This is an excerpt from an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto from MTVMultiplayer.
"Multiplayer: It strikes me that, when I look at "Wii Music" or I look at "Wii Sports," these games are very radical for their genres. "Wii Music" is very different from other music games. Take "Wii Sports," for example: I remember when I first heard that you didn't control the guy on the tennis court, and that the computer controlled him, I thought: "This can't be. This isn't going to be any good." But it was actually really fun. [Miyamoto laughs.]
It seems to me that Nintendo has been able to be radically innovative in sports and in music, in genres that Nintendo isn't as well-known for as the adventure genres or the platformer genres. Do you agree with that? Do you think that it is easier for Nintendo to kind of take those leaps in areas that are less familiar to the company than, say, the more conventional genres we see depicted in a "Mario" or a "Zelda"?
Miyamoto: Actually, I think it might be a little bit different. If somebody were to come to me and say, "There's this particular genre of games and these are all the different games in that genre and they're all very similar. We want you to create something very similar to what those are," certainly from a design perspective I would be able to design a game like that. And the team members I have working with me would certainly be able to program and create a game that would be very similar to essentially anything else that's out there and feel that we could do it quite well.
Instead, where I think we're able to innovate is we're able to find something that's a unique resource, or a unique idea or a unique sense of what is fun. And because that sense of what is fun is unique, we're able to bring it together in a very simple form. And it's still very fun.
Whereas, a lot of times in game development, teams might look at an interactive gameplay element that maybe isn't in and of itself a particularly fun thing to do. But then what they do is they refine it, they polish it very well, they put a lot of other elements around it and then that experience becomes fun.
I liken it almost to cooking. There are certain elements of cooking where if you're able to find a very delicious ingredient, all you have to do is put a little bit of salt on it. Then you cook it and it tastes amazing. Whereas, when you have something that doesn't taste very good, typically then you have to season it and put sauces on it, and find ways to take something that at its core isn't very delicious and make it taste delicious. Somebody who is a very good chef, if you say, "I want you to create a fantastic French meal," obviously if they're a very good chef, they can do that. But often times the chefs are more interested in finding the most delicious ingredients they can find and cooking those in a way that really highlights the inherent deliciousness of the ingredient. And that, I feel, is our job in game design.
Multiplayer: I want to make sure that the dichotomy that I was breaking down was clear. I was asking if, internally at Nintendo - and I guess this is a personal judgment call on my part - but I feel that "Wii Sports" and "Wii Music" have been more radically different from what I would call their predecessors - which are other sports games and other music games - than I feel, as wonderful as they are, "Super Mario Galaxy" or the last "Zelda" are as radically different from their predecessors. And so, I'm curious if you can identify why it is that Nintendo can innovate more radically in certain genres. And, again, I'm guessing that it's because these are genres that you guys haven't done as much in. There's more room to think freely, perhaps?
Miyamoto: You ask very good questions! [Everyone laughs]
Multiplayer: Define "good." [More laughter]
Miyamoto: That's something that I talk to the members of my development team about on a regular basis.
What I've been saying to our development teams recently is that "Twilight Princess" was not a bad game, by any means. But, still, it felt like there was something missing. And while, personally, I feel like "Super Mario Galaxy" was able to do some things that were very new and were very unique, at the same time, from another perspective, certain elements of it do feel somewhat conservative in terms of how far we branched out with design. And so this is something I've been talking to both of those teams about.
Of course, as is customary with Nintendo, it's very rare that we are able to announce any games until they're ready for release, but I can say that these are themes that both of those teams are taking into account and the hope is that for both of those franchises, when we do release the next installments of the "Zelda" [franchise] or maybe the next "Galaxy," hopefully they will feel newer and fresher than their most recent versions."
- Here are the links for the entire interview.
- http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/10/27/one-on-one-with-shigeru-miyamoto/ Part 1
- http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/10/28/one-on-one-with-miyamoto-part-two/ Part 2
- http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/10/29/shigeru-miyamoto-punchout-mario-zelda-portal/ Part 3
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