Q&A: 90 Minutes With Miyamoto, Nintendo's Master of AmusementNEW YORK -- Shigeru Miyamoto is, still, one of the most fascinating people in videogames.
As the creator of Donkey Kong, he revolutionized the form, using tiny pixelated characters to tell dramatic stories. With Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, he was widely credited with revitalizing the American games industry after the Atari crash -- not to mention directly inspiring a generation of young game designers. And just when it seemed the 55-year-old Kyoto native was past his prime, he spearheaded the development of the Nintendo DS and Wii, which shot his company back to the top of the business.
Just prior to the launch of Wii Fit two months ago, Wired magazine contributing editor Clive Thompson and I enjoyed 90 uninterrupted minutes interviewing Miyamoto in a swanky New York hotel room. We've used several quotes from this extensive interview in a variety of stories, but we know that fans and industry followers want to read every single word uttered by Nintendo's game-design visionary.
The full transcript, with insight into the creation of Donkey Kong, the rise of indie game development and the future of motion-sensing controllers, is below.
Clive Thompson: So what do you call Wii Fit? Is this a game?
Shigeru Miyamoto: I think it's a communication tool for families.
Thompson: That's lovely.
Miyamoto: And, I think I've also realized that it's a new kind of play. It's a kind of play in which you become more aware of your body and your physical well-being. I mean, I think you can call it a game, but I think ultimately it's a new kind of interactive entertainment.
Thompson: Where did the idea come from?
Miyamoto:In general, I take my inspiration from a couple of different areas, and one is my own long personal history of creating games, starting back in the arcades, and then on the Nintendo Entertainment System and the various consoles since then. But, then the other area that I draw inspiration from is from my own personal hobbies.
Thompson: So, this is a hobby?
Miyamoto: Yes. I was always a fan of sports. I never really participated in specific sports or nothing, but once I hit 40, I started to get a little bit more active and began swimming more. So when I was about 40, I started having problems with back pain, and I think a lot of that stemmed from the fact that I worked at a desk all day. And, so that was when I started swimming.
And then when I hit 50, I started weighing myself every day, and I of course track that and create my own graphs to watch my weight. And, I found that to be very interesting. So, when I first started weighing myself, my family thought that was kind of fun, and so they bought me a very nice scale. And, so then I started creating the graphs.
And, so I'd always wanted to try to find a way to make a game out of that, and I felt that with the Wii, that's something that I would normally do in the bathroom is weigh myself. But with the Wii, if there was a way that we could take that into the living room and turn it into an experience that everybody takes part in, then that might be fun.
Thompson: What about the timing of this device seems auspicious right now? Does it have to do with the acceptance of alternative controllers now?
Miyamoto: I think there are a couple of reasons. One is that at this point the Wii is wireless, and so I think the fact that it's wireless certainly makes it easy to use. For me, personally, also, in this NES era, I myself didn't really think that weighing myself and tracking my progress every day is something that I could turn into a game.
Thompson: How did your family react to the data?
Miyamoto: As can be expected, as they watched the data and they saw my weight went up, then they would kind of scold me. And, as my weight went down, then they of course would praise me.
Thompson: How do you think families will relate to this game if they're all playing it?
Miyamoto: I think because of my hobby, my family was already talking about health, and so in that sense, Wii Fit didn't change my family very much. But, the one thing I can say is that for a long time my wife never played videogames, and it really wasn't until the DS came along with games like Brain Age and the Dr. Mario & Virus Buster game that's in that, that she started first playing videogames and has now kind of gotten to the point where she's actually comfortable playing videogames and interacting with a game system on a daily basis. So, her and my children will often compete in the balance games in Wii Fit, so in that sense, it will help to kind of broaden who is interacting with the systems.
Chris Kohler: People outside of Japan have this impression that everyone is really skinny. Do you think there's a health crisis in Japan now that Wii Fit is trying to address?
