14th Entertainment Division Critiques

Human touch is necessary for the production of work

I was chosen as a jury member of the Entertainment Division of the Japan Media Arts Festival for the first time. As the Entertainment Division includes various genres such as games, play equipments, movies, characters, and websites, it was difficult to screen all the works by the same criteria, and there were heated discussions during the screening process.
Still, IS Parade featuring Twitter impressively won the Grand Prize, winning the votes of several jury members, with the uniqueness of the work highly valued. In a way this can be said to reflect the current times.
As for games, many works were found among the entries that are the sequels to games for which a certain degree of sales can be expected. The soaring production cost may be the reason behind this.
These works were also highly entertaining and of high quality, but I regret to say the consequences were harsh for the sequel works.Unlike the early days of computers, digital or interactive media can be found anywhere today. The very existence of such media does not surprise people any more.It is no longer possible to entertain people just with "great CG movies" or "a bit taste of interactivity."
Through the screening process, I once again realized that after all human touch is necessary for the creation of entertainment.

Profile
HORII Yuji
Game Designer
Born in Hyogo Prefecture, 1954. Graduated from Waseda University, School of Letters, Arts and Sciences I . HORII Yuji init ially worked as a freelance writer until embarking on a career of game designer. In an age when action and adventure games were the mainstream genre, he achieved success with the original game Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken (The Portopia Serial Murder Case) that was first released in 1983. HORII is also the creator of the Dragon Quest role-playing game series. He is recognized as one of the founders of Japan's video game culture and among the most influential figures in the game business.