Video: How Shigeru Miyamoto Designs a Game

So far ?
Super Mario Odyssey !
I give it 8 from 10 for first impression.
Later, my final impression can be changed based on gameplay. Possibly higher than first impression.

No disrespect, but I feel as though Miyamoto is the George Lucas of Nintendo now.

best games are mario, zelda and pikmin imho
the guy made video game history and is the best designer of all time IMHO.

@AlphaJaguar
Who is his Jarjar?

Vox love explaining things to people.

@Xaessya wiimusic

Gaming would not be the same today if it was not for him. I'll watch this once I get out of work.

@AlphaJaguar Unfortunately yeah. I think it might be cool to see other people play around with new game ideas using his characters.

@NintonicGamer in many ways they already do. Talk to any developers about their inspiration, and eventually it always comes back to Miyamoto and probably either Mario or Zelda. A vast % games of the last 20 years are built around the building blocks that Miyamoto created in his heyday.

@AlphaJaguar Yeah I see where you're coming from with that. Miyamoto is still afforded a lot of creative control though, whereas Lucas has had all of his ideas for the new Star Wars films shot down by Disney.

They've definitely both still got a lot to give to their respective art forms in my opinion regardless.

@gaga64 @NintonicGamer Yeah and Miyamoto does let other designers have a lot of freedom when it comes to the series he's created. For pretty much every Mario, Zelda etc. for ages he's had more of a supervisor role.

@gaga64 @Lenzo Well that's good then. Still though, take Paper Mario for example, since Miyamoto helped make the new sequels it has become much different, I'm sure he probably helped make it better but at the same time he completely changed what I want Paper Mario games to be like. Edit: But not to say it's a totally a bad thing just different, some people really like the new style.

The picasso of video games.

Why is Star Fox Zero the EXACT opposite of this design philosophy?

In my opinion Super Mario Run actually goes too simple and somewhat loses the true magic and appeal of the very best videogames—Super Mario Bros. 3 is probably the prefect balance of easy to pick up and play but difficult to master, with really only the d-pad and two buttons to grasp yet a tonne of depth and variety to the challenges and things you can do in the world—but in general I think he has the right design philosophies. He did, however, allow a game like Star Fox Zero to happen recently, and that tells me that he's definitely not quite as on-the-ball as he used to be in his heyday.

@LegendOfPokemon Indeed.

The Main Man? I didn't know Lobo worked at Nintendo!

The gaming market was on the brink of collapse and in comes Nintendo and Mario to put video games back into people hands. What is gaming didn't pick up for 10 more years? Where would games be today? They would not be the same.

His 'against the preestablished' attitude led to innovation and success in the older days, but in recent and not so recent times it just comes off as hipster-ish and actually has a negative effect on the company's IPs. He keeps trying to make games or have others make games the way it worked for the market from back then, and that's a mistake.

He was the right person at the right time for Nintendo and a lot of what we have today, we owe to him. However, he and his methods are well past their prime.

I respect the guy a lot, but I just wish the spotlight would go to the people who are actually leading Nintendo through hard times and towards a more successful future nowadays. I'd much rather an interview on design philosophy with Aonuma, for instance.

He should join the list of legends where he is a living legend.

Mohammed ali of boksing,
Bruce lee of kungfu,
Michael jackson,
Prince,
Elvis Presley,
Etc etc
Shigeru miyamoto for the gaming world.

Does Vox only hire people with vocal fry?

@Dezzy This is one of my favorite articles of the last few years.

My favorite Miyamoto series? That's easy- Mario. No wait, Zelda. I mean Donkey Kong. No, definitely Pikmin. Probably Star Fox. Dammit.

The irony here is that Miyamoto hates putting narrative cohesion into his "stories." They are always as simplistic as it gets for the material involved. Then again, he's no writer, so it's not like we should expect Planescape: Torment levels of narrative genius from him. I don't think he's the right person to listen to in regards to storytelling.

Simplicity of design and immersiveness of environments, on the other hand, are definitely more his forte. He knows a lot more about those things than most give him credit for, and I think that comparisons of Super Mario Odyssey against games like Sonic Adventure (of which SMO borrows it's namesake) will further the divide in design completeness between Miyamoto's work, such as Super Mario 64, against others. Few can match Miyamoto's understanding of level and world design.

@Donutman @Xaessya I don't know if you two have seen the Jar-Jar Sith Lord theory... It was more or less confirmed by Jar-Jar's voice actor.

@impurekind To be fair towards Miyamoto's inability to make Star Fox Zero control well, the Wii Upad was a disaster to design around. It rarely worked out favorably for any game compared to other controllers, and it drew a significant amount of system resources.

People often bring up Splatoon or the like as an example of it being usable, but what else really made use of the Upad without it being a glorified UI/map display viewer compared to Wii MotionPlus & Nunchuk? Even Splatoon itself has now been amply demonstrated by the Joy-Cons that the Upad served no significant purpose in the game, other than to act as a UI/map viewer. The Wii MotionPlus & Nunchuk could have been an acceptable control option- just like for most every other Wii U game.

I still think the only game that really made use of the Upad to it's potential was Nintendo Land. Too bad it's good ideas never got used...

