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The story
A social media post arguing that “Nintendo should design games with less-creative players in mind” went viral and became a hot topic on 5ch’s hardware/industry board (Geha). The original post claimed Nintendo overlooks a segment of players who simply aren’t good at being creative and would rather play within a given framework than invent their own goals. The thread split over how much of Mario or Zelda actually demands “creativity” in the first place, with some arguing that the freedom offered by Tomodachi Collection (Tomocolle) and Tears of the Kingdom is actually stifling, while others countered that Nintendo is, if anything, the company that caters most to casual players in the entire industry.
What people said
Like, "Creating stuff is fun, right? Everyone loves it!"
They don't seem to realize there are plenty of people who find creating painful and just want to play with what they're given, within some set boundaries.
You can play it without using your brain at all!
Let's go play games like that.
Play more.
Yeah, this is just what happens once you get older.
That's why PlayStation is basically a paradise for middle-aged guys.
It's rough on old guys who've lost their creativity.
Isn't it more like they want games playable even by the incompetent, not games that don't require creativity?
Like those QTEs that progress whether you press the button or not —
now that was the invention of the century lol
The part of Mario that requires creativity is finding routes other than the one to the goal —
like when you somehow make your way to some spot unrelated to clearing the level and find a coin or a 1-up there.
If it doesn't suit you anymore, just go play games from someone other than Nintendo.
If you can only measure things against Nintendo in the first place, doesn't that disqualify you as a creator?
one where you get 100% guaranteed to see the ending even if you just leave it running.
Just don't play games and binge some finished anime instead. It'll automatically play through to the final episode and end on its own.
You're just not looking at them.
You can't actually clear those without using your head properly either, you armchair gamer.
Even if they think they're catering to us, the bar's still too high.
The gap is way too big.
They'd never imagine there are hordes of people out there even lower than rock-bottom gaming-forum posters.
That's because nobody understands better than them that even lazy, crappy graphics will sell.
Though I do wonder whether Tomodachi Collection (Tomocolle) really requires that much creativity.
If you're just playing casually, you can get by just throwing in your real-life relationships, but once you want to go beyond that, there's a lot you have to actually think through.
it's always hated deep character-building systems with class changes.
Despite not wanting to think too hard, it looks down on action games,
and by repeatedly piling on Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (FFCC), it created a curse where Final Fantasy going action is never forgiven.
Just an endlessly foolish track record from people who only care about the Sony brand.
For the crowd that just looks up a walkthrough site and copies the optimal build,
since they're just going to copy it anyway, the whole build system itself apparently feels unnecessary.
They seem to want something different from the game than the crowd that enjoys trial-and-error with build systems.
Stat allocation and skill trees are fine if you can freely redo them, but if it's locked in once you've assigned points, it's nothing but an annoyance.
Not being able to redo it is necessary for the sense of superiority that comes from believing the route you chose is better than the others.
Don't need that kind of thing.
If it ends up fixed and everyone converges on the same build anyway, it's pointless.
it's got a lot more middle-aged guys now.
They need to put out games aimed at that crowd too.
Enjoying chess or gomoku in Clubhouse Games is fine,
but I draw the line at QTEs that progress whether you press the button or not.
you can do lots of things, but they're all things Nintendo prepared in advance,
and you're forced to follow those elements almost like it's an on-rails game.
It'd be terrifying if something the developers didn't prepare for got into the game.
And yet it's exactly those kinds of people who end up squealing with delight whenever they find a glitch in a game.
Something like that Wolverine game would be great — where if you step outside the normal boundaries, you end up in a field that looks like an unfinished open world.
It's just a game, so just do whatever you want to do.
Thinking about it that way, they probably do have some imagination after all —
it's more like they're just using it in the wrong direction.
If you actually know you're a tasteless middle-aged guy, you won't even touch Minecraft lol.
The ones who get a complex about it are the ones who half-think they can do it — and that's true across action games, sandbox games, drawing, all of it.
Solving a puzzle in Zelda lets you get that same sense of superiority, which becomes its own pleasure.
On the other hand, when you watch amazing players of Tears of the Kingdom or Tomodachi Collection, you end up feeling inferior, like "Wait, I can't even do that much…?"
I do think games probably shouldn't be designed in a way that makes players feel inferior.
Feeling inferior over a game? You're not in a position to be playing games right now — go build some backbone in real life, at work or wherever.
I've never seen this kind of criticism leveled at Minecraft.
The exact same thing happens there, so why is it that whenever Nintendo does it, all people can come up with is this kind of nitpicking?
That's because they only look at the end result and can't understand enjoying the process.
We live in an age where only the polished highlight reel ever gets shared as "the picture" of anything.
Watch out, because when someone with that kind of inferiority complex tries to force a result, they end up turning into the guy who dumped dish soap all over the sushi at Kura Sushi (a notorious viral vandalism incident).
Background and Key Points of the Debate
The discussion was sparked by a post on social media that went viral, arguing that “Nintendo should design games with less-creative users in mind.” Underlying this is the sense that many Nintendo titles — Tomodachi Collection (Tomocolle), Tears of the Kingdom, and Mario Maker among them — ask players to figure out their own methods and goals rather than providing them outright. What split the thread was whether people were conflating “games that don’t require creativity” with “games that are easy.” Neither finding alternate routes in Mario nor solving puzzles in Zelda is actually required to clear the game, and Nintendo itself has long publicly stated that it tunes difficulty so that “anyone can solve it, but it still makes you feel like a genius.” At the same time, some pointed out that Minecraft, which sells itself on the same kind of freedom, rarely draws this same criticism — suggesting an asymmetry where Nintendo simply gets singled out more easily. No official response from Nintendo to the original post or this debate has been confirmed.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry [Geha]) thread “X: “Nintendo should design games with less-creative users in mind” ← goes viral with 10,000+ reactions“.
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