Miyamoto: Well, yeah, actually Japan actually is an aging population, and so as the population has aged, they have had a lot more problems with health. Just in the last couple of years -- it's a term in Japan that they call metabolic syndrome, which equates here essentially to the adverse health effects of obesity, has become a hot topic in Japan over the last few years as the population has aged. And, even I myself in traveling around Japan, obviously there's a lot of hot-spring resorts in Japan. In going to hot-spring resorts, you often come across groups of businessmen who are on a business trip or something, and they go to the hot-spring resort. And, what I have noticed is the physique of people who are in the hot-spring resorts in Japan is very, very different from the physique of the people I see at the gym.
Thompson: People in New York are freaked out about being skinny, but when I travel to Iowa and Ohio for stories, it's a whole different picture. I did a story on why New Yorkers were living longer than anyone else in the country, and I found out they're actually now expecting that life expectancy in the United States is at its peak and it going to decline from here on. You've got 9-year-olds who have diabetes you're only supposed get when you're 57 years old and you're fat. They've never seen this problem before, so they have no data to predict later health issues. So, health is a big issue in the United States.
Miyamoto: Yeah, the same may be true for Japan, as well.
Thompson: People blame videogames for being part of the reason that young people don't get enough exercise. Do you think that's true?
Miyamoto: Actually, I think that it's probably unrelated to videogames. What I found is that just in the lifestyle today, people have fewer and fewer opportunities to get exercise. When I was growing up, I would spend my days running around in the hills and mountains of Kyoto, and there probably aren't many kids who are doing that now. But, I think that that's not necessarily the cause of videogames so much as the change in lifestyle.
Thompson: Yeah, the change in lifestyle created an appetite for videogames, because the kids weren't allowed outside of the house. That's a really good point.
Kohler: Wii Fit's been really successful in Japan. Who is the Wii Fit consumer? Is it women doing a lot of yoga?
Miyamoto: We've obviously been doing a lot of consumer surveys and been getting the data back in Japan. What we found is 60 percent of the people purchasing Wii Fit are males right around age 30. Often the case is that the wife is interested in getting it, and the male is making the purchase. But, what we found is that everyone in the family is playing it, and actually there's a really good balance. There are some people who are pretty much playing the balance games. There are some people who are playing pretty much the yoga and others who are focusing on the strength training. But, overall, it's very well balanced in terms of which activities people are doing -- 40 percent of the people that we surveyed said that they bought a Wii in order to play Wii Fit.
Thompson: Are people going to be using the Balance Board to design other games?
Miyamoto: Yes.
Thompson: Is it already happening?
Miyamoto: Yeah, there's actually a game out already called We Ski. It's a skiing game that uses the Balance Board that's developed by Bandai Namco. And there are other developers that are already working on product as well. We Ski is a game that you can play with Wii remotes, but you can also, as an option, use the Balance Board to play.
Kohler: From a design time line standpoint, was the Balance Board always part of the design for Wii Fit?
Miyamoto: Initially we created the Balance Board in order to create Wii Fit, and it was essentially designed to enable that experience. And, then after we finalized the design, we looked at it and realized -- or as we were finalizing the design, we realized it could potentially be something that could be used for other games, as well. And so in finalizing those designs and finalizing the final Balance Board, we ultimately tried to do it in a way that would enable other developers to also take advantage of it.
The other thing that we found is that actually in the sports world there are devices that are somewhat similar to this that are used for training athletes. There's pitching training devices and golf training devices that have kind of similar functionality, but we were very surprised to learn that those devices, while of course being very high end, cost around $20,000. There are some that are cheaper that are available, but I think looking at that, we can probably envision not only just different types of games that could use the Balance Board but also different types of training activities that can be done using it as well.
Kohler: You have a golf game just using this to measure your center –- like pantomiming a swing and measuring your center of gravity and seeing exactly how your golf swing went.
