> That said, I try to insure that nothing I make wastes the players’ time by having them do things that aren’t productive or creative.
And this is why I like Nintendo games.
Miyamoto has had plenty of misses—Star Fox Zero comes to mind—but I never feel as though his games are trying to waste my time, much less manipulate me into wasting my time, as is so common nowadays.
This is also why Nintendo never had much success on mobile. Mario Run was a legitimately great game—it's just that it was short, and cost $10, and we're used to mobile games that are "free" and rely on whales to subsidize the cost.
Mario Run had a major flaw for me. It would have been the perfect subway commute game, but it required an internet connection to play. I'm still baffled why Nintendo made this design mistake; they excluded a large market.
Here in Tokyo I've not encountered an issue with signal on the metro yet. I had big issues back in London but since moving to Japan 2 years ago it's never been a problem. I've seen similar oversights by Japanese companies when it comes to disregarding or just not really understanding things from a Western perspective so it could be as simple as that.
The London Underground doesn't have 4G/Wifi in the tunnels. As with most things with the tube, the reason is that the infrastructure is very old and installing extra equipment inside those old, narrow and twisty tunnels is quite difficult and expensive.
My guess would be that they just never considered that there would be first world countries without cheap mobile data everywhere.
When I was living in Asia, even in poorer countries and/or rural areas, there was mobile internet. $1/mo for 4G 1GB. People took it for granted at a level that would be impossible in Germany, because here you can still be without even 3G just a few km outside of city centers.
Also, mobile internet repeaters for tunnels are a solved problem. Singapore had no offline areas in their underground metro. Germany has lots of em.
> mobile internet repeaters for tunnels are a solved problem.
True. Unfortunately in Canada (Toronto at least) the big 4 telco oligopoly can't agree on pricing for this one. The result is a single company offers subway coverage!
Nevermind that data here is more expensive than even the US.
Where's that Silicon Valley disruption spirit for the telco oligopolies worldwide?
I remember one of the reason was because of software piracy. On iOS it shouldn't be required since you cant install anything other than from App Store anyway. And so to make it fair for both iOS platform and Android platform they had it on.
It’s a weird quote because a lot of nintendo games are endless tutorials or interactive menu that take away from actual play time. I remember this being especially annoying in wii fit as I would just wait a lot between exercises.
Well, that's a different sort of time waster—they're trying to make the games more accessible. You can (and I would!) argue the approach is misguided, but it's not an attempt to optimize engagement metrics or some such.
It’s also an approach Nintendo has finally begun to avoid in the past few years, with games like Breath of the Wild.
I don’t think they’re necessarily getting better, I think some games have always been better than others at that. I’ve never been bothered by intro tutorials in Zelda games or mario games. Time to an actual game in SSB is super fast too. But for some reasons some games are uber slow (mario party, animal crossing)
> I’ve never been bothered by intro tutorials in Zelda games
I'll take it you didn't play Skyward Sword? :P
I think Animal Crossing is also a bit different—it's an experience that's designed to slow you down and make you relax. The speed is a part of what makes it comforting.
I've never felt a game to be more disrespectful of my time than when playing Animal Crossing. The number of completely unnecessary menus, transitions, loads, and otherwise flow-breaking elements is astounding. That game was simply not for me.
Once it picks up pace, Skyward Sword has some of the best dungeons and bosses of the series. Ancient Cistern alone is probably the pinnacle, but it's also got Sandship and Lanayru Mining Facility. Wind Waker and Twilight Princess are replete with weak dungeons aimed at more novice gamers. You'd have to go back to N64 or Link to the Past to find something that challenges the player, and none of these are as thematically satisfying as what Skyward Sword offers.
Skyward Sword's overworld is oozing with rich and evocative atmosphere, too. If you take away the Gothic veneer, Twilight Princess is almost sterile in comparison.
It's a great game that gets blamed for small pitfalls.
Twilight Princess is actually my favourite Zelda game. I enjoyed the darker atmosphere, and found the level of emotion in the game to be on par with Skyward Sword <spoiler type="rot13">(Gur frpgvba jurer lbh genafcbeg Zvqan gb Mryqn, naq jura Zvqan yrnirf ng gur raq ner gjb bs gur zbfg zrzbenoyr zbzragf va nyy bs tnzvat sbe zr)</spoiler>. I also still enjoy the dungeons and boss battles, The City in The Sky, Icepeak Ruins, and Arbiters Grounds all stick out in my mind as having difficult components. I also think that combat in general peaked in that game with the number of techniques you could learn. All of that being said, it's the first Zelda game I beat, so this should be taken with a grain of salt.
I do also love the dungeons/bosses and atmosphere in Skyward Sword however, and have to agree that it is where bosses peaked.
Twilight Princess is its atmosphere, though–it's just not the one that Skyward Sword is. Skyward Sword has more compact dungeons, sure, but I actually found them to be easier than Twilight Princess's. Sure, Twilight Princess is pretty big and a bit empty at times, but I feel this is just a setting thing. (Skyward Sword's overworld is kind of a weaker, larger dungeon to be honest.)
