"The age of gameplay mechanics has passed" says Fumito Ueda, former Sony developer (ICO, Shadow of the Colossus, The Last Guardian)

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LakeOf9

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To a T is a puzzle adventure game developed by Takahashi's indie studio Uvula, and it follows the odd coming-of-age story of a boy stuck in a T-pose. When its trailer was first released, Ueda apparently reached out to Takahashi to ask him – "How do you play this game?" Takahashi remembers answering that the game didn't have any special mechanics – to which Ueda replied with: "That's great." The Katamari Damacy creator jokingly remarks that he thought "Ah, these are the words of a professional" when he first heard that comment. While Ueda's reply may not seem that serious at first glance, what he was actually trying to suggest is that current day games could benefit from focusing on more than just gameplay mechanics.
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"While I don't know why I replied with 'That's great' back then, I was most likely thinking – The age of gameplay mechanics had already passed. I guess this is not the age to release new devices or offer new mechanics with each and every new game."
Ueda explained that, in his opinion, mechanics don't necessarily need to be "new" or "innovative," because the game's art and story are there to build the experience. "Even if there's nothing novel about the mechanics, you can push the game further with a certain vibe or artwork. Personal preferences aside, what I'm saying is – I think it would be better to give already existing game mechanics more definition."
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If we take into account Ueda's previous works, the logic behind his reasoning becomes much more obvious. In his cult classic game ICO, rather than focusing on gameplay mechanics that would make the game entertaining and comfortable for players, Ueda decided to bring the art and the atmosphere to the forefront. Other prominent creators like NieR: Automata director Yoko Taro have praised Ueda's games exactly for this reason – by using already existing gameplay elements and deliberately ignoring playability in favor of conveying the message through the story and worldbuilding, the game ended up being one-of-a-kind experience for Yoko, and many others.
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automaton-media.com

ICO, Shadow of The Colossus director praises Katamari Damacy creator's new game for not being mechanics-based. "The age of gameplay mechanics has already passed" - AUTOMATON WEST

Fumito Ueda praised Keita Takahashi's To a T for not relying on mechanics, stating that the age of coming up with new mechanics is long over.
automaton-media.com automaton-media.com

I love Ueda and his works, but personally I couldn't disagree with this statement more.
 
I mean, The Last Guardian was an imbecile, slow and unstable version of ICO - and that was released 2016. So according to this logic, "gameplay mechanics has passed" almost a decade ago.
 
Ueda after his sermon.

Jim Carrey Thank You GIF
 
dDoc said:
Mistranslation?
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Automaton is a Japanese website, they would probably be least likely to mistranslate what he said

I actually do agree with the general message of his here, which is that gameplay and mechanics have already evolved into a stable, near final state, and so the expectation of every major new release being a big gameplay revelation or revolution is unfair on everyone involved. The framing of what he said, though, kinda taints the otherwise sound point he is making.
 
Sounds like he pretty much walked it back in the rest of the sentence . . . "not the age to release new devices or offer new mechanics with each and every new game" . . . sounds like a nothingburger to me. He's correct, not every game needs new mechanics or a new device.
 
Once you go this route, you start ignoring everything from difficulty balancing to level design to general playability.

One off game like this is fine by me. Like something made by Udea. Not many more than that though.
 
Obviously, most games aren't going to break the mold. But there's still plenty of room for more evolved/interesting/innovative mechanics than there ever has been. Especially when you take into account VR which is still pretty early days.
 
LakeOf9 said:
Automaton is a Japanese website, they would probably be least likely to mistranslate what he said

I actually do agree with the general message of his here, which is that gameplay and mechanics have already evolved into a stable, near final state, and so the expectation of every major new release being a big gameplay revelation or revolution is unfair on everyone involved. The framing of what he said, though, kinda taints the otherwise sound point he is making.
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yep. calls for 'next-gen gameplay' have always confused me. as in, 'what does 'next-gen gameplay' even mean?'...
 
The reality is there probably are very few, if any at all, new meaningful mechanics to discover. Most innovations are just novelties or gimmicks lacking the necessary substance to support an entirely new form or genre.

Maybe more avenues could be found by radically rethinking controller design, but again that's a field that has plateaud since the whole motion control fad died its entirely predictable death.

I know people want to think that its possible to continually reinvent the wheel, but the plain fact is there's no evidence to support that view.
 
Usually when I see an inflammatory headline on GAG, I read the full context and discover that it's just some mundane shit framed in an outrageous way to farm clicks, but in this instance what he really said is actually far stupider than the headline implies.
 
vaibhavpisal said:
Uncharted 3 -> Uncharted 4 type of leap?

Doom 2016 -> Eternal -> The Dark Ages

Dark Souls -> Sekiro

Halo 5 -> Infinite.

Plenty of examples where devs took mechanics seriously and came up with superior gameplay.
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superior? never saw sekiro's gameplay as superior, simply different. as was bloodborne's. certainly nothing 'next-gen' about either. the uncharted 3 to uncharted 4 'leap'? again, simply modified, not dramatically altered. you're not talking about new forms of gameplay, you're talking about the refining of existing forms. which isn't what i think ueda was talking about...
 
