Unless they work in marketing.
I think the idea has merit and Iâm not really trapped in thinking this is new to Miyamoto or care that this conversation started from a Nintendo tweet. Itâs always good in artistic pursuits, especially I find as a writer, to both consume a large amount of media from within your speciality, but also just having a large cultural appetite in general brings something to the table. For traditional art and writing, seeing how other people have made their work and what the end result was fine tunes and adds to your capabilities as an artist as well but I find having a diverse set of hobbies tends to make you a more well-rounded person in general, and that never is a bad thing to have regardless of what youâre doing.
Iâm someone who is an outsider to games and Iâve found that that both hurt and helped me at times.
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Iâll say this explains a lot about why Nintendoâs games are the way they are, for better or worse. As it turns out, âWhy didnât they just go with the obvious solution everyone else uses to this problemâ may actually be that nobody working at Nintendo played that game, or uses that service, or whatever.
It does lend Nintendo games a fantastic uniqueness, though. Breath of the Wild is a lot of familiar ideas done different ways, and thatâs undoubtedly a result of this initiative.
Iâd wager that this type of outside experience leads to more nontraditional ideas (at least within the space of gaming), but its hard to say whether that equates to âbetterâ or not. From a Nintendo perspective, it would make sense that decades of game design experience would be able to shape these types of ideas into something not only unique, but steering them into something fun.
Anecdotally, I used to work on a now-defunct video chat platform that underwent a major redesign. We had some incredibly good designers, who made some really interesting and beautiful choices, but who also missed the mark. We wound up with something too complicated & too far from the core user expectation, which ultimately led to failure. Definitely a bit of a different situation, but I think itâs important to value domain specific experience.
I think that mirrors the incredibly common joke/meme about Twitter whenever a new feature or change is announced: that the only reason these are prioritised by design leadership in the company is because they canât actually be using social media (and specifically Twitter) themselves - because otherwise theyâd know how this canât be a priority for actual users or the proposed change just wonât work for what they claim is the intended goal.
I donât agree when it comes to Mario and Zelda. BotW and Odyssey only play it safe in the sense that they donât utterly reinvent the wheel. Yes, youâre a boy with a sword rescuing a princess/kingdom from evil. Yes, youâre a plumber jumping on and around things to collect other things. That is where the safety and familiarity end.
Zelda takes the fundamental structure of every game in the series, and chucks it in the trash. You get all your abilities up front, and then it lets you do whatever. Zelda was never, ever a game about system interaction. There was one way to solve a problem, you used the one tool to solve it, and you moved on. If you donât have a hookshot, you will never cross this gap. If you donât have the glove, you will never lift this rock. It is impossible to beat them without doing a certain, critical path.
Mario similarly takes everything you expect, and mostly ditches it. They branched out into new art styles, new level design, new problem solving, all of which was a huge risk. They have Mario dancing around with realistic humans, possessing dinosaurs, entering RC car races, driving scooters up scaffolding, etc. The number of times where the solution to moving forward was âjump on platforms really wellâ has been few and far between for me so far. Mario moves in much the same way, but the kind of exploration and world interaction you do are brand new.
Nintendo could have shoved out a OoT clone or another Mario 3D land if they wanted to and made another fortune, but they didnât. They werenât the riskiest choices in the world, but these are the biggest leaps either of these franchises have made since they went 3D.
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Having worked in the game industry for the majority of my adult life now, I can say that nearly everyone Iâve ever worked with has gamed to some degree. Though the most interesting people Iâd have to say are folks who have a strong interest in other areas outside of games. Maybe they use their skills to help make a game, like program or making art, but use those skills to fuel some other creative passion. Or maybe they play the guitar, sculpt, or majorly in to a sport.
The ones with strong interests outside of games are definitely some of the best people Iâve worked with. They have experience and vision outside of the field and are more free form and unconstrained. They try new things and challenge others to as well.