> Skyward Sword's overworld is kind of a weaker, larger dungeon to be honest.
Notably, if you read interviews with the developers, this is precisely what they were going for with the overworld.
It was a great idea that didn't pan out because, for whatever reason, the over-world areas simply weren't as well designed as the real dungeons. Fi interrupting you every 30 seconds didn't help either, of course.
Oh, I loved Skyward Sword, I was just talking about the tutorials! I really enjoyed the motion combat, and I think the dungeons were the best in the series.
I think this is just how Motion Plus is for everyone? I got into the habit of re-centering my sword after each swing, which eventually become relatively natural.
It will be interesting to replay the game in Dolphin some day with a more accurate motion controller.
Yep, you press the down arrow on the d-pad. Fi does tell you about this, but I guess that's the other problem with giving too many instructions—you start ignoring them!
It's my favourite. I really mastered the motion controls, to the point that BotW felt like a big step backward in being able to get Link to do what I wanted him to. And I managed to tune out Fi.
I think if I hadn't been able to do either one of those, I would have gotten really frustrated though.
I streamed all the 3D Zelda games to Twitch except for Skyward Sword because I couldn't comfortably sit at my desk and hold/swing the controller as the game wanted without whacking my hand against all the infrastructure around me (stand mics, lighting stands, etc.).
Between it being incredibly uncomfortable to play (in my situation) and Fi coming up every five minutes to hand-hold me, it was not my favourite thing.
BotW felt freer. I could explore at my own pace and defeat enemies in many more ways than using my weapons. I could use Sheikah Slate abilities, push rocks, send them marching off cliffs, freeze them then plonk them in deep water, etc.
Skyward Sword punished me for sitting still at a desk. BotW didn't. I gave up on Skyward Sword partway during the first temple — which took two four-hour streams to arrive at!
I totally understand! I probably wouldn't have been able to play it at a desk either. And BotW is better suited to the portability of the Switch as well. I can't imagine trying to play Skyward Sword on the subway or in an airplane seat, but BotW works perfectly for that, and lets you feel like you're roaming an open landscape even when you're being crammed into a sardine tin.
But I miss being able to break into a sprint, then at the right moment, jerk my left hand to roll through an enemy's legs and get behind them, spin around and draw my sword while they're figuring out where I went. Or chase them off a cliff with my little remote controlled dronebug. The combat does eventually get a lot more creative than at the start, and the enemies in Skyward Sword (bokoblins especially) felt like they had a lot more personality.
A recent-ish Nintendo design hallmark that i've grown to hate is hiding bits of the game behind a naked hours played counter. I get that there's a call for it, especially for creative games like Mario Maker, but the annoyance is that they don't provide a way for people who know what they're doing to bypass it.
I suspect Fire Emblem Heroes is a result of competing interests inside Nintendo. Miyamoto has said publically several times that he doesn't think they should be making games like that—even after Fire Emblem's success: https://gamedaily.biz/article/197/nintendos-shigeru-miyamoto...
> Nintendo said earlier this year they were moving away from the mobile market, which is what made me think they didn't see it as a huge success
I think it has been financially successful—but when the WiiU was failing, Nintendo needed a backup plan, badly. Now that the Switch is incredibly successful, they’re not as desperate for a Plan B, and so mobile ports are mostly a distraction, even if a profitable one. But their biggest bottleneck is time and developers, not money.
Register at developer.nintendo.com, download the free tools, and off you go. Switch development is much more straight forward than previous Nintendo consoles. You'll need a dev console eventually which will cost a bit, but you can get quite far before spending anything.
I play and follow Dragalia Lost. Used to play FEH. It's co-produced by a company called Cygames which makes a number of other gachas. Gachas are kind of scummy, but for what it's worth, Nintendo has pulled the reigns on them pretty hard. They've publically stated they don't want kids spending too much money on the games as it hurts their brand. Cygames has stated they have lost potential revenues due to Nintendo's influence. I think this is true as a free to play player who has pretty much everything in the game and zounds of currency (although it's gotten a little bit stingier now).
That's what came to mind for me as well. The games have some fantastic elements, but a lot of the gameplay loops are designed to be slow.
I recall reading that preventing 'assembly line' mechanics was a deliberate choice. As a result, in New Horizon you can't do bulk crafting, you need to perform multiple button presses and watch an animation for every single one.
Shopping is equally bad, where buying stock from a visiting NPC takes orders of magnitude longer than it might in an RPG, because you need to button through multiple pages of dialogue after each purchase.
Nintendo defined mobile gaming for decades, and they currently sell the leading game console in the world which is designed to switch between mobile and console gaming.
Op probably meant apps on mobile phones, not special purpose gaming handhelds (which have been defined by simple mechanics usable in touchscreens, and the most profitable / popular of which use loot crate mechanics to exploit whales). There's an argument that the distinction isn't meaningful, sure, but I definitely think it is.
> Once you get inside the building, it is a little like you’ve described. But on the outside, it’s very simple and clean, just a simple square building. Some people have even likened the reception area to a hospital waiting room. It’s kind of serene.
