Shigeru Miyamoto and Reggie Fils-Aime introduce new “Wii Fit” Game and Peripheral for the Nintendo Wii! (more…)
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Shigeru Miyamoto and Reggie Fils-Aime introduce new “Wii Fit” Game and Peripheral for the Nintendo Wii! (more…)
I’m curious about all aspects of game design, and found this insight from the master - Shigeru Miyamoto. He is the man who brought us Donkey Kong, Mario Brothers, Zelda, and is the creative genius behind so many of the Nintendo games. He breaks down his creative vision into four major areas:
Expanding Audiences: One of the challenges that he has been successfully addressing for Nintendo, is designing games that appeal to wider audiences. Wii Sports for the Nintendo Wii, and Brain Age for the Nintendo DS are good examples of this. He says his wife wasn’t interesting in video games for a long time, but now she beats him at Brain Age…
Balance: He defines balance as moving forward as a company and creating new innovations, but also keeping true to their history. I personally like Nintendo’s approach in the recent console wars, where they decided not to take Microsoft and Sony on in terms of the level of graphics and technology, but to focus instead on games that are fun to play. In Wii sports the baseball players don’t even have arms, but you forget all about that because you are using the interesting new Wii controller to swing the bat and hit the ball.
Risk: And speaking of that new controller, Miyamoto says it is the biggest risk 
the company has taken yet. They are breaking with 20 years of tradition and history in game controllers. As new games come out that take advantage of this new controller we’ll see how successful it is. Impressions from staff here and friends so far have been that the Wii is a great “party” console, fun to play games with others. And the Wii remote sort of levels the playing field for all ages making the games really fun to play together.
Communication: When designing a game, he tries to understand the “emotion” that the player will be communicating while playing it. What does the game make you feel?
Miyamoto sums it up by saying “creative vision is not one element of game design. It’s the essence of game design.
I think that has been the problem with some recent educational games. In pursing educational aspects of the games, part of the creative vision was lost. There are, however, some shining examples of games that provide a learning experience and are also really fun to play. The challenge for us as a community of parents, is to influence the major publishers to fund more of these kinds of games, and I can envision a future where there many quality titles for children 4-12 that immerse the players in a fun learning experience!
More interesting links:
Miyamoto Video Interview on C|Net
For more on Shigeru Miyamoto and Nintendo’s interesting story, read the book Game Over. It is a fascinating read!
The Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2007 was a great success for Kidconfidence. Click the image below for our “GDC Impressions” video.
More interviews, articles and videos are coming soon, aside from what we already posted. Check out our site and subscribe to our feed.
We would like to thank Ian Bogost, Ph.D. - Persuasive Games, Shigeru Miyamoto – Nintendo, James M. Bower, Ph.D. - Whyville.net, Tom Crago - Tantalus, Randall King – US Army, Judy Shasek - RedOctane, Jessica Hammer – Columbia University, Dan Roy – MIT, Dr. Debbie Reese – WJU, Ed Fleming – VGXPO, Kan Anant, Ph.D. – PhaseSpace, Professor David Williamson Shaffer - University Wisconsin, and all other speakers and exhibitors who interviewed with us.
Our Kidconfidence GDC video is featuring music from Sonic Picnic. Sonic Picnic specializes in sound design and music composition for games and other media.
Nintendo game design icon Shigeru Miyamoto was honored with the “Game Developers Choice - Lifetime Achievement Award” during this years Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, CA.
Miyamoto joined Nintendo in 1977 as a staff artist and quickly built a reputation for himself. In 1981, Nintendo released Miyamoto’s creation Donkey Kong to arcades, launching what would come to be known as his first masterpiece. In 1985, Nintendo released their Nintendo Entertainment System with Miyamoto’s Super Mario Bros ; over time, more than 40 million units of the game were sold worldwide, and a series of mega-hit titles was born, including the 1996 Nintendo 64 best seller, Super Mario 64. More than 193 million video games in the Super Mario series have been sold worldwide. To date, Miyamoto has worked on more than 100 different Nintendo video game titles, supporting younger video game creators as a producer for Kirby and Pokémon games. Miyamoto’s most recent video game projects include Wii Sports, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Nintendogs , Super Mario Galaxy and design work on the Wii hardware. He also was responsible for The Legend of Zelda : The Wind Waker , Metroid Prime , Super Mario Sunshine , Pikmin , Luigi’s Mansion and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time , which has been called the greatest video game of all time.
Recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Award are selected by the Choice Awards Advisory Board, comprised of a diverse set of developers from around the globe. Past recipients of this award include Richard Garriott, Eugene Jarvis, Mark Cerny, Gunpei Yokoi (posthumously), Yuji Naka and Will Wright.
“This year’s recipients of the Game Developers Choice Award special honors reflect the dramatic impact of their visionary creations and industry work,” said Jamil Moledina, Executive Director of the Game Developers Conference. “Our four honorees are each responsible for inspiring the industry to creative heights through personal example and challenging conventional wisdom.”