Serious gamers in the game industry definitely seem to have trouble thinking outside of the box and prefer to stick with tried and true mechanics. âJust do what {{popular game}} didâ is something I heard often from these folks.
People who donât game at all are usually in businesss and filled with just awful ideas, or take their skills to another industry that will usually pay them what they are worth after they realize that almost any industry treats their employees better and pays them more.
Youâre misinterpreting âsafe designâ as meaning âdoing the same thing againâ rather than âdoing the shit that bestselling games already did and are proven popularâ. You climb towers, complete sidequests and obtain âbetter lootâ in Zelda. Mario Odyssey is just a Mario game with a gimmick attached, which they already did with every 3D Mario game (Fludd in Sunshine, gravity and planets in Galaxy). Theyâre both well-executed games (because Nintendo has ridiculous amounts of money to spend on them) but theyâre not exciting or experimental in the slightest. Nobodyâs going to âlearn lessonsâ from these gamesâ design other than how to better implement already existing systems.
For all intents and purposes Nintendo probably spends as little on game development as they humanly can. I remember the quote that the HD update to Wind Waker cost more money for them to create than actually making the original Gamecube game.
Which seems bizarre when you consider Wind Waker HD clocks in at around a gigabyte, meaning itâs still small enough to fit on a Gamecube disc â suggesting that not much was done to it in the way of remastering. Textures werenât really repainted, models and environments werenât recreated to have more polygons. Most of the core data was probably left as-is, with the game more likely upscaling/smoothing the textures at runtime (read: while the game is running via shaders or whatever) and applying the new lighting engine.
Either that means the original Wind Waker was developed on a shoestring budget or that new HD lighting engine was expensive to an unreasonable extreme. Given how budget-conscious Nintendo seems to be in every other aspect of their business, itâs more likely the former.
I mean, thatâs kind of been the companyâs mantra since their toy company days:
The entire reason Nintendo has ridiculous amounts of money to spend is a direct result of this frugality. More money comes in to the company than leaves, apparently by orders of magnitude.
I think there are lessons to be learned from Zelda and Mario, but I think both games may provide the same lesson, and it seems to have sort of been the companyâs modus operandi for last year â something they seemingly called âThe Nintendo Frontierâ internally.
Basically, getting back to the core tenants of what makes exploration and discovery fun. At least with Mario, as far back as Sunshine they were looking for ways to lock Marioâs world down and tell linear stories. You canât acquire collectables in Sunshine out of order like you could in Mario 64 â you have to follow that worldâs ânarrativeâ beat by beat, doing everything in a linear order.
Galaxy 1 locked things down even tighter, getting rid of the open playground-style levels and going back to one-off, linear platforming challenges. Galaxy 2 locked down even tighter than that, ditching the free roaming hub world in favor of a simplistic, Mario 3 style map screen.
3D Land was the logical end point in all of that, with a map screen that wasnât even really a map â every level in the game was on a straight line. Nothing was optional. 3D World was just more 3D Land, but by then you could see them toying with the idea of walking things back from the linear dead end they had painted themselves in to.
Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey double down on the idea that exploration is fun. That itâs okay to have empty spaces as long as the act of travel itself is fun. They are games about the sense of journey, the atmosphere of a place, and itâs a distinct flavor that feels noticeably more rich than other so-called similar games â namely your Skyrims and Assassinâs Creedses. For that simple fact alone, there is definitely lessons to be learned.
If it was easy to just be Nintendo, the video game industry as we know it would be a very different place right now.
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Iâm not in the game dev world, so I canât say much about whether this applies to games, but I did spend some time in the public speaking world, and I can say this: the very best public speakers are not professional public speakers. They are people that have a broader range of experiences who collaborated with public speakers and coaches to produce a speech.
To really create a great experience, you need a mix of insider knowledge about the craft and the authenticity and perspective that comes from living life that has nothing to do with the craft. As you get more involved with speaking, too much of what you know becomes about speaking. I see the same thing with musicians. Late albums from musicians often draw from the one thing they still really understand: a successful musicianâs life. And that loses authenticity, since most of us never experience that.