I can attest! Just like a hospital.
You can also see a glimpse of it from the nearby train station. A quiet unsuspecting almost industrial part of Kyoto; away from the more touristy areas. Perhaps for a reason; unlike many parts of Japan it isn't necessarily a convenient walk-to - so better maybe to have a taxi drop you off nearby.
And then when you arrive up close; a sublte Nintendo logo adourns the gated entrance - where the boring square shaped building presents itself.
Also one day, many months later - walking casually in Osaka in an area not too far from the busy Umeda / JR Station. I saw an interesting looking blue and white sign atop a commercial building amongst mostly residential apartments...
I asked my friend at the time what the Kanji meant. To my surprise, "Nintendo" she said. It was neat moment because at the time I was living in the area and had been for fair while - and all that while did not realize my childhood idol Nintendo was right there in the neighbourhood too. I just assumed they always display their romaji logo / classic font name but apparently not for this office, which was quite large as I recall; among the tallest 'medium sized' towers in a rather dense area.
Nintendo's lobby is nothing like a hospital. It looks like a North Korean palace. Sparse with only 2-3 plants. Every wall is marble. At the reception desk are 3 receptionists. The lobby is giant, consuming about 1/2 of the building's footprint. Maybe only 7 sets of low sitting executive style chairs. Absolutly zero Nintendo authored art or decor. Off the lobby to the left are meeting rooms. These meeting rooms are your usual corporate japan meeting rooms minus any large glass windows.
Nintendo is a young japan by Japanese standards combined with being from outside of the two major metro areas they have a chip on their shoulder. They are proud and want to be respected like a proper 500 year old japanese mega corp.
Compare this to the other game company's waiting rooms I've been in. Marvelous was the most "look at what we've made" with tons of products and brand merchandise lining the walls. Square Enix is more reserved, with maybe 10 figures from their brands in a glass case inset into the wall. Sony (near shinagawa) is yet more reserved, no brands, but examples of their hardware, again along the wall. Large logo behind the receptionist desk. Wargaming.net had large props reused from their promotional events, plus the fanciest and branded offices of anyone.
My experience is from the new-nintendo building. The prior Nintendo building, which itself is not the original wooden building you might remember from black and white photos, is a few blocks away. The old building is only QA now from my understanding. The new building is larger with the most premium of japanese features: large open gardens between the building and compound walls.
One of my coworkers used to work for Nintendo here in Japan, and told us about his first day.
Apparently, in the building you visited, there is a massive Nintendo museum -- everything they've ever made, all carefully curated.
You get to visit this museum once, and only once: on your first day with the company. From that point forward, you are not allowed to go again.
They do this because Nintendo believes that, while it is vital to understand your roots, to know where you came from, it is equally important to not become mired in the past and rest upon old glories, and instead to look forward to the future.
Strange yet common to have such a weird pseudo religious gimmick to indoctrinate new employees with a symbol that doesn't serve the purpose it purports to. It's like Amazon's door desks, a symbol of frugality that costs more than a regular desk because they insist on custom building imitation doors instead of regular (and ergonomic) desks.
Why doesn't the one-time museum visit serve the purpose? Are Nintendo employees disbelieving that the company is serious about that balance between legacy and future?
Oh now that is super interesting. I've heard of Bandai's library, where they have copies of every game they've made plus consoles staff can borrow. Which is the exact opposite of Nintendo's theory.
To clarify, the North Korean palace you refer to - which is the new building; is the boring blue and gray square shaped hospital looking one (the one I describe with the official sign out front of the gated entrance) ?
Fascinating to hear about it from the inside. I was excited to see the building and lay foot on the sidewalk of the compound but not the type to ask for a tour; I didn't want to be an annoying がいじん. Settled for a selfie and pictures of the outside; Kyoto on its own is has no end of photogenic opportunities so it was one of many.
Nintendo does not do tours. I only got inside as the programmer on a team delivering a game for the Switch, early after release. We only even got access to the meeting and switch hardware through an executive's connections to a seperate major games company. Our taxi drove in after checking in at the gate, we got out, waited in the lobby for 10 minutes, then went to the meeting room for half an hour. In the meantime the only other visitor appeared to be a contractor meeting with his manager, showing off a poster for approval. Meaning even if one directly contracts with Nintendo good chances you'll never see more than the lobby.
You must have been to the new building. The old building does not have a large Nintendo sign. The old building has almost no space between the compound walls and the building itself while the new one has a basketball court.
Right on; well that is the best way to enter any area: with relevance. It's super neat you got the inside view on more than one front; hope your Switch project was a success.
Yeah I must have been at the new building; again to clarify, you were at the new one too?
I checked out / subscribed to updates for Railgrade. Looks great. Hope にほん life has been good for you despite the crazy year; I haven't been back in a while so have been worried that the little things I enjoyed/valued so much there such as the polite hustle and bustle and sea of smiling faces (now covered with masks) has well maybe vanished.
Thanks eh. Yeah Japan has been good to me. This year above all other years has been a year of growth. As you noticed my own production, Railgrade, is nearing ship. It helps that the games and anime industry has only grown thanks to COVID. My client work is at capacity. I was able to hire a friend thanks to Google's hiring freeze.
