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The story
A thread appeared on the Hardware/Industry (“Geha”) board introducing a remark reportedly made in 2009 by Yoshiyuki Tomino, the creator of Gundam: “Games are evil. They’re a waste of energy, they destroy the environment, and they only drag down humanity’s productivity.” Since this coincided with the announcement of a new Gundam game, some pointed out the apparent contradiction — why is he fine with his own creation being turned into games? Others corrected the record, noting that Tomino doesn’t actually hold the rights to Gundam game adaptations and only appears in the credits thanks to his moral rights as the original creator. From there, the discussion broadened into a general debate over whether all entertainment shares the same structure.
What people said
And games using today's electronic tools are just burning energy — once you're talking about selling hardware to tens of millions, hundreds of millions, even a billion people,
the act of selling the hardware itself is evil. There's nothing eco about it at all.
he's the type who'd say
"if you've got time to play games, go have sex instead."
Tomino doesn't hold the rights to Gundam.
he's always been like this, stirring people up and basically saying "go on then, rebel, you brats."
we'd be better off cutting it by 80%.
it settles on "sure, to varying degrees, but anime and games aren't really any different."
Isn't that true of most entertainment?
and this thread pops up — kind of funny timing.
https://ghelix.ggame.jp/
Tomino's remark was made in 2009, so time-wise it's clearly aimed at the Wii/DS era.
Nintendo was touting "expanding the gaming population," but from Tomino's point of view, Nintendo let marketing lead instead of making games that actually entertain people.
Sure enough, games made in that era got remade for Switch and players turned their backs on them.
Hideo Kojima made a similarly sharp criticism, calling it "a crisis of creativity."
he's boring anyway.
That's Old Baldy's favorite, the ultimate Newtype.
Impressive that he can write this much just to say "I'm sore about losing."
There's no "making it big" here — Director Tomino doesn't hold the rights to Gundam at all…
He has no rights to the anime adaptations, the games, none of it.
The only reason he's in the credits is his moral rights as the original creator.
He probably thinks something like "my work is a wonderful influence on people, so it's the exception!"
The best way to hit back at Yoshiyuki Tomino is to shut him up with actual work, like Kohei Tanaka did with the King Gainer [キンゲ, one of Tomino's own anime] soundtrack.
If he says "I'll crush it," that's basically a win
though it's not really a phrase I'd want to use in this context.
Honestly, you probably do need to be this intense about it just to survive in production work.
> As I just said, you need to bring those contradictory parts into consistency and close the gap,
and develop games where playing isn't evil — even if not exactly "good," at least something that offers real relief.
So which of Tomino's own works actually "achieved that consistency"?
If he can't name one, then this is just
"trashing other people while ignoring his own faults."
I have zero interest in Gundam so I wouldn't know.
Not a single one lol
Every one of them fits
"it's not an activity that supports daily life.
And games using today's electronic tools are just burning energy — once you're talking about tens of millions, hundreds of millions, even a billion people,
the act of selling the hardware itself is evil. There's nothing eco about it."
so basically he's only talking to creators, not players.
If it pisses off players, his message is: doesn't matter, come over to the creator side and prove me wrong yourself.
Industry people mock this content too —
there are several serious flaws in it,
the biggest being:
"At the end of the day it's just hardware getting more powerful — show me a game that's actually fundamentally new."
By that logic you could say anything: "every story is just a rehash of myths written thousands of years ago,"
or "there's no such thing as a fundamentally new human being, so humanity should just go extinct."
And of course, by that same standard, this old man making anime is completely pointless too.
Because they really are mocking it —
his line is basically "prove me wrong if it bugs you that much."
The point was "industry people are mocking it."
maybe he needs someone to soften things before they come out.
Even by Showa-era standards, Great Master Baldy [Tomino] is a pretty eccentric guy.
Background and Key Points
The remark is said to have been made in 2009, and some in the thread pointed out it was made at CEDEC (a conference for game developers). There are mainly two points of contention. One is the apparent contradiction between denouncing games while the timing overlapped with the announcement of a new Gundam game. The other is the fact — corrected multiple times within the thread — that Tomino himself doesn’t hold the rights to Gundam’s anime or game adaptations, and only appears in the credits through his moral rights as the original creator. A point readers can easily misread is treating this remark as a simple “criticism of the game industry,” when the text alone doesn’t convey that Tomino made the comment while acknowledging his own anime work could be judged by that very same standard.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry “Geha”) thread “Yoshiyuki Tomino: “Games are evil. Just a waste of energy, environmental destruction, and a drag on humanity’s productivity.””.
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