Miyamoto: Using a Wii remote, you could track the timing of the swing and the shifting of the balance on the Balance Board to calculate kind of how good the swing is. Of course, there's still the question of whether or not the mass market would want a game that perfectly replicates that type of an activity. But, in terms of golf training, you could certainly do something like that.
Thompson: That's great. When I think of the big cultural breakout successes in the last year in videogaming, they've all involved alternative control systems, ranging from Guitar Hero to the Wiimote. So, is the traditional controller something that's going to fade as time goes on?
Miyamoto: Speaking as the individual who created the traditional controller, I certainly don't want to speak badly of it! I think as videogames evolved, the videogame experience became more complicated. In order to control the more complicated experience, that resulted in more complicated controllers. The challenge of that is that videogames then became something that appeared to be difficult and complicated to people who don't play videogames. So what we've been trying to do over the last few years is find ways to take advantage of technology to essentially create an interface that has a broader appeal and that's more approachable to the average consumer. So I think that's, perhaps, the reason that we're seeing so many different alternative control types flourishing these days. But at the same time, I still think that there are certain types of gameplay that are suited to the traditional control style.
Kohler: With Guitar Hero and Rock Band, you've set the bar a little higher as far as what people will pay for a videogame. Wii Fit's going to be $90 in the United States, and maybe two years ago that would have sounded ludicrous, but now it sounds totally perfect. Is there a danger of maybe burning people out on extra controllers?
Miyamoto: Of course, as you point out, Chris, we did intentionally develop the Wii to be a small, compact device that you could place in the living room that wouldn't be in the way and would fit in kind of naturally in the living room. So, on the other hand, of course, we are creating a number of different controllers and peripherals for the Wii, as well, so in that sense, I can see your point of how having so many different controllers can be a little bit inconvenient. But, at the same time, we feel that the videogame audience has gotten to the point now where it's so broad that there are different tastes and different needs within people, within the audience of people who are playing the videogames.
So, for example, even now there are people who are 70 years old and 80 years old who are playing Wii. In designing the interface for a game, even something as simple as making a button on the screen too small is going to make it difficult for that audience to know what to do, or even something as complicated as navigating using a plus-control pad can be too difficult for people who aren't used to playing videogames.
When we're designing games and designing peripherals, we're not designing them for the purpose of simply creating more devices to use with the Wii. We're trying to create devices that are creating a more streamlined and intuitive approach to gaming so that a broader audience can feel that they're able to interact with and better use the device.
Kohler: Back to the aging population in Japan. Does Nintendo see that as a growing market that it wants to make sure it starts capturing right now?
Miyamoto: Yeah, that is a good point. I think one thing that we always struggled with is the fact that even though in Japan there is the aging population, and you do have elderly people in the home, videogames were always seen as something that was for kids, and so we've always tried to find a way to branch out of that mold and reach that audience. I also think that the peripherals we're creating probably have a slightly different objective than, say, the guitars for Guitar Hero. I think with Guitar Hero the idea is that people who are playing games can kind of live the fantasy, and you feel like you're playing a guitar and yet you still have the complicated button control that you experience in other videogames. Whereas, what we're trying to achieve with things like the Balance Board and the Wii Wheel is controller interfaces that are more intuitive and more welcoming to a broader audience.
Thompson: What exactly do we call something like this, whether we call it a game or software? It seems like the videogame industry has become so broad it's difficult to generalize it at this point in time. What does this mean for the future of what we call games? Is the word videogame becoming irrelevant or too broad to capture what's happening with the types of things you're doing with it?
Miyamoto: Well, yeah, I often get asked the question of when do you think the videogame boom is going to end, and my answer to that is that if you think of videogames as simply a system through which you have an individual and a monitor and a computer that somehow links the two of them and creates an experience, then I think that that system is never going to go away. And that's something that will always continue, and so I'll always have work to do.
