I have very few points of reference when it comes to both Dragon Quest as a staple RPG and Minecraft as a sandbox creation tool, but the two combined really struck a chord with me. Dragon Quest Builders gave you the freedom to build in a world very similar to Minecraft, but the the structure and objectives of a classic RPG. It directed my creative efforts in a way that made me finally appreciate its gameplay, so you bet your blocks a sequel is exactly the kind of news we need for a Monday morning.
Revealed during the Dragon Quest Summer Festival, Dragon Quest Builders 2 is currently in development for PS4 and Nintendo Switch. The original game launched for both PS4 and PS Vita, so it seems the rising popularity of the Switch is enough to usurp the Sony handheld for some upcoming projects. As a formula, Builders 2 seems relatively unchanged. The brief livestream of early development footage showed a familiar looking game, albeit with some slight changes that fans of the first game might pick up on.
Most noticeably, Builders 2 is expanding the range of freedom you have around its world. You’ll be able to swim and mine for blocks underwater now, while also taking to the skies in a very Breath of the Wild styled hand glider to traverse large spaces in no time flat. Slightly less noticeable are changes to some of the numbers – like being able to stack triple the amount of blocks than in the first game. Builders 2 will also feature 4-player co-op, which is a neat touch.
There’s no release date yet and the project looks to be in its early days, but anyone who had the chance to play the original Builders will know just how addictive its formula was. If this sequel captures that with a better range of motion, its going to be another game you’ll need to pick up immediately.
A minute of offscreen footage from Harvest Moon: Light of Hope has been unveiled via Nintendo World Report and fans aren't happy.
With a like-to-dislike ratio strongly tilted towards the latter, it's safe to say that this is not the Harvest Moon people wanted, at least not when it comes to its aesthetic with an awkwardly animated 3D model gliding over a terrain of cheap-looking assets.
It's worth noting that Harvest Moon: Light of Hope isn't actually made by the usual series developer Marvelous. In a strange game of legal hopscotch, Marvelous wasn't able to keep the name of its own series when it switched publishers away from Natsume. Now the long-running series has been renamed Story of Seasons, and it's distributed by Marvelous' own publishing company XSEED in North America, while Nintendo publishes it in Europe.
As for the Harvest Moon moniker, Natsume kept the name and has continued to make its own farming sims under the known brand. First there was Talbot's 2014 entry Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley, and now Natsume is trying its own hand at developing duties with Light of Hope.
Not much is known about Harvest Moon: Light of Hope, other than it's set in a small troubled village where the player character finds themselves shipwrecked, and they must save the town through – what else? – farming.
Harvest Moon: Light of Hope is in development for Switch, PS4, and PC.
Minecraft's game-changing cross-network update is now available to beta test if you are on a Windows 10 PC or Android PC.
Xbox One beta access will follow “in the coming days”, Microsoft stated in a blog update.
Each version will let you play with people on other platforms, such is the nature of Minecraft's Better Together Update, which will launch properly this autumn. (There's no beta for Nintendo Switch players, though Switch will also be getting cross-network play).
The update adds features yet to appear on console – stained glass, parrots, coarse dirt and perhaps most importantly, world conversion.
There's a handy FAQ on how the update will work for each platform – which is just as well, as it is a little complicated.
PC folk can download the Minecraft Better Together Update beta now via the Xbox Insider App. On Android, it will be available to those who have already bought the game via the Google Play Store.
Worlds you have been building and playing on already will be present in the Better Together Update, and if you play with a world from Xbox One and Nintendo Switch then you'll get extra world generated for you when you reach the edge of your map.
Microsoft has also included several details on parental controls and child safety, after Sony's Jim Ryan told Eurogamer PlayStation players would not be part of the Better Together cross-platform update to keep them safe within the PlayStation Network.
“The Better Together Update will enable players to discover new content and creations across all devices, as well as the option to find new and like-minded players, as with any multiplayer game,” Microsoft wrote. Helping keep kids safe online is a priority for Minecraft, and we provide parental controls across platforms via Xbox Live which help parents choose the content, communication and sharing settings that are right for their families.