I would be surprised if it wasnât really similar in gamedev. Iâd guess that too much inside baseball leads to games where the craft is evident, but the experience is thin. On the other hand no craft whatsoever might lead to an interesting but deeply flawed mess. Or even a project failure.
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I think people are taking this interview fragment a bit off. Miyamoto says two things here. One, that he tries to get designers who arenât only game fans but also have varied other interests. Two, that some of their hires hadnât even played games at all. But what he does not say is that itâs better to have no experience with games. Just that itâs not necessary.
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Man this notion really bother me. What a mean thing to say thousands of passionate people out there trying to make their own games or make it in the game industry.
TLDR:
Sure, those who donât play games MAY design better gamesâŚbut in what world are those people even given half a chance to do so?
Thoughts:
While I do appreciate the positive aspects of the core idea, like trying new things or getting out of your comfort zone, I have seen this sentiment pop up a number of times over the years and it kind of gets under my skin a little bit. Or rather I think what bothers me is the broad take away that it may leave people with. In some ways I would also like to call âBSâ on the fluffy ideology people are extracting from Miyamoto here.
Here are my thoughts in random order.
The thesis of the notion is kind of weak:
Sure I believe âThose who donât do x MAY make a better X.â Anything is possible. I MAY win the lottery some day. You MAY keep reading this decent into madnessâŚbut probably most people will not.
Letâs try an exercise. Try removing the word games and replacing it with another creative medium that has a similar process. Letâs say books, music, or film. To be very good at writing, composing, or filmmaking you consume and practice a lot rules and skill sets over and over again. Sure, thinking outside of the box might come quicker to someone who isnât constrained by those rules but executing those ideas might be nearly impossible without some sort of context.
There is also an analogy that is constantly brought up in both artistic and music theory that in order to subvert expectations and break rules in a way thatâs entertaining and feels inspired you actually need to be very familiar with current trends and expectations as well as the rules and trends that came before hand. I think game development is a lot like that. Probably Undertale is a good example here? Maybe the first Nier also. I havenât played the second yet.
Creative works are generally very iterative. This really applies to games more so then the other mediums I mentioned. Think about your favorite game. Is it the creators very first work (the original Mario Bros or original DK for example) or is it something (like a Super Mario World) that was inspired by games that came before it? Even if it is the first work how many projects did the creator put in a trash can and light on fire before publicly releasing the one that you like? Did they playtest those projects? Doesnât that count as playing games?
Now I am not saying someone who doesnât play games canât be more creative than someone who does. I am just saying in a practical setting and particularly in the world of games and game makingâŚjust having a really inspiring idea wonât get you very far at all. At least not in a an official capacity.
As if it wasnât hard enough to get a job in games already
Look up job postings for âgame designerâ on any minor or major publisher or game developerâs job board. One of the first requirements is usually 2 years of game design experience with having shipped at least one product. Here is the first ideal requirement from a Game Design job listing at Respawn Entertainment.
2+ yearsâ experience in the games industry working in a game design capacity, shipping at least one title.
After years of trying to earn, fake, sneak, beg, steal, and kill my way into a junior position on the dev side of things this is probably one of the lower experience requirements I have seen. Good luck having accomplished that requirement if you havenât played or experienced very many games. Now imagine you actually managed to get the interview and then telling the devs interviewing you that you actually arenât at all familiar with the past work they have done.
Now if youâre an indie sure you could just make your own and I donât doubt that it would be a very cool game but is it going to be as polished or successful as a Super Mario Odyssey or a Splatoon?..probably not.