But, it's true that obviously the subject of videogames, as we've called them, has really broadened to the point where now we're doing things like with Wii Fit and there's different types of activities we can create. And even now, in relation to Wii Fit, we've had a lot of hospitals getting in touch with us, because they're looking at the possibility that, "Oh, with a device like the Balance Board and a system like the Wii that's connected to the internet, we can potentially have it so that people are connecting their Wii to the internet, linking up to the hospital's computer and getting home rehabilitation programs sent to them over the internet."
So, there's a lot of interest. In my mind, that's still the same videogame technology, that's still that same system that we've always worked with up until now. At Nintendo, our focus is entertainment, and so we have these requests from the hospitals. Even if we were to work on these types of programs, the question then is, "Well, is that entertainment or is that rehabilitation? What is it we call it?" And, I think, for me, I don't really know the answer to your question, because I just look at it and I see I have this system with which I am able to create interactive experiences, and what we call that system, I don't really know.
Kohler: The other big news this month is the launch of WiiWare, and having gotten the chance to look at the Japanese launch titles and the U.S. ones, it seems like they couldn't be any more different. The U.S. games seem to be a lot better than the majority of Japanese WiiWare launch games. Why the big difference between the ways that the two countries are approaching development for WiiWare?
Miyamoto: I think there's a few things at play, and one is that kind of in my view, I think America has always been better at creating unique products. So I think that has something to do with it. On the other hand, I think that in Japan, oftentimes the technology required to create videogames tends to be concentrated in the bigger corporations, and the large developers have a tendency in order to try to support future development to make more conservative games and try to essentially find a way to make those games profitable and then move onto their next project from there. I think that with those two elements at play, then you can look at that and see how that could affect the lineup of both.
At the same time, even while those developers are making more conservative and smaller games, I think that it's possible -- you know, they're still focused very much on quality and still trying to make the best compact games that they can create. Whereas, I think that here in the United States where you have these independent developers who have managed to get the skills and the training and the development, also have managed to get access to the technology and the hardware needed to develop it. They're able to let their own personality and their own kind of unique interests really flourish in the games that they're creating.
Now, of course, here in the United States there's been a long culture of people independently creating things on the PC, and in Japan, I think that outside of videogame developers, while there is a group of people who do use the PC to create kind of fun, interactive pieces of art really, they haven't really come into the videogame fold or the videogame industry, so to speak. And so I think in Japan there is still kind of the possibility and even some strength out there within those more artistic communities that are creating things on the PC to potentially find some of those unique ideas. We've worked with some of them in the past from more of a media standpoint, but it's been rare that they've come into the videogame industry in total.
Kohler: Are you going to go out and try to court garage game developers in Japan?
Miyamoto: I guess, yeah, that's kind of my job.
Thompson: Speaking of the garage game stuff, do you prefer designing games with very small teams, as when you started out, or with very large teams as you do now?
Miyamoto: For me it's not really a preference related specifically to team size, but really it's more related to the product. And, I think you have to form your teams based around the needs and the scale of the product that you're creating. Oftentimes if you have marketing people who are doing marketing research to try to determine what type of game a consumer wants, more often than not, that's going to end up with a game that's very large in scope and, as such, is going to require a very large team. What I think is more important is for the managers who are developing the games to look at the scope of what they want to create and build a team of an appropriate size around that vision.
So, for instance, with both Wii Sports and now with Wii Fit, I've been focused specifically on trying to create both of those products with very small teams. And, the idea behind that is that I feel that as development costs have risen, I think it's important for somebody to try to show an example to other developers of how you can create games with a small team in a way that there's still a very great market for it and a way that it can still be very successful. And so both Wii Fit and Wii Sports were developed with very small teams, but of course, under my division is still the Legend of Zelda team which continues to create very large games with very large teams, as well.
Thompson: How many people are on the Legend of Zelda team?
Miyamoto: It's now about 50 to 100 people.
Thompson: How does that compare to the Wii Fit team?
Miyamoto: Wii Fit was developed with 10 to 20 people.
Kohler: How about the smallest of small teams? You made Donkey Kong all on your own. Have you thought about another solo project?