Of course the back drop is I've lived and saved as if the world was always in a recession. Thus when the actual danger hits I was able to expand my business. As PG says, the best time to start a business is during a recession.
Personally I expect Japan to handle COVID economically better than most other countries. Japanese corporations have long be criticized for building cash warchests instead of upping dividends or buybacks. Thus Japan Inc has the balance sheets to leave the recession having acquired foreign assets.
Really insightful, glad to hear it (and am also at capacity at the moment but should you ever need HTML/CSS/JS gamedev freelancer feel free to reach out)
Yet I wish to press once more, the main worry I have I wish to quelle if you care to elaborate on is regarding daily life. Maybe I'll just ask specifics - like is Tokyo morning, lunch hour and 4 to 6pm rush hour still packed trains? Are the streets less busy? Is the happy go lucky-ness lost now that everyone is wearing masks all the time?
I work from home everyday so I cannot speak much to the commuting situation. I would expect life to return to normal. A couple major corporations have announced work from home being permanent but I expect a slow migration back to the status que.
For the exact situation on the street, sorry I cannot speak from experience.
Indeed! As I wrote the comment above, I pulled up my old photo of outside Nintendo's Kyoto office that day and noticed/realized that sure enough they actually display that Kanji you shared on a blue/white flat atop a tall flagpole directly next to the detached ground-level classic "Nintendo" logo sign.
Cross referecing with the building referred to later in Osaka then of course, it is the same blue and white colors with that Kanji. Didn't connect the dots at the time! Just happened to casually bring it up as a curious sight to my friend while walking about on a summer day.
The company was named 任天堂骨牌 (Nintendō Karuta) when it was founded in 1898 to sell a traditional Japanese card game called Hanafuda (meaning "flower cards").
The company name is certainly intended to have semantic meaning, as each character of 任天堂 combines sensibly and logically.
The last character 堂 suggests a kind of sacred space, "a hall, temple, or shrine". The second chatacter 天 means "heaven"; and the first character 任 implies trusting, or leaving things up to, this "heaven".
> The name Nintendo is commonly assumed to mean 'leave luck to heaven', but the assumption lacks historical validation; it can alternatively be translated as "the temple of free hanafuda". (From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo#1889%E2%80%931969:_Ea...)
Overall the name gives a religious or spiritual impression, which feels at odds with the purpose of the company to sell games. I believe this is also intentional, related to the history of these playing cards in Japan as part of illegal gambling.
> The company was named 任天堂骨牌 (Nintendō Karuta) when it was founded in 1898 to sell a traditional Japanese card game called Hanafuda (meaning "flower cards").
Well, calling Hanfuda a traditional card game is bit like calling cocaine a traditional stimulant -- before pivoting into family entertainment, Nintendo got its start in life selling cards for illegal gambling to the Yakuza. Earlier, unsuccessful, diversification attempts included love hotels. Apparently the reason Nintendo branched into toys was a lucky accident: company president Yamauchi noticed one of his factory employees, Gunpei Yokoi (who later invented the d-pad and went on to design the game boy) fooled around with an extensible claw he'd built himself during lunch break. Yamauchi ordered him to productionize it, and it became a big hit (that may have saved the company from bankruptcy):
I feel like it's an exaggeration to say 堂 mean "sacred space". Maybe in some historical sense but it's used for common places. 食堂 (cafeteria) 公会堂 (public hall). If you put 堂 in Google Maps you'll find 1000s of places and companies called ~~~堂 For example the bookstore on the famous Shibuya Crossing is called Taiseido 大盛堂, store that sells stationary called Kanmido (カンミ堂), a store that sells stamps called Zenbido 善美堂 etc...
While known fo Apple Park, many of Apple's offices are pretty much like this–especially smaller ones they have acquired and are using for some less-public division. They are frequently bland, almost entirely unmarked. The lobby is empty save for an iPad that lets you tell people why you're there. If you know what to look for they can stick out, but most people don't and they pass by unnoticed.
> We’re finally at a point where people who played with Nintendo’s characters as children are playing with those same characters with their children. That longevity is special.
I'm the generation he's describing, and some of the best parts of my life have been on both sides of that interaction. Looking forward to being the grandparent.
Absolutely, i thoroughly enjoy playing the first Super Mario I played at age 3 with my 3 year old.
Seeing him laugh but also get angry and fail made me choke up and say thank you to Mr. Miyamoto in my head. What a wonderful experience to share and bond over.
I don't have kids, but my nephew is 6, and I love playing Mario games together with him. I just love seeing the same type of joy in his eyes playing Super Mario Odyssey that I had playing Super Mario Bros 3 as a kid.
Yeah, he's played those as well. He's also obsessed with Mario Maker 2 right now. It's amazing how good of an outlet that game is for a kid's creativity.
It’s a weird statement. We’re at the point where some who played with Mario as a kid could be playing with Mario with their grandchildren right now. I started playing Mario with my kid over a decade ago.