@Megas I'm pretty sure that some of the original developers of WoW back in the classic Blizzard days have actually provided testimony through collegiate textbooks that they were inspired in one way or another by Nintendo & Miyamoto...

As for the others you mentioned, they weren't necessarily inspired directly by Nintendo & Miyamoto, but their iconic forebears likely were to some degree:

EVE Online was greatly inspired by Chris Roberts' Wing Commander series, especially Privateer. (Wing Commander 1 got a SNES port.)

DayZ's inspiration can be traced back to Tokuro Fujiwara's Sweet Home (Famicom) and Resident Evil. (Deadly Premonition, another open world survival horror, was created by former members of Whoopee Camp, which Tokuro Fujiwara founded.)

The inspiration for every FPS can be attributed to John Carmack/Romero's Doom. (Which was ported and given sequels on several Nintendo platforms.)

They all paid attention to Nintendo & Miyamoto in some capacity.

@The-Chosen-one Lol, literally every person you listed but Miyamoto is dead, that is not how "living legend" works. Please don't invite misfortune upon our God of Gaming.

@PlywoodStick exactly. If anything @megas point works to support mine - you can guarantee that Doom used the same core design principles as Miyamoto is listing here. The story is as simple as Donkey Kong's, the atmosphere is immersive, the controls are simple and direct and you get a feeling of accomplishment. The first 2 minutes of gameplay give you all the tools you need to understand and succeed, the rest of the game is just upping the complexity of the challenge.

Just because it doesn't feature Mario or platform jumping doesn't mean it's not inspired by Super Mario Bros in some way.

And yes, you can be sure 99% of game designers played Mario at some early point and thought "I want to make this". They just made Dark Souls instead.

@PlywoodStick
He takes the hatred from the fans to fuel his sith powers

@PlywoodStick Well, I'd say games like Super Mario Maker and Art Academy: Atelier show that being able to use a stylus on the screen can certainly allow for some very cool and novel things. And I can definitely come up with a few more cool ways to use the screen and stylus input too. Although, with the multi-touch screen on Switch we should be able to do Super Mario Maker's level editing and stuff pretty intuitively too. Drawing or writing with any kind of precision, however . . .

Miyamoto wants to make accessible games but he also wants to make challenging games and games for the gamer that wants a deeper experience. It's in this interview a bit, but it's also apparent in recent games he has directed recently.

Star Fox is a game that explores vehicle control in a deep way that only core gamers that buy into it are going to get the most out of. Not saying many people liked it or it was very successful at it for most but he wasn't going for just accessible there. Pikmin 3 goes beyond the simplicity you'd expect in a game aimed at casual gamers. In his Treehouse interview about Super Mario Odyssey he explained his viewpoint that Super Mario 3D World and especially Super Mario Run were meant to be accessible so it was time to make a deeper experience for the core gamer.

Sadly, some people like to point fingers in a simplistic way because you can get to the "righteous" anger soapbox much faster and get the series of easily earned hater comments to follow up that gives them a little dopamine rush of ill-gotten satisfaction.

Miyamoto is a complex human being who has been dealing with shifting roles at a company that has been shaken up many times in the last decade. I don't think anyone should be shocked that he has made bad decisions for gamers and/or the company on many occasions nor do I think those moments define him.

2 things IMO this man does so well:

• His games are fun just to move around in. The controls are perfect, and just jumping around and trying different things is satisfying.
• His games are for everyone, not just kids, not just adults. They are simple enough that any kid can play them, but challenging enough that adults can really find a decent challenge in.

@AlphaJaguar Not at all. Luca's only great product was the original Star Wars, the rest either weren't fully his or were not great. Miyamoto to this day still has many great things coming out, even if some you might disagree with.

@PlywoodStick Am I the only who thinks that C3-PO is far more annoying than Jar-jar? He's in every single SW movie even, for no real reason.

@nab1 American Graffiti was a really good movie and that was directed by George Lucas when he was still talented. I respect Miyamoto's legacy, I just feel as though his credit is merely due to nostalgia and nothing more.

@nab1 C-3PO was built by Anakin/Vader as a kid, so I think they're supposed to represent the remnants of Anakin/Vader's childhood innocence. This is further implied by C-3PO's cowardliness serving as a foil to Anakin/Vader's fearlessness.

@impurekind Aside from the use of capture cards for online streaming, I don't think there's much of a technical advantage to using the Gamepad for those titles compared to using a 3DS (especially XL), though. Colors 3D! is another example of proof in that regard- there's more that can be done, both for still images and animations, by using a 3D top screen than a TV screen.

In particular, Nintendo just didn't bother to give the 3DS version proper online mode functionality, even though they've demonstrated through 2D games like Advance Wars: Days of Ruin that it would have been more than possible. (There was even a DS game called Race Driver: Create & Race which featured a 3D custom track designer, and online features for sharing and playing them with others, so there's no excuse for Nintendo not being able to do the same with SMM for 3DS.)

There are capacitative screen styluses out there, but it doesn't seem that Nintendo will offer any of their own. I bet third party ones could work just fine, though.