“For many, the most important of these is making sure that your kids are using child accounts which you have control over. To do this on Xbox, you can find out more at http://aka.ms/xblsafety.”
As for the likelihood of PlayStation people getting the update in the future? Microsoft continues to say it is open to the idea.
“We are still in discussions with Sony about PlayStation and have nothing to confirm. We would love to work with Sony to bring players on PlayStation 4 into this ecosystem as well.”
Microsoft recently released a big new update for Minecraft that marked the beginning of cross-platform play, and alongside the update updated its safety features for playing the game online.
If you want to play Minecraft online you have to have an Xbox Live account.
In a lengthy article on the Minecraft website titled, “How to stay safe online,” Microsoft outlined safety tips for playing the game with others, and announced some new requirements.
An Xbox Live sign-in is now required for online multiplayer no matter which platform you're playing on. That includes Android phones and, eventually, Nintendo Switch. You need a gamertag to connect to a Realm, an official server partner or a hosted Minecraft world via an IP address.
“By creating an Xbox Live account and gamertag, when logged in you can set your own privacy and multiplayer preferences, create and manage accounts for your family members, and stake your claim on your name in the Minecraft universe,” Microsoft said.
“Plus, because everyone will have an account, if you do run into any creepers ruining the fun, it's easy to report them, and for our Enforcement team to identify the player in question.”
JASON!
Of course if you are playing on a local area network (LAN) connection, you won't need to sign in to play with friends on the same network.
In the same article, Microsoft detailed how to add, mute, block or report players from the pause menu.
“We take reports very seriously,” Microsoft said. “All our players are expected to adhere to the Xbox Live Code of Conduct. When you report bad behavior you're helping to create a positive and welcoming experience for all Minecraft players.”
There's a lot more in the article on Minecraft online safety. Clearly, it's important for Microsoft to highlight the work it's doing and the steps it's taken to keep Minecraft safe for users – and it's easy to see why.
Microsoft explains how to set privacy settings, parental controls and child accounts on Xbox Live.
At E3 in June, Sony executive Jim Ryan expressed concern about letting PlayStation gamers connect with those on other platforms. His comments came after Microsoft announced Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PC, mobile and VR Minecraft players would all play together.
In defending Sony's decision to block cross-play, Ryan told Eurogamer:
“We've got to be mindful of our responsibility to our install base. Minecraft – the demographic playing that, you know as well as I do, it's all ages but it's also very young. We have a contract with the people who go online with us, that we look after them and they are within the PlayStation curated universe. Exposing what in many cases are children to external influences we have no ability to manage or look after, it's something we have to think about very carefully.”
Ryan's comments clearly irked Xbox boss Phil Spencer, who told GiantBomb in a later interview:
“The fact that somebody would kind of make an assertion that somehow we're not keeping Minecraft players safe, I found – not only from a Microsoft perspective, but from a game industry perspective – like, I don't know why that has to become the dialogue. Like, that doesn't seem healthy for anyone.
“We take the safety of Xbox Live, of our players across all of our games – inside of Minecraft, obviously an incredibly important part of that – it's incredibly important to our team. We would never put Minecraft in a place where we felt like […] we weren't keeping our players safe.”
Fast forward a couple of months to the release of Minecraft's Better Together update, and you can see Microsoft hammer home Spencer's point. The message is loud and clear: it's safe to play Minecraft on Xbox Live.
While we're on the subject of cross-platform play, Microsoft has said it's still talking with Sony about PlayStation but has nothing to confirm right now. “We would love to work with Sony to bring players on PlayStation 4 into this ecosystem as well,” Microsoft said.
Minecraft is adding more community content to the Marketplace with a new batch of content packs.
A whole slew of content is hitting the Minecraft Marketplace today thanks to five new community-created packs. Most notable is the Infinity Dungeon EX map, which generates a new dungeon every time you enter. On top of that, however, players can now get their hands on a bunch of new skins with packs themed after summer fun, sports, medieval kings, and more.