My point is that the statement has been the case so long that it’s true even for some grandparents; quite in contrast to the idea that we are “finally” there.
Strange how Nintendo gets no shit for crunch because they're "beloved". Lots of articles about Nintendo USA not crunching but the main office in Japan is still the same
This isn't meant to be a defense of Nintendo (I don't really care about game studio fandom), but Japan itself has some way to go when it comes to their cultural attitude to work.
That said, companies like Nintendo bucking the salaryman trend would do a lot to help shift people's perspective towards a healthier work/life balance.
I don't get the games industry's obsession with crunch. Never mind adverse health and personal impacts -- does it actually work as a means to squeezing more output out of staff? I mean, you can definitely achieve a short temporary burst to meet a deadline by putting in long hours and maybe Miyamoto can boost his managerial output by sitting in meetings for 60 hours instead of 30. But I really have difficulty picturing programmers working on complex stuff like game engines being more productive with a 80 hour week than a 30 hour week for anything beyond a few days, let alone extended periods of time. And indeed all traditional studies of worker productivity (not necessarily in IT) I recall suggest that productivity falls off a cliff pretty soon as weekly hours a cranked up (see also https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/productivity-vs-annual-ho..., which suggests a general pattern between countries).
So I'm wondering -- is game industry crunch so popular (majority of game studios seem to be doing it) for reasons that having nothing to do with increasing individual worker output?
In the case of Japan in particular there is also a strong tradition of doing long but very unproductive work hours because presence is prized over productivity .
Or are games really "special" in some way (for example because there is some evidence that people can sustain normally unsustainable productivy/weekly hours ratios for "passion projects")?
Does anyone have any good studies or anectodal evidence from their own experience (focussed 30-50 hour week vs crunch for several weeks)?
1) Towards the end of a production cycle mostly laborious work is remaining that doesn’t require as much creativity to produce. Not so much programmers working on an engine, but rather art teams working on finishing assets. For this kind of work you do get more output per hour worked, even if people are overworked. Some companies (many companies unfortunately) do plan for this crunch early on.
2) For a multitude of reasons, usually related to biz dev and budgeting, release windows are set way ahead of time. Then a marketing campaign starts months in advance to build up to release. A marketing campaign is extremely costly, and loses much of its effectiveness if it’s interrupted. it might be impossible to build up the same level of attention a second time, and most companies aren’t willing or can’t afford to take that chance.
3) The work remaining that does require creativity, responding to QA demands, porting, redesigns, bug fixing, etc ends up in a crunch by necessity due to 2).
The first part of your answer that sounds intuitively believable, namely that a bunch of chores accumulate by the end of a production cycle and that productivity is not as badly hit, so it might be possible to get more out of people by overworking them (it's not completely obvious though, many of the studies about productivity declines due to overwork I skimmed study tasks that don't seem like they'd obviously suffer more under overwork than art asset creation).
But the other two points are in a way begging the question: I understand that both poor planning and set-in-stone release/marketing windows are endemic in the industry (and that this creates temptation to overwork people to hit a slipped deadline). But if overworking people is generally a net loss in throughput (as a lot of studies seem to suggest), giving in to this temptation ought to be counterproductive and decrease the likelihood of meeting the deadline. Now of course it's not uncommon for people to really persistently, and en-masse do stupid things that turn out to be highly counterproductive -- like seeing a doctor throughout most of human history. On the other hand, given that the practice seems to be both ubiquitous and universally hated you'd think the first major game studio to figure this out would completely crush its competitors in no time. Since this hasn't happened yet, it's tempting to conclude it must provide some advantage.
Speaking about controversies, what are the opinions on Nintendo's "stream ban" happened in Japan? I barely heard anyone talking about it in Western World.
(For the unfamiliar: basically, the streamers have to get permissions from Nintendo to stream their games. Some famous streaming groups failed to do so and they had to delete all their VODs involving Nintendo's games after Nintendo's warning.
[I assume other game publishers technically/legally can do the same, but I don't see them practice this without causing a huge backlash from the community.])
Revelations about past Nintendo activity repeatedly extinguishing Smash events both through strategic and tactical measures, disclosed after The Big House cancellation: https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1srfu4r
A couple days back Nintendo was on the front page of HN for threatening people and tailing them, iirc?
Also, they've been pretty assertive about DMCA, and they aren't very kind with streamers from what I understand. (Also, they really seem to not be interested in supporting the tournament communities for their games like Smash.)
I asked this a few days ago but did not get any responses...
Given that I find myself strongly compelled to stand up to this ridiculous behavior on the part of Nintendo and I have the time and resources to do so ...
I am going to purchase, on ebay ... what ? A plain old retail Nintendo Switch ?
Then I will send that switch (or two, or three) to ... who ?
Let's say I have a budget of USD $10,000 - who can I pay to do original, clean-room reverse engineering of this device ?
The goal here would be to publish everything that I can pay people to find.
What difference would $10,000 make? That's the primary question.
You can buy a decent engineer's spare time for two or three months, if they're being generous about it and particularly want to help. Where would one place $10k that it would meaningfully accelerate reverse engineering the Switch?
