Nintendo's subtle approach to player creativity with Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom | This Week In Business
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Two things dominated industry discourse this week but let's be honest, who really wants yet another take on the ongoing circus that is Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard – especially given that a) the EU's approval of the deal doesn't change anything while the CMA is determined to block it, and b) it's Friday.
Instead, let's turn our attention to what has been flooding our social media feeds all week. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
Big companies talk a lot about player expression and creativity. Just last week, EA CEO Andrew Wilson told shareholders the publisher is investing more in "games as a platform," built around the tenets of "play, watch, create, connect." At a Ubisoft corporate event we attended in September, CEO Yves Guillemot said player expression was one of the key pillars behind its future games (apologies for not remembering his exact words, we had other things to discuss). And we can't overstate how many pitches we receive touting user-generated content as the future of games.
After all, just look at the evolution of one of the biggest games of the past decade. Fortnite almost entirely focuses on content creation. But at the risk of being cynical, a lot of efforts to enable player expression and creativity are done with the primary purpose of selling cosmetic items, or somehow monetising the work of your players (hello, Roblox). These companies have more players than staff so enabling the former to create new content helps relieve the pressure for the latter to do so.
Most games offering such an experience lead with it. Their initial announcement is filled with promises of users being able to
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