In 2015, Shigeru Miyamoto took on a new role at Nintendo, as Creative Fellow. To this day, however, many fans still think he makes games at Nintendo. So he’s recently gone in detail to explain what he actually does now.
In the Q&A for the latest Nintendo quarterly financials meeting, Miyamoto gave this answer to the fourth question (edited for brevity):
“Each year, I give a talk to about 100 to 200 new graduates and mid-career hires, and afterward people often say that they were wondering what kind of person I was and were relieved to see that I was surprisingly ordinary.
…In the talk I give every year, I touch on those challenges that come with creative work.
My annual talk is divided into three parts. The first part covers the history of Nintendo, starting with hanafuda playing cards, moving through toys, and leading to how we have become the entertainment company we are today. The second part focuses on what Nintendo values in game creation and what our strengths are. For instance, I discuss the evolution of the game interface by tracing the development of our controllers since the arcade days.
In the third part, I address game design. New developers, especially those who are avid gamers, oftentimes aspire to create upgraded versions of the games they have played before, but I explain that game design is not about that. Rather, it is about observing the world around us and figuring out how to assemble those elements into an engaging video game.
I explain that game design is about planning. That is, it is about assessing what hardware and development environment to use to create the game, whether the desired game can be realized with its available processing power, and engaging in trial and error to bring it to life. Many attendees find this perspective refreshing in that it is different from their own concept of game design or feel that they sympathize with our philosophy of product creation.”
Nintendo’s Senior Managing Executive Officer Shinya Takahashi also chimed in, explaining that Nintendo’s staff of active game developers now come from divergent backgrounds. They listen to Miyamoto’s stories, and also work with him in making games, which seems to suggest he still gives advice every now and then.
Miyamoto has earned a strange (mostly speculated) reputation among fans that he kills ideas other game developers pursue in his position as management at Nintendo. But as you can clearly see today, the way the company makes games has largely stayed the same since he slowed down and then retired from active game development.
It’s clear that there are aspects of Nintendo’s internal game development culture that they still keep to themselves, and that has shaped their decision making in this field. That culture may have formed in huge part with Miyamoto, but he was hardly a Steve Jobs figure that was micromanaging everything. As some gamers say, Nintendo is just going to Nintendo, and that’s because the culture they have fostered has helped keep them very successful at making popular and profitable video games.
But as for Miyamoto, he is more Walt Disney than Steve Jobs now, literally retracing Walt’s footsteps in animation and theme parks. As crazy as it is to think he would still have a salaryman’s wages if his dearly departed colleague Satoru Iwata had not become president of Nintendo, it’s just as crazy to think the guy who came up with plumbers eating mushrooms to fight turtles is now indulging himself in creative endeavors that he himself could have only dreamed of once.
