Square Enix's Mike Fischer on trends and the changing game industry

by Richard Mitchell on Jul 25th 2011 9:00PM

In an interview with Gamasutra, Mike Fischer, recently appointed president of Square Enix's US operations, spoke at great length about the current state of the game industry. Fischer noted that Square Enix is necessarily focused on building games for "gamers," primarily because he believes that the definition of gamer is "very subjective."

As an example, Fischer pointed to television networks canceling soap operas because their primary audience are spending time playing games. "If they're playing more games an hour than a college student, who is the gamer?" he asked.

That said, even though social games are "hot" right now Square Enix won't abandon traditional game development for the sake of a trend that Fischer believes may not last. The company has, according to Fischer, a "strong lineup and strong IP" that gives him "confidence in a long term success" and an opportunity to take part in current trends outside of core games.

Check out Gamasutra for the full interview, which covers Square Enix's strategy going forward and Fischer's thoughts on new IP, the console development cycle and more.

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Hot Topic: Changing Mario to be Fresh

Hey, everyone. We are back with another “Hot Topic” from our forums. This time around is all about Mario. One of our members, schmete, recently expressed some thoughts on how he believes the Mario franchise needs to change. He believes specific changes could help bring a fresh appeal to modern gamers.

Here are his thoughts:

Get rid of the hub world, and make it open world. The reason Mario 64 used a hub world was because the N64 couldn’t handle rendering a full world in 3D, so they made small levels that you would enter from a single hub world. It’s an ingenious solution to a problem like that. However, technology has advanced, and games can handle a huge, open world environment (see: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion).

Imagine a giant Mushroom Kingdom complete with an ice mountain, lava lake, Cheep Cheep Beach, caves, lake, etc. It could either be entirely open, like Elder Scrolls, or it could be sectioned off, similar to Zelda games. Before you say that Mario doesn’t really fit in a large, empty, open world environment; imagine taking every level of a 3D Mario, and putting them all right next to each other. It’s not an empty place, but it’s a huge world. NPCs could give Mario his objectives, which opens up an opportunity to introduce new characters. For example, a character that is obsessed with red things tasks Mario with collecting the 8 red coins within certain areas.

I think putting Mario in an environment like that would be a compelling enough change to how 3D Mario games work that it would encourage people to try it out. It also doesn’t make any radical changes to gameplay (like Sunshine added the F.L.U.D.D.), so purists will not be turned away.

As with all our “Hot Topics” from the forums posts, please direct your discussion to our forums. We would love to hear your thoughts! Should the Mario franchise make this change? Should it keep doing what it does best? Should it make another change? Let us know what you think in our forums.

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