Source:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/arts/television/25schi.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=all
Excerpt:Through all his games, his designs are marked by an accumulation of care and detail.
Given that its roster of characters includes not only Mario and
Donkey Kong but also Princess Peach, Zelda, Bowser and Link, it’s easy
to imagine that Mr. Miyamoto designs his games around those characters.
The truth is exactly the opposite. According to Mr. Miyamoto,
gameplay systems and mechanics have always come first, while the
characters are created and deployed in the service of the overall
design. That means a focus on the seemingly prosaic basic elements of
game design: movement, setting, goals to accomplish and obstacles to
overcome.
“I feel that people like Mario and people like Link and
the other characters we’ve created not for the characters themselves,
but because the games they appear in are fun,” he said. “And because
people enjoy playing those games first, they come to love the
characters as well.”
Mr. Miyamoto’s work is evolving from a
reliance on invented characters and fanciful, outlandish settings like
Mario’s Mushroom Kingdom or Zelda’s mythical Hyrule. With games like
Nintendogs (inspired by his pet Shetland sheepdog), Wii Sports, Wii Fit
and coming next, Wii Music, Mr. Miyamoto is gravitating toward everyday
hobbies: pets, bowling, yoga, Hula-Hoop, music. It is as if an artist
who had mastered the abstract had finally moved into realism.
“I
would say that over the last five years or so, the types of games I
create has changed somewhat,” he said. “Whereas before I could kind of
use my own imagination to create these worlds or create these games, I
would say that over the last five years I’ve had more of a tendency to
take interests or topics in my life and try to draw the entertainment
out of that.”
It has proved the perfect strategy as Nintendo
reaches out to nongamers who may not care to understand why this
frantic plumber keeps jumping on top of turtles, or why that gallant
fellow in green has to keep rescuing the same princess over and over.
At this moment, when consumers crave the ability to shape and become a
part of their entertainment, whether through MySpace
or “American Idol,” the latest star in Nintendo’s stable of characters
is you — or rather Mii, the whimsical avatar Wii users create of
themselves.
“I see the Miis as the most recent character creation
from Nintendo,” Mr. Miyamoto said. “What’s interesting is that
regardless of the user’s age, if they’re looking at a Mii, it’s their
Mii. Before, when you’re playing as another character, it’s more
typical of more passive entertainment, and by creating a Mii you’re
becoming more a part of the entertainment experience.”
==
Video Games
Resistance Is Futile
Michael Nagle for The New York Times
Shigeru Miyamoto illustrates the Wii Fit system, a new interactive physical fitness device from Nintendo.
Published: May 25, 2008
IT’S O.K. to liken Shigeru Miyamoto to Walt Disney.
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An image from Wii Fit.
Mario Super Sluggers for Wii.
Characters and a scene from Donkey Kong.
When Disney died in 1966, Mr.
Miyamoto was a 14-year-old schoolteacher’s son living near Kyoto,
Japan’s ancient capital. An aspiring cartoonist, he adored the classic
Disney characters. When he wasn’t drawing, he made his own toys,
carving wooden puppets with his grandfathers’ tools or devising a car
race from a spare motor, string and tin cans.
Even as he has
become the world’s most famous and influential video-game designer —
the father of Donkey Kong, Mario, Zelda and, most recently, the Wii —
Mr. Miyamoto still approaches his work like a humble craftsman, not as
the celebrity he is to gamers around the world.
Perched on the
end of a chair in a hotel suite a few dozen stories above Midtown
Manhattan, the preternaturally cherubic 55-year-old Mr. Miyamoto
radiated the contentment of someone who has always wanted to make fun.
And he has. As the creative mastermind at Nintendo for almost three
decades, Mr. Miyamoto has unleashed mass entertainment with a global
breadth, cultural endurance and financial success unsurpassed since
Disney’s fabled career.
In the West, chances are that Mr.
Miyamoto would have started his own company a long time ago. He could
have made billions and established himself as a staple of entertainment
celebrity. Instead, despite being royalty at Nintendo and a cult
figure, he almost comes across as just another salaryman (though a
particularly creative and happy one) with a wife and two school-age
children at home near Kyoto. He is not tabloid fodder, and he seems to
maintain a relatively nondescript lifestyle.