You either do it for anything but the money, or the money has to be a lot larger than $10k.
Calling it lack of support is probably a bit misleading, in reality they are actively undermining the competitive scene by things like shutting down tournaments/streams, preventing outside orgs (eg evo, mlg) from picking up smash, etc. Some of the other commenters gave links which have more details on this.
Given the recent events in context of the past 2 decades of nintendo's behaviour, the smash scene would love for nintendo to not be involved at all. There is no entitlement whatsoever for nintendo's support (unless "support" literally just means allowing us to run events with no help of any kind from nintendo other than not shutting it down, in which case it really doesn't strike me as too unreasonable).
That tailing took place years ago. Nintendo has never been kind to anyone using their IP in ways they don't like. I love Nintendo, but there's no denying they can be very fierce and litigious.
This New Yorker article is dated Dec 20. The tweets from the ‘stalking’ thread were posted Dec 21. Not defending Nintendo for anything here, just pointing out this theoretical ‘PR spin’ timeline doesn’t add up.
Agreed, I personally don't think this interview had anything to do with trying to put out that fire. Not even really convinced Nintendo cares all that much about the leak, tbh, pretty much nobody I know outside of the HN crowd even heard about it.
Q. Games can be labeled as a cause of problems by parents and society alike.
A. Like smartphones and VR goggles, devices themselves are not harmful. It’s unhealthy to become dependent on them. I want children to experience many things, like playing outside, reading books, and learning more. Balance is key. It’s almost as if video games are attributed as a source of crimes, but it’s a result of becoming obsessed or losing touch with people. It’s wrong to blame social problems on a device.
I appreciate his views, but I find it rather ironic that while Miyamoto points out the violence in other video games, even Miyamoto's creations involve some degree of cartoon violence. (e.g. Mario stomping on Goombas, Link stabbing his sword and breaking vases)
> (Miyamoto) expressed sadness at the number of people Bond shoots down, and suggested to him that, during the end credits, he make the player visit each victim in their hospital bed
Hideo Kojima did this in Metal Gear Solid 3. During a boss battle, the boss would conjure up the souls of those who fell to the protagonist Snake. Snake's movement would slow down because of the ghosts surrounding him. One of the most harrowing scenes in video games history.
Yeah, and every encounter with a warrior in the same game I believe (or maybe majora's mask?) you damage them untill they flee the room. I don't think you ever kill a human in those games. Maybe Ganon, but he comes of as a man-pig hybrid. Although I'm not sure how the knights in Link to the Past fit into this, surely those are human soldiers you're killing...
Another data point: What happens with the highway bandit in Breath of the Wild? They eventually teleport away, they don't explode into a poof of death.
> Another data point: What happens with the highway bandit in Breath of the Wild? They eventually teleport away, they don't explode into a poof of death.
Except if you hit them with an Ancient Arrow, which completely disintegrates them like any other type of enemy. That's what I did the first time around in the Yiga Clan Hideout.
Also I guess quite a few of the series' villains are human or humanoid, but most tend to become a monstrous form before you actually kill them.
> a few of the series' villains are human or humanoid, but most tend to become a monstrous form before you actually kill them.
That's a good point. I can think of Zant (from Twilight Princess) at least dies in his humanoid form, although <spoiler>Ur'f abg xvyyrq ol gur cynlre, ohg ol Tnabaqbes</spoiler>. There's Ganondorf in Twilight Princess and Wind Waker. In the former, <spoiler>ur genafvgvbaf vagb n uhzna ng gur ynfg cunfr bs gur svtug</spoiler> and in the later <spoiler>ur bayl nccrnef nf n uhzna</spoiler>.
In the case of both Wind Waker and Twilight Princess however, it's already established in series canon that he is not entirely human.
Yeah, Ganondorf is part demon in most of his appearances, and is clearly not a typical 'mortal' human in any game.
I think Zant actually kills himself though, as the last act of spite against Ganon for something or another.
For other examples:
Both Astor (Age of Calamity) and Chancellor Cole (Spirit Tracks) get taken over by their demon king rulers before their final battle (Ganon and Malladus respectively).
Vaati becomes his one winged angel form in all games where he's a major villain or final boss.
Master Kohga gets killed by his own idiocy at the end of his boss battle.
And Yuga takes over Ganon, before getting killed in that sort of merged form instead.
At that rate, the only 'human' who doesn't do this is Lady Maud from Tri Force Heroes, and she's neither particularly threatening nor actually dies after the battle.
Every corpse you drop needs to be hauled to a crematorium or any single one will go thermonuclear and end the game. Lethal weapons and explosions will also cause stress to your precious cargo.
MGS5 did not reward violent playthroughs either. Snake would turn demonic, start looking like crap and aggravate fatigue. The point of the game is to build an army; you can't recruit the dead.
I'm a HUGE Nintendo fan. But non-violence? Just because it's cute doesn't make something non-violent. See Tom and Jerry cartoons.