Miyamoto: Yeah, I mean, I think it would be fun to do that, and of course, I'm always telling the developers that are working under me that they should think about doing that, as well, because of course, the bigger your team gets, the more time you end up spending managing people instead of working on the project.
Thompson: Exactly. You can see the aesthetic imprint of the vision of the designer more clearly when it's designed by one or two people, which is often lost in a large game, although you've managed to keep it in Mario and Zelda. When you're dealing with a very large team, how do you keep a very distinctive vision?
Miyamoto: I don't know. I do oversee all of the projects, and so for each project that I have under me, I am checking the content and looking at the game itself. And, one thing that I focus on with my under-developers is I'm always instructing them on kind of the history of the characters and how they should view those characters and those worlds that we've created over the years. Of course, the game design, I leave up to them, but when it comes to the company's overall characters and story, I'm trying to give them a lot of direction as you get them on kind of the nature of those characters.
So, take for example the Mario game, there's a certain kind of Mario-esque nature to Mario and even to something like the use of color and the world design. The Mario games have kind of their own unique personality, and so as we go through development, I'm often looking at that and giving direction on that. And, oftentimes we'll have conversations as we're in development, and I'll say, "Oh, this looks like a Sega game. We need to make it look more like Mario."
Thompson: You said you get your inspiration for your games from hobbies and parts of your life. Give me an example of where an idea for a game came from.
Miyamoto: Well, I think in the end I could say that my inspiration comes basically from my own interests. So, for a concrete example, Nintendogs was a game where that came about because of the joy and the fun that I discovered in the different aspects of raising and training a dog. Now, in the cases of Super Mario Galaxy, again, not so much a hobby but coming from my interests, looking at kind of the joy of discovery and surprise in the creation of kind of maybe an Escher-like world where you have strange angles and things like that, as well as kind of the different types of fun you can have playing with the effects of gravity. So, those are not necessarily hobbies, per se, but things that interest me.
Kohler: What are your hobbies right now?
Miyamoto: I knew someone was going to ask me that question. (Nintendo president Satoru) Iwata has told me absolutely not to tell anyone. Of course, I did go jogging in Central Park this morning.
Kohler: All right, there's our clue.
Miyamoto: Yesterday I ate a hamburger.
Thompson: Where exactly did the idea for Donkey Kong come from?
Miyamoto: Actually, when I'm designing a game, I start with the game system. So, Donkey Kong was based kind of on this idea of almost like a collage where you have a defined area, and you would essentially within that area be able to paste -- and this is in terms of the graphics. Within that area, you've got specific elements that you're pasting in there. The game system of Donkey Kong was the idea of you're in this square, which of course is defined by the TV screen. And, originally the idea was that it's a maze that you're moving around in. And so in thinking of what types of art or graphics would go well in terms of representing this movement around kind of a maze, the idea was, well, if we have something big that you're working toward, that serves as a clear objective. And so something big, a gorilla, gorillas are big, that would be a good point on screen.
With the Mario character, in designing him, because we, in the design process, had given him a mustache, then in the end we were like, "Oh, he's got a mustache. Well, let's make him Italian." But, typically, and even the same can be said for Wii Fit. With Wii Fit it was we're looking at the game system. This is going to be its device. We want people to have it in their living room. You're going to use it to track your progress and your health. What kind of art or what kind of graphics are going to help best represent that game system? And, so typically in designing a game, it's always focused on what is that core gameplay mechanic or that core interactive element to it? And, then the look and feel of it is built around that.
Kohler: I think this goes back to how Donkey Kong would be designed today. They would design the characters and levels before even trying to figure out the gameplay.
Thompson: Now, we'll figure out a gameplay mechanic afterward.
Kohler: Right, the fact that there's a big gorilla came from the fact that there was a gameplay scheme and that needed to be there. So I think that speaks to the core vision stuff that you were talking about.
Thompson: What games are you enjoying these days that aren't by Nintendo?
Miyamoto: I'm actually not playing very many games these days.