Here's a quick look at all of the new packs hitting the Marketplace today:
Infinity Dungeon EX – Fight alone or alongside friends through an intense randomly-generated dungeon full of horrible dangers, tricky puzzles and amazing treasure! Discover the secret of the Infinity Core, but make sure to watch your back…
Summer Festival Skin Pack – Throw on your summer gear and hop down to the beach! Live life like a turtle or a mermaid, and show off those summer colors with this seasonal skin pack!
Survivors Skin Pack – The world has gone to ruins, but these characters manage to survive against all odds. This skin pack is all about the rough-and-tough adventurers who use their strength and ingenuity to survive yet another day.
Kings and Paupers Skin Pack – From the heights of the castle down to the streets of the city, this pack will immerse you in the European medieval era. Serve as a virtuous queen, live as a beggar, bake bread, or handle the axe as an executioner in service of the crown!
Sports Skin Pack – Transform into an athlete with the Sports Skin Pack! Team player? Pick up a ball as a volleyball or soccer player. In the mood for gracefully sliding around? Become a figure skater or hockey player. Choose from 15 different sports and get your game on.
As far as cost is concerned, each pack runs 310 coins each. The exception is the Infinity Dungeon EX map, which is slightly more expensive at 830 coins.
This comes after the initial introduction of the Minecraft Marketplace in May, which is a place for Minecraft community creator partners to sell their work to players. Anyone on the Bedrock Engine, which currently includes Minecraft on Windows 10 and Mobile platforms, can pick up the new Marketplace content now. Minecraft on Xbox One and Nintendo Switch are expected to join the Bedrock ecosystem soon.
Legendary game maker opens up about being a designer rather than an artist, his love of carpentry and why he's not retiring any time soon
Shigeru Miyamoto – the man responsible for creating Mario back in 1981 – has been in the US promoting the December 15 release of Super Mario Run for iPhone and iPad all week, keeping a brutal schedule that has included playing guitar with The Roots on The Tonight Show and speaking to a packed crowd at the New York Soho Apple Store. His new game marks a massive change of approach for the pioneering company he's worked at for more than 30 years, as it sees its crown jewel property appearing on devices not made by Nintendo.
We caught up with Miyamoto at the end of his big publicity tour and spoke to him about his creative process, his feelings about getting older, whether he's thinking of retiring any time soon, and how he sees himself as a creator. He also reveals that he's been able to find the time to work on ideas for Nintendo's theme park partnership with Universal by not leading the charge on the company's upcoming Switch console.
You mentioned in your presentation at the Apple Store this week that your core team has been together for 30 years. How do you keep that relationship together and keep it working? It's interesting, because people often ask me what I'm most proud of and for the longest time it was a question I always really struggled with. A few years ago I realized that the thing that I'm really the most proud of is that I've been working with the same core group of people for the last 30 years – and really it's because you just don't see that happen very often.
There's myself, Takeshi Tezuka, Toshihiko Nakago and there's actually a fourth member of our group too – Koji Kondo. Usually it's the four of us that work on things together. There are probably a few reasons for it. I think we're actually somewhat special because we're all Nintendo employees, and that's unique compared to what you'll sometimes see with other creative groups. The other is that in working together over the past 30 years, we've all fallen into these very specific roles in the development process and that's enabled us to work really well.
What are those roles? Well, I'm the boss. Because I'm the oldest.
What's key is that all that we do is work very closely together to make sure the thing we're doing is really fun. That's what we're always striving for. One of the things we've done to maintain the relationship is that we spend a lot of time together. Japan is a country where people really work a lot, so every day we always eat lunch together and go to dinner together.
When there's an idea for a game or something that we think is just going to be fun, generally the four of us share a similar opinion. We all kind of agree on the fundamentals. The other thing I've noticed is that although we have this strange convergence of opinions, when other people come into the group and see what we're getting all excited about, people will often question us and say “oh, does that really seem that fun?”
We just really trust each other, and that came into play with Super Mario Run because it was easy for us to drill down and know what we should and shouldn't do on mobile. We aligned very quickly.
