto Shrine.
"Apparently many older gamers like Grand Theft Auto," Miyamoto continued, "but that doesn't mean Nintendo will develop similar games, instead it's our task to find new ways and create substitutes. It is our duty to produce alternatives to GTA."
The context here is important. This interview was published around the launch of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, which was famously criticized for its cartoonish, "kiddie" visual style. Yes, it's rightly recognized as one of the best Zelda games these days, but the discourse among the teens and 20-somethings games like GTA 3 had started to court was a lot more skeptical.
But while Zelda has experimented with more "mature" art styles – Twilight Princess always seemed to be a way to directly address criticisms of The Wind Waker, after all – Nintendo's approach hasn't really changed. "I have never intended to make games for a specific age, I want to make games for both kids and adults," Miyamoto said in that interview.
And, of course, Nintendo's never made games featuring wanton crime and murder, either. "I think it's important that we producers keep things inside moral and ethic borders," Miyamoto said. "I actually think that game designers have some responsibility for what we create. Of course the art of freedom and the right to speak are important, but we should be careful with what we create. Games are interactive entertainment and could affect young people…"
I'm not certain any individual Mario game has threatened to be a capital-C, capital-E Cultural Event the way GTA 6 promises to be, but maybe that doesn't matter, since sales estimates for the Mario franchise almost double those of the GTA series. Nintendo has apparently found the success it has over the years by offering alternatives to GTA, and I don't expect it's going to stop now.
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