Thompson: Yeah, not much time.
Miyamoto: The We Ski game is actually pretty good, the one that uses the Balance Board. And, then there's a game that's been released called Professor Layton and the Curious Village. And I like that game particularly, because I had also been trying to create kind of a brain calisthenics-type game, and so the fact that that kind of overlapped with that I thought was -- I particularly enjoyed that game.
Thompson: A friend of mine is the editor of Sterling Publishing, which is one of the largest children's book publishers here, and she's terrified by the success of Professor Layton and Hotel Dusk, because she thinks this is the future of books and she's not sure how the industry will adapt to it.
Miyamoto: Yeah, as I was saying with the interface of the home console where you have the monitor, the computer processor, and then the connection to the player, I think that there is certainly possibility for a lot of different mediums that people have experienced in the past to be reawakened or given new life by being brought over to a home console and giving an interactive flavor to it.
Kohler: I noticed a Nintendo 64 controller sitting over in the corner. I guess it's from the hotel, but it's got me thinking, before that controller even came out, after it was announced, Sony and Sega immediately started working on their own copycat versions. Now we're hearing a lot of rumors of Sony and Microsoft introducing versions of the Wii remote. Is this a danger to Nintendo if other companies copy this controller and get it on the market? Or does it just validate what the Wii remote has done?
Miyamoto: Of course, we're not trying to monopolize new interfaces. I think that, obviously, we took a very big gamble and took on a lot of risk not only in designing and developing the Wii remote but then trying to launch it as kind of the core of the system. And so I think that in seeing what other companies might be doing, that certainly validates the risks that we've taken and shows that they have been obviously greatly successful. I think in the end, our wish is that we want interfaces to be something that are inviting to a wider audience, so if in the end all that ends up happening is that more people end up playing videogames, then that's great.
Kohler: Are you happy with how other software makers have used the Wii remote so far? Do you see it getting better within the next year or so?
Miyamoto: I think that the understanding of the Wii remote technology has certainly proliferated to developers, and their understanding of how it works is now very strong. But, I think that in terms of developing games for the Wii remote, it's really more about the focus of the team and how thoroughly they consider the user interface and the end experience for the consumer in terms of how intuitive that is and how easy it is to use. And, at this point, I think it's just difficult for me to say how many teams that are really focused on that experience are out there and are working on games.
I think for a long time I was worried that there would be a number of games that are very similar, and so I think that the real topic of thought or discussion for the development community is, "How can we create games that take advantage of this technology that we understand in a way that makes the end experience better for the end consumer and yet still is a unique idea of our own that's different from what else is available?" And so my expectation is that we're gradually going to see a lot more of these teams appearing that are very focused on the end user experience and how they can take this technology and apply it to that.
Thompson: The focus in designing the Wii wasn't on having the best graphics. Does it matter at this point in time that the graphical capabilities of consoles get any better?
Miyamoto: I think that taking the Wii, for example, I think that overall it's, in my opinion, just a very well-balanced machine in terms of the focus on interface, the online network, pricing and things like that. And typically, when we're trying to design a piece of hardware, we're not looking specifically at one element of the hardware, such as the graphics, but rather what is the best balance of features for the given generation. Obviously, I think TVs, gradually we're going to see more and more HDTVs in households and things like that, and so because of that, in the future I can definitely see that there will continue to be graphical improvements.
But typically when we're designing the hardware, we're focusing on the features that we think provide the best balance in terms of the experience for the end consumer, as well as in terms of the development environment and trying to create a development environment that allows developers to easily develop their ideas into games. And so even going forward, while Nintendo's not going to refuse to pursue improvements in graphical capability, every generation we're going to be taking into account a number of different elements and trying to create the machine that best balances all the different needs of each generation.
Kohler: Are we going to be seeing more about Wii Music soon?
Miyamoto: I wasn't expecting that question today. Yeah, it's moving along nicely.
Fuente:
http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/06/int ... .html#more 
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