Mario throws fire at enemies and burns them alive. How is that not violent? He stomps on their heads and squishes them into juice. He knocks them into lava and watches them melt. And let's not forget that most video game characters, including Miyamoto's loot and steal anything they can. Link walks into a building and empties every container he can.
> I also resist the idea that it’s O.K. to simply kill all monsters. Even monsters have a motive, and a reason for why they are the way they are.
He designed Zelda and Mario where all you do is kill every monster.
I love all those games but they aren't non-violent. They're just violence disguised in cute clothing.
Non-violent might include Animal Crossing, Pilotwings but certainly not ARMS where all you do is punch other people.
I think there's a distinction to be made between a concept which can be violent and a violent depiction, specifically when said violence is depicted realistically. I think Miyamoto is referring to wish to avoid the latter.
You never see Mario's enemies burn, you watch them disappear in a puff of smoke. When enemies are jumped upon, they flatten in a cartoonish manner rather than a realistic. Even in Zelda, where some things can be genuinely gruesome to watch, enemies mainly flash red when they are hit rather than spew blood everywhere — and this is a series where most bosses are to be stabbed in the eye!
> They're just violence disguised in cute clothing
That's called cartoon violence. Yeah, it's still violence, but I don't think it's what Miyamoto was referring to.
For Miyamoto, his characters, his worlds, and even the enemies are all like players on a stage. They play their parts, including being the villains, and bowing out when their time is up. It's as they go off-stage, maybe to participate in a kart racer or a round of tennis.
I don't think the distinction matters. The point is you're solving your problems via violence. Don't like what they're doing? Beat them up until they stop. Want their possessions, beat them up and take them.
I think we need to be more honest about what the definition of violence
is. Equating real-life violence to fictional or simulated violence really stretches and dilutes its meaning. It also completely misunderstands the psychological motivations and incentives behind each one. One of these two activities leaves an /actual/ person hurt (and then dead) and the other does not. One of these two activities is a safe way to explore your curiosity about very morbid and common human concerns (conflict and death) and of them is not. They couldn't be less different.
Diluting that down to "solving your problems via violence" just completely misses that distinction in favor of a boogeyman.
From a game design and game mechanic perspective, do you have any suggestions on how to remove the cartoon violence? How would you design a Mario or a Zelda game? Or do you have any examples of comparable games without cartoon violence?
Many popular games have an element of rivalry; you have to take away the ball, defend or capture a base, get the most points, etc. In a game of tag people chase and touch each other. One could argue that being “caught” or being “jumped on” are violent concepts, but in the context of a game I’d view them as harmless.
You've actually correctly identified a strange contradiction here. Everyone is talking about how violence is "bad" but at the same time we're ok with cartoon violence. Why?
The reason is most people and your repliers included are unable to identify their biases so they talk about violence but violence is not what actually repulses them or humans in general.
What repulses humans is gore. The more realistic the gore the more we're repulsed. All forms of violence depicted without gore is something humans are completely ok with.
The evidence for what I am saying exists in what we eat. The meat we put in our mouths come from violent houses of slaughter where we kill living things and slice them up for consumption. Most people are totally ok with this, they just don't want to see the actual animal getting killed. But the fact that we raise living things for the sole purpose of slaughtering them later is a something we're totally ok with.
It's not gore specifically that makes us repulsed. It's visually seeing gore that is something we're not ok with. As long as we don't see gore then we're ok with gore actually existing in real life. Nothing illustrates this concept better than video games. In video games and movies... No actual violence is occuring! It's just pretend violence. We're more ok with eating slices of flesh violently hacked off of from living things then we are of seeing movies depict fake violence, where no actual violence occurs!
People are unable to separate a response triggered by visual stimuli away from the actual intent of "violence" that usually is associated with such stimuli. In their confusion the mistakenly conflate gore with violence and as a result have a deep misunderstanding of human psychology in general.
Don't try to find logic behind your instincts and emotions. Things like "reactions" from visual stimuli do not exist because the make sense, they exist because such "reactions" at one point in prehistory helped humans survive predation. Making logical sense is not a prerequisite. That is the problem with your repliers when they try to dismiss your response, they are trying to make sense of something that never made sense in the first place.
Either way, congratulations for asking the definitive question and noticing what others are incapable of noticing.
You bring up an interesting point which is how gore removes the plausible deniability of violence from death, a fascinating observation about human psychology which I generally agree with. But I wonder if you're talking about something orthogonal to what GP is -- that is, you're talking about literal violence whereas they're talking about a more meta form of violence, if I'm understanding correctly.
The meta form of violence they are talking about is simply the mechanism of "might makes right" -- if I am not misinterpreting them, it's the idea that violence comes not just from the force but from engagement with the opposing character as a hostile threat to be neutralized rather than an independent agent to be reconciled through diplomacy, and that this is a function of the game design. And so a non-violent game design would entail not just removing gore but removing these kinds of engagement styles completely.
I'm not inclined to agree with this line of reasoning because I think it rests on faulty assumptions. And I think you call out the prime one pretty specifically in your comment:
> People are unable to separate a response triggered by visual stimuli away from the actual intent of "violence" that usually is associated with such stimuli.
