Interview:GG8 May 16th 2001

Shigeru Miyamoto, Eiji Aonuma, and Mitsuhiro Takano talk with GG8 about Majora's Mask. Topics discuss include the development process, the three day game cycle, the inclusion of a fairy companion, and the storyline. Eiji Aonuma also talks briefly about Zelda GameCube.

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How did you become a game designer?

It's a long story. I began as an industrial designer. I begun designing toys and the housing for stand-up arcade machines. Right about that time Space Invaders was beginning to become popular and so myself being considered an analogue person, I wasn't really interested in the visual world. Things went on from there.

What did your parents think when you told them that you wanted to be a game designer?

My parents were teachers and I grew up in what might be considered a rather strict household and I was scolded a lot as a kid. But being a teacher my Mother understood the value of technology so she supported me moving in the area of technology and encouraged me to use my creativity. So I would write comic books and draw pictures and things like that and when I went into art school she continued to support me, even thought they say that people who went to art school have kind of found themselves on a 'lost path' sometimes. But when I actually started making videogames at Nintendo and made my first game and the ones that followed my parents were kind of disappointed because they thought that they meant that children had now lost the time to study!

Does that mean that you might produce some 'educational' games in the future to make up for that?

No, I don't think my games are effective as education. I think they're more effective in broadening and expanding and bringing to life a world for children.

When you start working on a new game what's the first thing that you do?

Since I came from an industrial design background I use a lot of industrial design methods. There was a time when I would look and see what was out there in the market and gauge where to go based on what existed already. But I no longer do that and when I make games now I like to start with a blank page, an empty canvas and I like to create an atmosphere that is fun and exciting. I think a lot of game designers feel that they're in competition with everyone and that they can't lose, they've got to create something that's the best and they give themselves a lot of pressure and put themselves under a lot of stress.

To me it's all about fun and having fun while you're creating is important to create that atmosphere. I also use a lot of memo cards. I'll make memos and post them up on a wall and I like to create visually initially and the other thing is to consult with the other designers in my groups and their teams and really repeat this process of consultation, of hearing and seeing and go through that many times and gradually work on things in that manner.

With your background in art are sketches and drawings a big part of the process?

I don't really use anything you might call an imageboard as such, used for drawing up ideas. Really what I like to do is just doodle. Kind of in the way that you right now might be sitting listening to me and doodling! To me, it helps me to focus my ideas.

If you had to choose one game you've worked on, which is your favourite?

I really like all the games that I've worked on so it's really hard to pick any one game, but I guess because it was so impactful and because I started at a time when there wasn't even anything called 'game design' I guess it would have to be Donkey Kong, the first game that I worked on. I was from there that I chose the path that I took and I went from a simple industrial designer to a 'game design specialist'.

So you never forget your first game?

That's right.

On Donkey Kong you did everything yourself. What's it like working with lots of people now. Do you miss the old days when it was just you?

Really for me since I became a producer I haven't really been working as directly on the games like that for quite a long time. I have people under me that do the direct work and I've been overseeing a lot of it, giving input here and there. But we do still start our games off in small teams so there is still a little bit of that aspect. Coming from an industrial design background you really can't make changes to these products very easily. When you start off you've got no forms, no lines, so any kind of a change you make to the product you're working on is going to affect a lot of people. One of the benefits of software is that you don't have that. When you've got small teams you can make changes quickly and easily and it's very easy for you to work. But gradually as your teams get bigger you get to feel more of the impact that the small changes bring back, particularly when you're using a lot of pre-rendered movies in your games, which is something I try to avoid because as you do that the more that you change the game the more you're going to be required to change a lot of the pre-rendered movies that you're using.

In that sense, when you're working with a lot of people you do lose some of the freedom that you have when you're working with a smaller group.

Are you finding it harder going from N64 to Gamecube than from SNES to N64?

That's a good question. As we move from one format to the next it's my job to take advantage of that new system's capabilities. But to explain the life of Nintendo, going from NES to SNES we were working with the same elements - going from 8bit to 16bit, staying in 2D. We were just able to do more in the same framework than we could before. Whereas going from the SNES to the N64 we were going from a 2D word to a 3D world and we had to completely start everything over. It took a lot of energy, everything had to change. It took a lot of time. I think that change was really drastic for us.

This time around - going from the N64 to the Gamecube - were going from a 3D platform to another 3D platform so it's more like the move from the NES to the SNES. They're both within the same basic framework - only we can do a lot more.