Wrong. Mechanics make all the difference. Without mechanics, you just get a re-skin of the same game over and over. Maybe that';s why he likes it. So he can sell us the same BS.
 
Nothing controversial said here, new mechanics are usually new iterations or evolutions of something old.

The golden era for me was Commodore 64. There was a crazy amount of strange gameplay mechanics and twists, some survived but some were just there for one game alone.

One of the more bizarre ones was a 1-on-1 fighting game where you had a rubber band stuck on your back pulling you back from the center of the arena. When you got hit you lost the foothold and were tumbling and dragged back by the rubber band, then had to work yourself back to the center again and smack your opponent.
No big loss that the mechanic hasn't survived! heh

Trying to think of something truly new that isn't indie.

Maybe Death Stranding? Or is that Mud Runners on foot?

Tricky
 
I think he meant "new" gameplay mechanics, because almost everything is already has been done one way or another.
 
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tr1p1ex said:
why have a game? why not a movie? mini-series? or tv show?
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because that's not what he means, contrary to what the inflamatory headline might suggest.

what the man is trying to say here is that we're long past the age of a game needing to be strong enough mechanically -- as a classic Super Mario game would be -- to be interesting or valuable as a piece of interactive media -- with Keita Takahashi's To a T being proof to it.
 
sure, stuff doesnt always have to be totally new or groundbreaking; you can just refine/tweak existing stuff and provide more content

like shooting an enemy in 3rd person... it's the same core mechanic across so many games, but it feels so different from game to game... it's all the little details that make a huge difference.

but ehhh, fail to innovate long enough, and everything will feel like DLC... and then whats the point
 
Clear said:
The reality is there probably are very few, if any at all, new meaningful mechanics to discover. Most innovations are just novelties or gimmicks lacking the necessary substance to support an entirely new form or genre.

Maybe more avenues could be found by radically rethinking controller design, but again that's a field that has plateaud since the whole motion control fad died its entirely predictable death.

I know people want to think that its possible to continually reinvent the wheel, but the plain fact is there's no evidence to support that view.
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Exactly

Is he wrong? Which AAA game recently has introduced new mechanics?

Souls games use the same mechanics every time and people love them anyway.

Death Stranding, I guess? But thats more like MGS V Lite, specially DS 2
 
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We are past the wild west of game mechanics having drastic improvements that deprecate older games. You would never release a FPS with Goldeneye 007's controls today. Rather, games are a sum of its parts and you can reuse existing mechanics with a twist on the other aspects of a game (art style, story, music, etc) to create a new experience. He isn't even downplaying focusing on game mechanics, but more on refining them rather than inventing new ones. There's not a lot of low hanging fruit left, and that's fine.

As usual people blowing things out of proportion.
 
Nothing , and I mean nothing, is more exciting than a game with new ideas and innovations in the gameplay department.

Even mechanics from other genres being put into a different genre can be a breath of fresh air.

Look at Clair 33, and how a lot of its mechanics exist elsewhere but felt fresh for the jrpg fans.

Or look at death stranding 1. Most of that felt fresh and why it resonated with me so much. I'd never built roads, or rocked a baby in a game, or thrown my shit and piss to kill BTs.

The first time I played hotline Miami!? Crack.

The first time I played loop hero? Crack!

This guy can take his shitty last guardian and fuck off.
 
He's right.

It's basically similar to how people always complain about a lack of "next-gen gameplay", while not being able to even define what this next-gen gameplay is.

He didn't even say gameplay isn't important, it's just not necessarily the driving-factor as the evolution of games has brought us to the point where gameplay is now more about refinement of what we already have and focus is shifting to more immersive, living and breathing worlds with lots of interactivity and in some cases connectivity as well.
 
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vaibhavpisal said:
Uncharted 3 -> Uncharted 4 type of leap?

Doom 2016 -> Eternal -> The Dark Ages

Dark Souls -> Sekiro

Halo 5 -> Infinite.

Plenty of examples where devs took mechanics seriously and came up with superior gameplay.
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You missed his point.

None of those games on the left do anything new in terms of mechanics, yet they're all broadly solid fresh-feeling gaming experiences. That's his point, i.e. there is not a lot of "new gameplay" ideas any more. And he's totally right.

Even indie games, which are supposed to be the cradle of innovation, are dominated by a bajillion permutations of the same survival gameplay or extraction shooter mechanics.
 
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I think people are overreacting.
I think he is mostly right, these days it's hard to find games with truly groundbreaking and never seen before mechanics. It's all about refining existing mechanics or integrating them in ways that feel unique due to the setting or context in which they are used.

It's a bit like that argument that there's only seven basic plot structures.

TheThreadsThatBindUs said:
You missed his point.

None of those games on the left do anything new in terms of mechanics, yet they're all broadly solid fresh-feeling gaming experiences. That's his point, i.e. there is not a lot of "new gameplay" ideas any more. And he's totally right.

