Creative Vision: the Essence of Design

2007 GDC session by Nintendo GameDev Legend Shigeru Miyamoto

Reported by Neil Melville

 

The reason I even decided to go to GDC this year was singular: to hear what video game industry legend Shigeru Miyamoto had to say. My desire to see this much respected man give this presentation was shared by over 2000 other people. Carlos and I arrived in line about fifteen minutes before the scheduled 10:30 start time. The line was already wrapped around the block of the Moscone Center South Hall and had doubled halfway back to street corner. It was at least another half hour before we got inside the building, and we were very fortunate to find two seats together in what ended up as a standing room only event.

The Stage is Set

It has been 8 years since Miyamoto addressed us at GDC. He was introduced by Jamil Moledina, and other than his opening and closing statements, the address was delivered in Japanese, and translated by Bill Trinen, of Nintendo of America. The large screens behind him display the Wii photo-channel he uses for the presentation.

 

He starts by reminiscing video game’s early years: 25 years ago, Pac-Man was all everybody was talking about. It was an age of innocence. As we look at the top selling games of the last few years, we can detect a trend:

 

Top 5 games of 1998

• GoldenEye
• Gran Tourismo
• Ocarina of Time
• Banjo Kazooie
• Super Mario 64

Top 5 games of 2004

• GTA:San Andreas
• Madden 2005
• NFL2K5
• Halo
• Halo 2

Sales have gone up, but games now have a reputation for adverse effects on gamers: fostering a desire for violence. Would Miyamoto’s style of gaming survive in this market? This leads Nintendo to question our path and our vision. Can we continue in our historical path, and deliver the Nintendo Difference?

Corporate Vision

1. Expanded Audience

We know there are a lot of gamers out there. And soon there will be more. How can we reach these people? They could be ages 5 to 95. What activities interest people who are not playing games? We already gather user feedback from people who do play games.

 

The most important tool Miyamoto uses in determining if a game will appeal to an expanded audience is what Miyamoto calls the “Wife-o-meter.” It measures one variable: how interested his wife is in a game. Games like Tetris that he thought were exciting had no effect on her. But she did watch her daughter play Ocarina of Time. She agreed to pick up a controller to try Animal Crossing. She really liked that there was no fighting and she could write notes to the other players.

 

Miyamoto has a dog named Pick, and after training with it, he developed Nintendogs. This game resonated with his wife, even though she is more of a cat person. But he still had not converted her to a gamer. It took Brain Age to do that. Now she brags that she is better than him at his own game. And he admits that it is true.

 

After the release of the Wii, he came home late Valentine’s night, and finds that his wife is still up. He was hoping she was going to give him chocolates, but she is casting votes on Everybody Votes channels. She downloaded this content on her own, and she is making Mii characters. He says now she is not only a gamer, but becoming a developer. “When she comes up with that great idea, I can retire.” It is Nintendo’s goal is to train gamers and future developers.

2. Balance

Miyamoto is an industrial design major and he helped to create controllers from the NES forward. But no one person is responsible for designing any controller. That’s not how it works at Nintendo. It’s a group effort. With collaboration, during iteration and testing Nintendo was able to reconcile various goals: advancement, convention, accessibility, and simplification. The resulting Wiimote does a lot of what Miyamoto has been dreaming of in a controller.

 

Nintendo has an entertainment focus. But it must consider what many different people consider fun. How can one experience be fun to many people? By finding commonalities and blending distinct ideas into a new single whole. Recently Miyamoto was tasked with updating the poetry card game exhibit at the Shigureden museum in Kyoto (Nintendo is one publisher of these Hayakunin Isshu cards). This is a traditional art form that is still practiced by older people, but not too popular with kids these days. His solution was to give each visitor a DS as a simple and fun interface with current location as a context menu. This interactivity bridged the generation gap and made learning fun for kids, and accessible to their elders.

3. Risk

To keep from being left behind, it is important to try to be different, to evolve in new directions. In order to move into new game experiences, some things had to change. For the Wii, the radical update in game controllers was a big risk. He was worried that people were too used to the old way of playing games. The new controller might not support all of the old functionality. But he became the evangelist, telling the company to focus on what is being gained, not on what is being lost. This is the only way to reach out to those who fear or hate videogames.

Personal Vision

He shows us a picture of his garden. “Maybe you can see the Pikmin?” Where do we find inspiration? It cannot be found in analyzing individual elements. You cannot understand why a single part of a game works well without considering the game as a whole. And to understand the whole vision of the game, Miyamoto thinks about how a player will react to playing. He shows us videos of first time game-players.

 

Is the player’s face happy? Are spectators as entertained as the player? Why do game reviewers not give games a score for how fun it is for the people not playing (that are just watching someone else play)?

 

We can make mistakes by just following conventions – instead, we design the game with the novice in mind, this way you allow for expanded audience. Draw in the non-gamers. Don’t let the game vision be muddled by what the seasoned player may expect. You think gamers are used to games doing things a certain way, but don’t worry about them, they will figure it out if you give them something new. The goal should be to provide the player with a positive sensation: challenge, elation, determination, or pride.

1. Communication

Games are a personal experience, but also should be a shared experience. If someone enjoys a game, they want to talk about the games they are playing. He learned about this when he made Zelda. Instead of making the game easier as Nintendo suggested, he took away the player’s sword at the very beginning. By leaving it to the players to discover how to succeed, Zelda created a reason for people to talk to each other about the game. Then players have a sense of mastery, and can learn or teach each other based on their level of mastery. The casual player is happy to learn and be a part of the game culture.

 

There is always concern that a game designed to appeal to a wide audience will not appeal to serious gamers. But the broad design does capture the hard core as well. And they are affirmed in the community for their ability to find and share the path to game excellence.

2. Prioritization

It is common in games to want to put in more features (or to make each feature as complex as it can be). We say to the engineers, or the executives, we want more from you to make this game bigger and better. Well, too bad. You can’t. You must prioritize, and focus on things that convey the vision to the player.

 

 In Wii sports baseball, the characters have no arms. This is like the Japanese kokeshi dolls. It is not realistic, but it turns out that arms did not help make it feel like a better baseball game. They tried using Mario characters, but most people liked using Miis. So the game didn’t worry about if the players understood baseball. The game just focused on making pitching and hitting feel real. Everything else was lower priority.

3. Tenacity

In the 80’s Nintendo was working on a scenario disk system which would eventally be available for the Japanese version of the NES. Miyamoto thought people would like to play with a face creator which could be personalized expression. His team started building a program, but the company did not see how to market this. He revived the idea in the 90’s in creating a Talent Studio for the N64, but again there was still no place in the company vision for this.

 

In 2002 the GameBoy camera and E-reader systems allow for the creation of a game called Stage Debut, where a photo of a person could be placed on virtual characters that danced on a stage. This was very amusing, and many Nintendo employees enjoyed this, but it was not yet right for the mass market. Now we have the Nintendo Mii creator and finally Miyamoto’s vision of a toy that lets people tinker and express themselves has found a home. And an important lesson is that as hardware advanced, the desire to make this feature more complex would have lead to less people using it.

 

Another project that Miyamoto has been working on for some time is Mario 128, now dubbed Super Mario Galaxy. He showed footage of this game featuring clusters of spheres with local gravity, and it was met with thunderous applause.

Conclusion

Miyamoto shared his personal vision of how to make games. He knows that not everyone will have the same goals and values as he. He concludes, “We are Human, and our job is to entertain humans. And to do that we must always remember the human touch. If we can convert my wife, I believe we can convert anyone.”

 

See streaming video of the speech: http://www.visualwebcaster.com/Nintendo/38232/event.html