Yoshinori Ono Wants To Make Educational Games

Speaking to games™ in an in-depth interview, Street Fighter IV producer Yoshinori Ono revealed that he’s not all about fighting – he’d like to work on more formative forms of entertainment in the future.

“I’m very interested in educational games. At the moment, small kids are having to either pretend to be grown-ups in order to play adult games or playing games that are basically made for kids, which kids won’t take because even they have their pride. I’d like to make games for these kids that won’t insult them and are made for them, games that they wouldn’t feel ashamed to play. And once they reach the age of 12, by playing my educational games they’d hopefully have become competitive enough to start playing Street Fighter.”

“It’s definitely a long-term plan and education usually requires a lot of time. With that in mind, I feel there’s a need to nurture gaming culture. At the moment, government officials like to attack games – whenever there’s a problem, games get the blame. It’s obviously just because they don’t understand and they reject things that they’re not familiar with. So it’s important that we can familiarise everyone with the whole culture of gaming from when they’re young. Some things when taught in school or taught through words can be difficult to comprehend. Reading things in a book gives people the chance of not understanding, but if they can interact with something and be shown how and why it works, it’d definitely be helpful. I’d like to see games not just as a type of entertainment but as a part of our culture – integrate the whole concept of gaming into people’s everyday lives.”

The full interview with Ono, covering everything from crossover games to Darkstalkers and Street Fighter to the Japanese development scene, can be found in games™ issue 100, on sale from 2 September. For more information follow this link, or click here to see all 100 covers.

To avoid disappointment, you can also order a copy through Imagine Publishing’s e-Shop.

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