On November 3rd Shigeru Miyamoto received the Bunka Kunshō (Japan’s Order of Culture award). He is the first video game designer to ever receive it and it is well deserved considering all that he has done for gaming.

I had planned to make a blog post about the award on the day, because Miyamoto is the reason I became a game developer. The first time I played Super Mario Bros., I knew this is what I wanted to do.
This post was going to focus on Miyamoto’s contributions to culture and the influence his work had on me, but my mind has been somewhere else of late. Other news has made me think of the past and where it led me.

Gaming may be the center point of my life, but we are shaped by everything around us. Books, movies, games, etc., and one of the things that had a profound impact on me when I was young was Star Trek.
I grew up in the 80s and 90s. I was a kid during one of the greatest periods of cinema and TV, a time with an abundance of fantasy and sci-fi literature up for grabs and during the rise of video games.
Of all the things I had access to, Star Trek was by far the most important and would in time become my favorite franchise, as it remains to this day.

Unless you have been living under a rock, you know that the last few weeks have been rough for Star Trek fans. First we lost Walter Koenig, which left us with only two of the original crew, but the real punch to the gut was the death of Sir Patrick Stewart.

The debate over Kirk vs. Picard will continue until we turn to dust, but most of that is looking at entertainment value. Kirk had the cowboy style adventures that fit in the 1960s, but when I look at the future I would want to live in and the captain I would want to work with, Picard wins by a long shot.
Stewart gave Picard depth that nobody else could manage. Grand speeches, heavy philosophical questions and a look into what it meant to be human were staples of the series and things that no other show would touch.

During the last week I have been distracted, thinking of Picard’s vast number of standout moments, from his defense of Data in The Measure of a Man to living a full life in The Inner Light.
Stewart’s delivery of a speech had such a presence that you had to pay attention. Combined with the writing for the show, you were not simply entertained, you questioned the world around you.
One speech in particular from the episode Drumhead always stays with me. A speech about the dangers of witch hunts and the erosion of human rights. With the current state of the world this speech feels more relevant than ever.

With the first link, the chain is forged.
The first speech censured,
the first thought forbidden,
the first freedom denied,
chains us all irrevocably.

I don’t normally get upset over the loss of a celebrity, but this time it was different. Even though I never met him, the impact that Sir Patrick Stewart has had on my life, my views of the world, my hopes for the future and my sense of empathy can not be understated.

While I know that I will not live to see it, I still hold out hope that one day humanity will live in Picard’s future. A future free of the fear, hate and greed that consumes our world today.

Godspeed, captain. Your legacy will be remembered.