Here we go again! I was beginning to miss my favourite "games are evil" tag a little, so I should thank Anime News Network for this interview with Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino, where he reinforces his pessimistic outlook on videogames.
ANN: Here’s something a lot of people have mentioned to me. You recently gave a keynote at a video game conference, where I believe you said that video games are evil.
YT: Yes, they’re evil. Because they just steal people’s time.
ANN: Do you think the people who make video games could change them into something more meaningful or worthwhile?
YT: I don’t think they can. But in the twenty-year history of video games, one good thing is that the technology they’ve produced feeds back to the real world. Video game hardware is endurance-tested by hundreds of thousands of people, and that helps establish computer systems that can be used in the real world. So the fact that video game hardware still exists isn’t meaningless.
I don’t know much about technical things, but I think at the very least, it’s thanks to computer games that we were able to develop the programs and hardware to make mobile phones as small as they are now. The fact that the game industry has taken on so many technological challenges has been a big help to the computer industry. Although the games themselves are worthless, in that sense they’ve been a good thing.
I picked this portion of the interview to put on the site because it was a) the most relevant, b) funny, and c) a follow-up to a previous story but I would highly recommend checking the entire piece out. Tomino is incredibly forthcoming and frank, and he talks about the 30th anniversary of Gundam, using CG and his next potential project. Great interview for anyone that’s into the franchise.
Ishaan’s note: Aren’t those Gundam speakers awesome? I came across them while searching for an appropriate image for the post. You can read more about them here.