Nintendo makes some of the best gamesâŚbut yo, they also make some real stinkers
I really like to tell people to never ever count Nintendo out but they certainly do have some wild swings. Say what you will about the WiiU and Mario Party games but remember Wii Music? Remember how Nintendo revolutionized an industry with motion controls but eventually failed to deliver on ways to keep motion controls relevant? We are kind of back to where we started after suffering the era of waggle, bad Kinect mechanics making there way into everything, and the short lived excitement of johan sebastian joust made possible by the PS move controllers. Soooo maybe Nintendo doesnât all ways have the best record when it comes to setting the example for how to do things.
Now remember how Nintendo probably has some of the most veteran game makers in the entire industry still on staff? Maybe they are in a privileged position where they can hire people who âdonât play gamesâ because they still employ the same people who made the medium what it is today? To add to this, Nintendo probably has 100+ job listings posted right now and not one of them is for a design position. The reason is most likely because (just like the rest of the industry) designers are generally promoted from within given to leads from different departments who already work at the company - thus listings are short lived. Surely those leads are inspired by some type of game playing experience.
Anyways, I feel like I am losing the thread here. Sure, those who donât play games MAY design better gamesâŚbut in what world are those people even given half a chance to do so?
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Wow I think alot of you are taking these comments the wrong way. I agree with Miyomotos sentiment. Game designers who play a lot of video games will design games for gamers. Nintendo are very good at designing games for anybody to play.
I can put my GF who doesnât play much in front of a Nintendo game and she will pick it up and have fun. Canât say the same for something like an Ubisoft open world game. Game designers who played games all their lives will just accept some crap design as the way things are. Outsiders who arenât tied to the history of the medium are more likely to make games that are more accessible to a wider audience.
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Anyone who plays games is a âgamerâ by the definition used (as in these designers may not play games at all as the other grouping) - gaming is already a massively wide audience. The sort of games made, how they on-ramp users new to the genre - all of this requires domain expertise to do well and absolutely isnât something that only an outsider can understand. Just because many Ubisoft games are designed for the hundreds of millions of people already comfortable with GTA V doesnât mean thatâs a sign theyâre trapped within a bubble of game design. Their design intent was to make something like that where on-ramping is a secondary consideration but itâs not because experienced game designers canât build on-ramping.
That also asks us to start breaking down what we mean by âpick-up-and-playâ and established knowledge. I understand Mario Party because Iâve played board games growing up. Theyâre not significantly more accessible games by design but rather games built around a set of established knowledge different to how a modern open world game is designed (around expectation of understanding of a dual-stick traversal game) but no less locked behind requiring to know various genre conventions to excel. This, for all games, causes a period of low performance as we start to understand how the game is played, which users may not find super-engaging, especially if done so in the company of people who have already internalised everything about the genre. Also working outside otherâs genre conventions is not necessarily easier to grasp. Hereâs me Googling âhow summon horse Zeldaâ, âno really, it canât be this broken, how actually use mounts in Zelda properlyâ, âmake fire zeldaâ, âhit flint not working, why zelda!â.
We can see from the mass adoption (billions of gamers) of mobile games that there is also a genuinely problematic definition of âaccessibleâ design to consider (there is another industry called the gaming industry that also have massive claims about how accessible their games are and how they can quickly turn a first time player into a fan of their products) - I think we call all agree that the design choices made cannot purely be about on-ramping and providing a structure around it to keep people hooked. Games should not be about every game being for every player (and âaddictiveâ should not be something aimed for) but they absolutely should all be designed around maximising their genuine a11y (which is not necessarily what weâve been talking about so far).
Zelda is no more accessible than any other dual-stick traversal game (in fact something like the recent Uncharted stuff has given far more effort into a11y); The Crew is not significantly less easy to pick up than a Nintendo driving game. Exceptionalising Nintendo is something that is both incredibly common and not justified by the actual facts of the matter. If you didnât grow up with original Mario jumping then no, itâs not a great game that still feels great. But because almost all US gaming coverage comes from people who thought Nintendo Power was great writing, not primarily a PR product, and Nintendo consoles were the standard (creating this US idea that they somehow saved gaming after a local market crash the rest of the world didnât experience) then it has created this bubble that does not really match up with reality (and makes some think Nintendo products are somehow far more ânaturalâ and accessible despite not being actually designed around genuine accessibility at all - youâre just used to their genre conventions and so are the âI donât really play games but I did kinda learn some Nintendo conventions previously so actually I do have domain knowledge of the typical designs they recycle for decades in endless sequelsâ).