Even indie games, which are supposed to be the cradle of innovation, are dominated by a bajillion permutations of the same survival gameplay or extraction shooter mechanics.
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Yup.

Death Stranding, which many people have mentioned here, is a good example.
There aren't a lot of mechanics in the game that are groundbreaking and never seen before. What makes it unique it's how they are presented, how the game focuses on the traversal instead of the combat, how unique the story and setting are, etc. But purely mechanically you spend a lot of your time doing stuff we've seen before: Walking, moving around in vehicles, building stuff with materials you have collected, doing fetch quests, some basic stealth and third person shooting, etc
 
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Ueda has only been part of 5 gives his entire career. And he's 55 years old. His games definitely skew to style over substance, have performance issues (until it gets remastered on newer hardware), and take forever to make.

His first 2 games he wasnt director, but were D and Enemy Zero FMV/cinema clip kinds of games. And his last 3 Sony games were big on style, short on gameplay and can have massive game engine performance issues. I had SoC on PS2 and first time I played it it was so choppy, I thought the disc was skipping and I rebooted the console. I dont think that game ran at over 20 fps and all you did was find the golem dude and then jump and move on it and stab dark spots. I never had a PS2 game run so lousy making gameplay a chop fest.

I get what he's saying, but pretty funny for this kind of game director to say this about gaming considering the games he's made.
 
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semiconscious said:
superior? never saw sekiro's gameplay as superior, simply different. as was bloodborne's. certainly nothing 'next-gen' about either. the uncharted 3 to uncharted 4 'leap'? again, simply modified, not dramatically altered. you're not talking about new forms of gameplay, you're talking about the refining of existing forms. which isn't what i think ueda was talking about...
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These are the types of improvements or "different" types of gameplay you get when devs focus on mechanics.

Thats extremely valuable.

Udea has done some good work. Not sure why he is underselling them. Shadow of the Colossus had good gameplay.

TheThreadsThatBindUs said:
You missed his point.

None of those games on the left do anything new in terms of mechanics, yet they're all broadly solid fresh-feeling gaming experiences. That's his point, i.e. there is not a lot of "new gameplay" ideas any more. And he's totally right.

Even indie games, which are supposed to be the cradle of innovation, are dominated by a bajillion permutations of the same survival gameplay or extraction shooter mechanics.
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Depends on perspective. I see a lot of value in refinements (Uncharted 3 > 4) or new combinations (Halo 5 fast sprint based action to Infinite's open world with grappling hook)

By this logic even stories, all the themes, their permutations have been seen before. There isn't any new story being told cause some part of it has been told elsewhere.
 
To paint with too wide of a brush, mechanics have regressed to appeal to larger audiences and for a lot of studios taken a backseat, to put it lightly, in favor of production values.
 
So the guys essentially says:

The days of brand new gameplay mechanics popping up all over the place is likely behind us so the challenge today is using art, story, music, etc to enhance existing mechanics to create new experiences.

Right?
 
vaibhavpisal said:
Depends on perspective. I see a lot of value in refinements (Uncharted 3 > 4) or new combinations (Halo 5 fast sprint based action to Infinite's open world with grappling hook)

By this logic even stories, all the themes, their permutations have been seen before. There isn't any new story being told cause some part of it has been told elsewhere.
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Again, you're missing the point. He's not making a claim about value.

He's making a descriptive claim about the state of the current gaming landscape in terms of the lack of new and original gameplay ideas. That shouldn't be mistaken for a claim that unoriginal gameplay ideas cannot themselves be combined in original ways. Ueda himself makes this point. His entire point is that the way to innovate in game design nowadays is not to create new mechanics, but rather to create something new and original out of known and pre-existing building blocks.

Not only is he totally right from a creative standpoint, but also from a business standpoint too. There's significant value in using mature and well proven gameplay mechanics that devs know gamers will enjoy to build something unique and new. It's combining the known (systems and mechanics) with the unknown (setting and story) to provide a fresh and original-feeling experience that also feels familiar to gamers.... it's a great way to reduce the commercial risk of games development; in an era where games are more expensive than ever to make.

It also reduces the purchasing risk on the customer side, i.e. as a gamer, I know I'll be more likely to enjoy this new survival game because it shares gameplay mechanics with the last big game I bought and enjoyed.
 
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You guys got to remember if you look at the 5 games Ueda has in his career, he's a guy big into art and style. And two of those games were FMV kinds of games. Gameplay is definitely not a strong suit. Nor is game engine performance making it worse.

If there's a art/gameplay spectrum. On one side are games that have great style and art, but low in gameplay. And the other is the opposite, Ueda's game would be on the high style side. While a game like Balatro which is a weird poker game with wacky gameplay and Windows 3.1 graphics would be on the other.

Ueda's not the kind of guy who would ever think of a Balatro, Minecraft, or RPG with tons of depth gameplay. He's an artsy kind of game maker.
 
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