It's a subtle but crucial distinction, and I think it gets to the core of what makes people make the conflation. Thanks for bringing it to the fore.
When Donkey Kong was created, the character now known as Mario was then called Jumpman.
Mario Segale was the owner of a warehouse that Nintendo of America rented in Tukwila, WA.
Nintendo wasn't timely paying the rent, so Segale showed up at the warehouse to collect he money from the then Nintendo of America president Minoru Arakawa. He did so in an aggressive manner, often trash talking everyone.
This is when Nintendo decided to create a game around Jumpman, with its name changed to Mario, after Mario Segale. Because Segale is Italian, they also made Mario Italian, and it's possible that the entire game started as some bizarre parody of Italians made by people that have no idea about Italy, and then was toned down and made more abstract.
"Koopa" sounds similar to "Cumpa" which means the same as "Goombah". Basically they made all the enemy names sound like "Goombah" and this is no coincidence.
In Japan, King Bowser is called 大魔王クッパ, or Great Demon King Koopa. Koopa, or クッパ (kuppa), is named for the Japanese pronunciation of a Korean soup , 국밥 (gukbap).
In the West, Koopas were retroactively changed to be the name of the turtle species with Bowser as their king.
They didn’t make all the enemy names sound like Goombah, just one, Goomba. Koopas having a similar sounding name is coincidence.
The actual name of the Goomba species, however, is likely to be, as you say, a reference to Italians. In Japan, they are called クリボー (kuribo) in reference to their chestnut (栗, kuri) appearance — this is supported by the even more chestnut-like appearance of the subspecies Galoombas (クリボン, kuribon) from Super Mario World.
It’s not random at all, naming things after food is pretty common in Japanese media. See half the characters in the Dragon Ball series. It’s also attested in Nintendo’s own documents, alongside other candidates for names taken from Japanese names for Korean food dishes.
Yes, Mario is confirmed to be named after Segale. No, that doesn’t make your theory about Koopas being named to sound similar to Goomba any less ‘random’.
It would also fail to account for the fact that (a) Nintendo is first and foremost a Japanese company, with the American branch relegated to managing marketing, sales, and localization meaning that (B) クッパ as a name predates the English naming of Koopa.
If Nintendo of America had as much influence as you suggest, then the name Koopa would apply consistently to either the great demon king or the turtles, and the turtles wouldn’t be called ノコノコ (nokonoko, in reference to the sound they make when pushed into their shells and bounced around) in Japan.
Not sure why this comment is at the bottom, as it's actually interesting, and the part about Mario Segale is clearly true. [1] I can't vouch for the relevance of the rest of the naming stuff and possible connection to Italian-ness, but it was neat to learn where the name Mario came from!
“Complex emotions are difficult to deal with in interactive media. I’ve been involved in movies, and passive media is much better suited to take on those themes.”
Mr. Miyamoto made a very astute observation here. The average consumer responds far better to simpler emotions when given the choice, and the trend appears to be growing.
This is a good interview. Maybe misleading title; the interview doesn't focus that much on any one thing. Personally I found the questions relating to being a good leader to be excellent (acknowledging the vulnerability inherent in creative work; using the leadership role to provide a positive grand vision to enable the team to work under, while still being able to be critical of important detail work; an awareness of the vulnerability anyone is facing when bringing an idea to the forefront and taking care to greet the idea with openness.)
The main reason games are violent is that you are usually presenting the player with a challenge to be overcome. That challenge has to be simple and visual. The simplest way to do this is with a fight - it’s why my game will have combat for example. It’s exciting to hear that such a superhero developer is tackling nonviolent games because he could start a really neat trend
He has always been like that. There's a (possibly apocryphal) story about him meeting with the developers of Goldeneye and suggesting that they have a scene at the end of the game where you visit the hospital and visit all the people you shot throughout the game and give them well wishes.
> The main reason games are violent is that you are usually presenting the player with a challenge to be overcome. That challenge has to be simple and visual. The simplest way to do this is with a fight - it’s why my game will have combat for example.
I wish I read this point more often.
I would love a game where you had to convince someone to change their mind or get a team of people to help you achieve something by only talking to them (like being a character in a non-violent movie). We're just nowhere close to this level of AI yet.
That's why we have so many games where button press = shoot gun in my opinion. It translates the physical controller actions we have to actions that the game can practically react to in an interesting way, in terms of graphics and gameplay. There's probably a similar mapping to why most TV shows and movies revolve around murder.
Exactly. The most common ways to interact with a game world are the simplest and most visual: push button = physically do something, and the target physically reacts also. Subtlety and abstraction is harder to pull off, and hence, riskier for the company to attempt. The ones that succeeded did great though
And this is why I like Nintendo games.
Miyamoto has had plenty of misses—Star Fox Zero comes to mind—but I never feel as though his games are trying to waste my time, much less manipulate me into wasting my time, as is so common nowadays.
This is also why Nintendo never had much success on mobile. Mario Run was a legitimately great game—it's just that it was short, and cost $10, and we're used to mobile games that are "free" and rely on whales to subsidize the cost.