So what did that look like? This time from the very beginning we decided that we wanted to make the very simplest Mario game that we possibly could. When we first made Super Mario Bros. 30 years ago, obviously a lot of people played it and part of the reason they liked it was that all you did was move to the right and jump. It was pretty simple. Gradually Mario games have become more complex and it's harder for people to control now. This time we started off with the idea of “what if we made a Mario game where all you do is jump and everything else is handled automatically?” Then we had to think about how we could take that basic structure and make it fun.
You mentioned earlier that you're the boss because you're the oldest. Do you ever worry about getting older and whether what you think is fun is really in tune with other people? Even if I worried about that, it wouldn't do us any good. For me it's much more fun to see if the thing that I made is actually going to sell well. Rather than me trying to create something that I think other people will like, I just keep making things that I like and then I just see if other people like them too.
I kinda of look at it as if I'm running a talent agency, and I have all these different people that when there's new technology and we're doing something new with it, I always choose Mario to be the one to represent it
What's your main contribution on the team? Are you the creative guy? What's your main focus? I guess if I was using a construction analogy, then I'm always focused on building the structural framework for the game. So, because of that, it's become easier for me to decide whether changes that we're making need to affect the overall game or just simple changes to specific small areas.
You've lived with Mario as your creation for 30 years. How would you describe your relationship with him? Are you sick of him yet? I kinda of look at it as if I'm running a talent agency, and I have all these different people that when there's new technology and we're doing something new with it, I always choose Mario to be the one to represent it. Then, if we have something else that's maybe not quite the right fit then we choose one of the other characters. That's usually how I approach things with him. Also, we've always evolved Mario's look – so we try and keep him fresh.
What inspires and influences you? In the past you've said you don't really look at games for inspiration, but what about movies or TV shows? Generally I try to not look at anything competitive, but what I will do is watch a lot of television. Especially dramas. I used to read a lot of manga when I was younger, and I was always very interested in which ones sold well and which ones didn't. Lately I've been looking at all the TV dramas to try and see what it is about them that makes them successful. I'm looking at how they're structured because I think there's something to the way those TV dramas are entertaining people that can overlap with games in some way.
Beyond that, it's all about my everyday life experiences and looking at how the things that interest me can really work in a game.
Like what? Many years before we made Wii Fit there was this thing in Japan where people would get together in their homes and they would do this silly dance. I remember when I went over to someone's house in the neighborhood and there was this guy who was a very well-dressed lawyer, and he started doing this dance in his living room. I saw his kids laughing so hard at their dad doing something silly, and he was obviously having a good time too. This was one of the images I had in mind when we started making the games for Wii Fit and the Balance Board.
You're insanely busy still. How do you make the time for things outside of work? I do tend to work pretty late during the week, but one thing that I always do is make sure that on the weekend I spend time with my family. My weekend time has generally been very separate for work. I don't golf or gamble, because those things take up a lot of time. I've given up those kinds of things.
What do you like to do? I used to go camping with my kids or just stay home. People would sometimes give me a hard time for not really doing anything. Now my kids are grown and out of the house, so I spend a lot of time gardening with my wife. The other thing that I like to do is carpentry. I like to build furniture.
Is that why recent games have had more creative elements, like Mario Maker or the Kingdom Builder in Super Mario Run? I don't know if it's about the carpentry specifically, but whenever I start working on anything I always like to sit down a draw a picture of it first. When I actually start working on a project, then I'm thinking about it all the time. Whether it's the carpentry or a game or whatever.
I'm a designer. I don't think of myself as creating works, I really think of myself as creating products for people to enjoy. That's why I've always called my games products rather than works of art
Do you still work in a pretty analog way? Do you like to draw things out by hand before doing work on a computer? It's less drawing pictures of what I think the game will be, and more a lot of graphs and flowcharts. Because I'm designing the structure of play, it's really more of a drafting process where I'm crafting the flow of things and how it'll work in the game. That's what I always put on paper first. Even with the carpentry it's all about drafting first. You need to make sure you have all the measurements, and then in your head you have to understand how you're going to fit all the pieces together.