“What’s important
is that the people that I work with are also recognized and that it’s
the Nintendo brand that goes forward and continues to become strong and
popular,” he said by way of comparing Walt Disney’s role in the larger
brand with his. “And if people are going to consider the Nintendo brand
as being on the same level as the Disney brand, that’s very flattering
and makes me happy to hear,” he added, through an interpreter. (He
understands spoken English well but does not speak it beyond a few
phrases, a twist of considerable amusement to him given that his father
taught English.)
Mario, the mustached Italian plumber he created
almost 30 years ago, has become by some measures the planet’s most
recognized fictional character, rivaled only by Mickey Mouse. As the
creator of the Donkey Kong, Mario and Zelda series (which have
collectively sold more than 350 million copies) and the person who
ultimately oversees every Nintendo game, Mr. Miyamoto may be personally
responsible for the consumption of more billions of hours of human time
than anyone around. In the Time 100 online poll conducted this spring,
Mr. Miyamoto was voted the most influential person in the world.
But
it isn’t just traditional gamers who are flocking to Mr. Miyamoto’s
latest creation, the Wii. Eighteen months ago, just when video games
were in danger of disappearing into the niche world of fetishists, Mr.
Miyamoto and Satoru Iwata, Nintendo’s chief executive, practically
reinvented the industry. (Mr. Miyamoto’s full title is senior managing
director and general manager of Nintendo’s entertainment analysis and
development division.) Their idea was revolutionary in its simplicity:
rather than create a new generation of games that would titillate
hard-core players, they developed the Wii as an easy-to-use,
inexpensive diversion for families (with a particular appeal to women,
an audience generally immune to the pull of traditional video games).
So far the Wii has sold more than 25 million units, besting the
competition from Sony and Microsoft.
In
an effort to build on this success, last week Nintendo released its new
Wii Fit system in North America, a device that hopes to make doing yoga
in front of a television screen almost as much fun as driving,
throwing, jumping or shooting in a traditional game. Though there were
no hard sales figures available as of Tuesday, there were reports of
stores across the country selling out of Wii Fit.
In a global
media culture dominated by American faces, tastes and brands, video
games are Japan’s most successful cultural export. And on the strength
of the Wii and the DS hand-held game system, Nintendo has become one of
the most valuable companies in Japan. With a net worth of around $8
billion, Nintendo’s former chairman, Hiroshi Yamauchi, is now the
richest man in Japan, according to Forbes magazine. (Nintendo does not
disclose Mr. Miyamoto’s compensation, but it appears that he has not
joined the ranks of the superrich.)
“Without Miyamoto, Nintendo
would be back making playing cards,” said Andy McNamara, editor in
chief of Game Informer, the No. 1 game magazine, referring to
Nintendo’s original business in 1889. “He probably inspires 99 percent
of the developers out there today. You can even say there wouldn’t be
video games today if it wasn’t for Miyamoto and Nintendo. He’s the
granddad of all game developers, but the funny thing is that for all of
his legacy, for all of the mainstay iconic characters he’s designed and
created, he is still pushing the limits with things like Wii Fit.”
Mr.
Miyamoto graduated from the Kanazawa College of Art in 1975 and joined
Nintendo two years later as a staff artist. The original Donkey Kong
was a prime force in gaming’s early surge of popularity, along with
arcade classics like Space Invaders, Asteroids and Pac-Man.
He
rose quickly at the company, and his name has been synonymous with
Nintendo since the 1980s, when the original Mario Bros. games helped
save the industry after the collapse of Atari, maker of the first
broadly popular home console. When Atari failed amid a slew of
unpopular games, Nintendo rekindled faith in home gaming systems; the
Nintendo Entertainment System, released in the West in 1985, became the
best-selling console of its era.
Since then Mr. Miyamoto has been
directly involved in the production of at least 70 games, including
recent hits like Mario Kart Wii, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Super Mario
Galaxy and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Mr. Miyamoto
supervises about 400 people, including contractors, almost entirely in
Japan. The popular new installments in classic game franchises have
maintained his credibility among core gamers even as he has reached out
to new audiences with mass-market products like the Wii.
Through
all his games, his designs are marked by an accumulation of care and
detail. There is nothing objective about why a goofy guy in blue
overalls like Mario should appeal to so many, just as there is nothing
objective in how Disney could have built a company on talking animals.
Rather, the reason I stood in line at a pizzeria more than 20 years ago
to play Super Mario Bros., the reason Mr. Miyamoto is almost a living
god in the game world, is that his games have some ineffable lure that
inspires you to drop just one more quarter (or, these days, to stay on
the couch just one more hour).
