Is that a real quote?

Lol can you imagine the jump if that's how it was 🤣

Clearly the showrunner has never played a video game.

Craig Mazin never said this at all. The closest source I could find on it is a seemingly bot generated article about a sarcastic tweet that someone made about him.

Things have changed significantly since Super Mario Bros. was released. For example, vast majority of video games released these days feature no senseless violence toward turtles. Many even portray turtles in factual, chilly way! 🐢

I guess Zionism is a bold innovation in video game storytelling now.

Edit: putting this here because I know you goddamn morons arent gonna read two comments down:

https://www.reversecanarymission.org/person/neil-druckmann

https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-not-so-hidden-israeli-politics-of-the-last-of-us-part-ii/

https://time.com/7275781/the-last-of-us-controversy-israel-gaza/

This isn't even a controversial association, you people have to fucking grow up.

"Druckmann has openly stated that the themes of revenge and cyclical violence in The Last of Us Part II stem from his reaction to the 2000 Ramallah lynching of two Israeli soldiers, where footage of the event filled him with "intense hatred" and a desire to "kill all these people that committed this horrible act" and "make them feel the same pain." He later reflected on feeling "gross and guilty" for these impulses, but used them as the foundation for the game's narrative. Druckmann also draws parallels to Israeli politics, citing the 2011 exchange of over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, noting how his father viewed the deal as harmful to Israel overall but would release every prisoner to save his own son. These inspirations manifest in The Last of Us Part II's portrayal of warring factions: the secular, militarized Washington Liberation Front (WLF), equipped with advanced weaponry and resources, mirrors the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) as a "brutal but well-intended" military, while the Seraphites, a religious cult engaging in ritual disembowelment and fanaticism, dehumanizes Palestinians as an extremist threat akin to Hamas."

You kinda undercut your point when you say that the most famous video game of all time was released aover a decade before it actually was. . .

If we want to be charitable there's a nugget of truth to what he's saying though. I'm 48 now and I've played computer games since I was seven, and I've worked with game development myself. TLOU was the first game that felt like it had a story for someone who's 40+. It felt like some kind of milestone. The art of games has matured significantly in the past 15 years.