So are you an artist or a designer? I'm a designer. I don't think of myself as creating works, I really think of myself as creating products for people to enjoy. That's why I've always called my games products rather than works of art. It's not about coming up with an idea and trying to make that idea, the work of a planner is to work within the constraints of what you're given and make the best possible thing you can.
It's not that I ever said I wanted to make video games, but once I started making them I said “OK, now that I'm making them, I'm going to make the best video games I can.” Whatever I was building, video games or not, I'll always approach it as trying to build the best possible thing I can within the framework I'm given.
A few years ago you talked about maybe stepping away or possibly retiring. Do you think you'll ever be able to walk away from all this? There was a misunderstanding around my supposed retirement. Really at the time what we were talking about was giving more opportunity and more leadership opportunity to younger people in the company. So rather than me leading everything we were really expanding that role out to others that had come up within the company. Somehow that got misinterpreted as the fact that I was retiring.
We have these younger people in the company who are taking the lead on Switch development and it's really been them that have put this forward and designed this system. They're the ones that have really shepherded it through the process. Because of that, what it's allowed me to do is focus on other projects like Super Mario Run or the Universal theme park. I'm going to keep looking for these kinds of opportunities where I can do something new and fun.
What's it been like working with Apple? How did the partnership for Super Mario Run come about? They're supporting it a lot more than they usually do with individual games. The timing was really fortunate for both of us. On the Nintendo side we'd been talking a lot about going into the mobile space but we hadn't decided that we were going to make a Mario game for smartphones. As we were talking about what we were going to create we started asking ourselves about what a Mario game would need to be. So we were experimenting with some things and we came up with the base idea, and that's what we eventually showed to Apple.
Part of the reason we took it to Apple was that in order for us to have the performance we wanted we needed some development support to ensure that the game would run the way we expected. Because Nintendo is always trying to do something unique we also wanted to try and do something different on the business side too. We really didn't want to do something in the free to play space, but in order to make sure we had the opportunity to do what we wanted [offer a taste of the game for free, and charge $9.99 to unlock the whole thing], we had to talk to the people who are actually running the shop. Naturally the people on the App Store initially told us that the free-to-play approach is a good one, but I've always had this image that Apple and Nintendo have very similar philosophies. As we started working together, I found that to be true and they became very welcoming of trying something new.
It's always seemed like Nintendo and Apple have some similarities in terms of the way they look at product and audiences. What do you see as that common ground? Probably the that easiest thing to point to is the fact that Apple, like Nintendo, is a company that thinks about how people will use their products. We design things to be usable by a very broad range of people. They put a lot of effort into the interface and making the product simple to use, and that's very consistent with Nintendo. I think Apple also likes to do things differently and take a different approach. In the early days when computers were very complicated things, computer companies were purposely presenting them in ways that made them seem very complicated. Then you had Apple who came along with their very simple and colorful logo and it all had more of a fun feel to it.
Actually, this reminds me that with the Super NES controller we put the multicolored buttons on the face of the controller, and then the US office decided not to keep that. I told that story to Apple, and how I liked the use of color in their old logo. That was like a bridge that had been built between us.
Their focus is always on simplicity. Their focus is always on really taking the user into account, making it easy to use and then having an environment that's safe and secure that people can work and play in. They're the areas where Nintendo and Apple really see eye to eye.
For Nintendo, we have a lot of kids that play our products. It was important for us to be able to offer Super Mario Run in a way that parents would feel assured that they could buy the game and give it to their kids without having to worry about future transactions. From early on, I thought that Apple would be a good partner so we could work on this new approach.
You've mentioned in the past that you play the cat-collecting mobile game Neko Atsume. Are there other games that you really love playing? Not really. I do like Minecraft, but really more from the perspective of the fact that I really feel like that's something we should have made. We had actually done a lot of experiments that were similar to that back in the N64 days and we had some designs that were very similar. It's really impressive to me to see how they've been able to take that idea and turn it into a product.
Have you played Final Fantasy XV or The Last Guardian? I haven't played those yet, but they do look really impressive graphically. I do hope that people who are looking for a fantasy game in that realm will also keep in mind Breath of the Wild.