Just as a film is not measured by
the quality of its special effects, a game is not measured merely by
its graphics. This concept is lost on many designers, but not on Mr.
Miyamoto. And just as a film buff might prefer to watch an old
black-and-white movie instead of, say, “Iron Man,” even Mr. Miyamoto’s
earliest games hold up as worthy diversions. (The story of two men
battling for the world record in Donkey Kong was made into a film, “The
King of Kong,” last year.)
“There are very few people in the
video game industry who have managed to succeed time after time at a
world-class level, and Miyamoto-san is one of them,” Graham Hopper, a
Disney veteran and executive vice president and general manager of
Disney Interactive Studios, said in a telephone interview. “The level
of creative success that he has achieved over a sustained period is
probably unparalleled.”
Given that its roster of characters
includes not only Mario and Donkey Kong but also Princess Peach, Zelda,
Bowser and Link, it’s easy to imagine that Mr. Miyamoto designs his
games around those characters.
The truth is exactly the
opposite. According to Mr. Miyamoto, gameplay systems and mechanics
have always come first, while the characters are created and deployed
in the service of the overall design. That means a focus on the
seemingly prosaic basic elements of game design: movement, setting,
goals to accomplish and obstacles to overcome.
“I feel that
people like Mario and people like Link and the other characters we’ve
created not for the characters themselves, but because the games they
appear in are fun,” he said. “And because people enjoy playing those
games first, they come to love the characters as well.”
Mr.
Miyamoto’s work is evolving from a reliance on invented characters and
fanciful, outlandish settings like Mario’s Mushroom Kingdom or Zelda’s
mythical Hyrule. With games like Nintendogs (inspired by his pet
Shetland sheepdog), Wii Sports, Wii Fit and coming next, Wii Music, Mr.
Miyamoto is gravitating toward everyday hobbies: pets, bowling, yoga,
Hula-Hoop, music. It is as if an artist who had mastered the abstract
had finally moved into realism.
“I would say that over the last
five years or so, the types of games I create has changed somewhat,” he
said. “Whereas before I could kind of use my own imagination to create
these worlds or create these games, I would say that over the last five
years I’ve had more of a tendency to take interests or topics in my
life and try to draw the entertainment out of that.”
It has
proved the perfect strategy as Nintendo reaches out to nongamers who
may not care to understand why this frantic plumber keeps jumping on
top of turtles, or why that gallant fellow in green has to keep
rescuing the same princess over and over. At this moment, when
consumers crave the ability to shape and become a part of their
entertainment, whether through MySpace
or “American Idol,” the latest star in Nintendo’s stable of characters
is you — or rather Mii, the whimsical avatar Wii users create of
themselves.
“I see the Miis as the most recent character creation
from Nintendo,” Mr. Miyamoto said. “What’s interesting is that
regardless of the user’s age, if they’re looking at a Mii, it’s their
Mii. Before, when you’re playing as another character, it’s more
typical of more passive entertainment, and by creating a Mii you’re
becoming more a part of the entertainment experience.”
Nintendo
is expected to release more details about Wii Music this summer, but
the basic concept is that while popular music games like Guitar Hero
and Rock Band allow players only to recreate canned tunes, Wii Music
will try to enable users to capture the feelings of composition and
improvisation.
Mr. Miyamoto grew up on Western music like the
Beatles and the Lovin’ Spoonful. He plays piano and banjo and, as a
bluegrass aficionado, immediately recognized the name of Ricky Skaggs
when told over dinner in Manhattan that Mr. Skaggs was scheduled to
perform in town in a few days. Mr. Miyamoto even joked about extending
his stay to catch the show. (He didn’t.)
“We’re trying to
create an experience where people are very simply able to get the
feeling like maybe they’re creating music,” he said.
With a
track record like his, it would be foolish to bet against him. When it
comes to the Walt Disney of the digital generation, no one knows fun
better.
among
the most expensive on the market, it also wins fierce brand loyalty
among purchasers. Mr Solobay says his fire department is paying about
$30,000 more than it would for a vehicle from a rival, but adds that
for a fire truck that is only replaced about every 20-25 years there
are other considerations, such as dependability and the unique features
the company offers. “These are top-quality vehicles,” he says. “We know
that because our other fire trucks are from Pierce.”
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