Suzuki: "Game providers have to shift their focus" on visuals to creativity

Industry legend Yu Suzuki has said the difference between game development today, and back when he was creating Virtua Fighter, boils down to developers focusing more on visuals than creativity.

Speaking in an interview with 1UP, Suzuki said it's not just the developers who are to blame for focusing more on visuals, but the consumer as well.

"The problem [today] is that the industry focuses too much on the extravagance of the graphics," he said. "Gorgeous graphics equal high quality, but it's expensive to make those games. So it's good that we are not being strapped down by hardware limitations, but games have rules. Shogi has its rules, Chess has chess rules, and soccer has soccer rules -- you play with a team of 11 members and you can't use your hands. And video games are games, as well. So there are rules. We should focus our creativity on making interesting rules in a game instead of focusing on the visuals.

"The game providers have to shift their focus. And the consumers have to also not look at only the graphics. The players are actually already beginning to realize this. You can see it in social-networking games. [But] user expectations are to blame, too. If given the option of 1,000 cars and 10 cars in a game, the user will most likely take the game with 1,000 cars.

"Games with fewer options can't compete on the same level because the user will always choose the game with more cars."

You can check out the first part of the interview through here, as part of the site's Shenmue Week.