See also Apple OS X/iOS for how a niche product (none of those are close to capturing the majority of the whole market) with a specific set of (sometimes non-standard) conventions is talked about as more natural and accessible by the people who were raised in (or first came to) that ecosystem despite being based around almost arbitrary choices. Nintendo have a great PR team and have pushed hard to have their design decisions embraced but when you break it down, theyâre often making user-hostile design decisions (and the fear is that is out of ignorance of the design space because of this fetisisation of outsider art/non-domain experts as core designers).
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Takayoshi Sato from Team Silent said something similar in a 2001 interview (http://www.silenthillmemories.net/creators/interviews/2001.08.17_sato_ign_en.htm):
âWe looked at movies like Adrian Lyneâs Jacobâs Ladder, and movies from David Lynch. Of course, Hitchcock, David Fincher, and David Cronenberg, too. Painters like Francis Bacon, Andrew Wyeth, and Rembrandt were very influential, too.
[âŚ]
Most people working for game companies are game freaks, but the Silent Hill team are artists and programmers first â mainly artists. Silent Hill 2 is not a typical game because most of our staff didnât grow up playing games. Because of this, we hope to provide the gamer with a different sort of game.â
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Disclaimer: Iâm not a dev, though I aspire to be.
I think what Miyamoto is saying is more complicated than âpeople who donât play games.â (And it looks like people in this thread are agreeing.) I think all the time about how he described his design philosophy for Star Fox: âWhen thereâs an arch, you want to go under it, right? Thatâs the kind of game I wanted to make.â His perspective was not based on game mechanics, but on a real-world sensation. What makes Miyamoto so unique as a designer is his focus on innovation and quirks. His inspirations come from gardening and noticing architecture, not the most popular arcade cabinets or his current favorite game.
Thereâs a great anecdote about fighter jets thatâs usually used for survivorship bias, but works here: some engineers were looking at how to improve the armor on their planes. They noticed areas that were riddled with damage on the planes that got back: the wings, the tail, behind the cockpit. So they figured theyâd armor those. Abraham Wald, however, noticed why this was a mistake; these were places the planes were damaged and still returned. It was the areas that were not damaged and returned they should be looking at. My point here: sometimes, itâs easy to get so wrapped in our own realm of expertise and focus, that we forget to look at things from new perspectives.
So what I think Miyamoto is trying to get at here is that sometimes an outside perspective can be essential to creating a good experience. This honestly, to me, tells me more about Miyamoto as a designer than what creates a great game.
Fields of study are often very insular; they get caught up in their own ideas so much that they forget what the outside world looks like. Expertise is valuable, but sometimes there are other ways to look at things that we just forget about. Games make this mistake just as any other, and I canât help but wonder if itâs exacerbated by its inherent toe in the tech world. Mark Brown made a decent video talking about, whether he was aware or not, a dominance of like, a pre-emptive prototype theory in a lot of game design. In other words: designers will frequently design a game based how many things it has in common with a âprototypeâ of a genre, like the âquintessential versionâ of that genre. As in, designing a game focused on making it as much like Super Metroid as possible. This, to me, is representative of a bigger issue of design having an insular logic to it. The history of modern games is brief, but weâve developed an extremely particular language and structure for much of design.
Like, why not use accessibility and disability studies as the fundamental part of your design philosophy? Or psychology? Or architecture for your level design? Or user experience? These are all valuable.
Maybe Iâve lost my point. Games, like many other fields, would probably benefit from better synthesizing and collaborating with different and unique viewpoints.
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