So in terms of gameplay when we went from 2D to 3D it was really exciting, it had a of appeal for me personally to grow the game in that manner, and I think it had a lot of appeal for the customers too, to be able to experience these brand new lush worlds. But really I think we've got to a point where the capabilities of the new system the 3D world is just one option in the world of creating meaningful and creative gameplay. The period where '3D world = value' for the customer is over. It doesn't have the freshness that it had before and now it's really just one option in many for creating these kinds of fun in games.

One of the things Nintendo have been stressing about Gamecube is that it's much easier to develop for than N64. With this ease of development does that mean we'll be getting more of your games?

When I come to places like this I am, kind of, a 'Public Relations' face for Nintendo and people think that I'm making every game that we put out. But actually I'm not! I have a lot of young Directors who are working under me and gradually I'm training them and giving them insight into game development and they're working on games. Some of the games you'll see later on the show floor. These are games that although I'm overseeing as a Director I'm not acting directly on these games. But with the Gamecube advances and that you can accomplish things on the Gamecube more quickly we may very well see an increase in games. I'm working with a lot of second party developers overseas in the US, the UK and Canada so right now I'm working on upwards of about 30 titles altogether. So I think that you'll see more titles.

What are the things that you look for in these titles to help them inject a bit of 'Miyamoto magic'?

What I like to do - and to get the Directors to do - is to really cast out a net to try to catch different types of fun. And this isn't about what types of fun appeal to different age groups it's about what's the basic element of fun in the game? To me the most important thing is that when you're casting out your net there's got to be fish there for you to catch so I try to help them see the overall big picture and where they might be able to find that type of fun.

Of course once we've found that particular type of fun we'll sit down and play with it and I'll give some advice. So really rather than give specific direction I like to look and find potential problems with the game. There are problems that can be answered and problems that for which there is no answer. So they come up and say they have this problem but if they can't come up with an answer who's to say that I'm going to be able to come up with an answer. So really it's looking at the problems that are coming up in their game design and whether they're focussing on the right problems or not. They might say this is an issue with the gameplay and I might look at that and say 'maybe the real question is this' to guide them to the real route of what needs to be solved. I try to help them find they're own way and really that's what my philosophy is.

For example your work on the Gamecube sequel to Metroid. Tell us about your work on that and the decision to turn that into a first-person game.

First of all what we like to do is look at our teams and try to make sure that they are creating something that matches their abilities and we think that the team that?s working on Metroid right now is the team that's best suited to make a Metroid game. We looked at the gameplay and we had a lot of conversations about it and in those discussions we thought we thought that it's going to have to evolve, it's going to have to change and that's part of a game developing. Perhaps we thought that the best type of gameplay for a Metroid game was as a first-person game. That's not final and it's not decided so don't think that's a first-person game necessarily because it might not be in the end! But at this point there is development going in that direction.

Over the years that you've been making games what are the difference you've noticed between Japanese gamers and gamers in the rest of the world?

When I work I don't work with attention to the attitudes of the game players but of course I do want players to be happy and excited about the games too. A lot of times the feedback that I get is from people who really are passionate about games and gradually I've seen attitudes change in the USA and in Japan too. But the main difference is that I think that the criticism is a lot greater coming from Japan, the US is a lot kinder!

Are there any rare moments you get where you get to just play some games? What kind do you play?

I have spent a lot of time playing Tetris in the past but really I don't spend a lot of my free time playing games. I like to spend my free time practising the guitar and making things. Lately I've been working a lot in the garden. I like to use my hands.

A lot of your games have been single-player. Do you have any intentions to work on a multi-player game?

In the past I have done some work on a multi-player game and tried to push it forward, things like Smash Brothers and four-player modes, such as with the four-player link-up on Game Boy Advance. But at the same time looking at connecting up to a network and playing games like that you've got lots of barriers for people across the world as regards picking up a game and playing it and making it simple enough for everyone to play. I think that's really the big challenge for that scale of game. But I do definitely think that communication with people and interaction with people is a lot more fun that just interaction with a computer and its processor.

Do you think that AI will get to the point where playing against the computer is as much fun as playing against your friends?

I think that no matter how good the AI gets and no matter how powerful the computer gets they're never going to be able to replace people. People have likes and dislikes and computers haven't and that's part of what makes people interesting. One of the things I do see computers being used for is as a teacher. If you look at a computer that can teach it'll wait and wait and it'll wait until a child gives the answer. But when you look at a human teacher in a classroom they don't have the time to wait for a child to give the answer. They haven?t time to wait the hours that it might take to come up with a good answer so I think in that sense a computer has a use.

Do you think that - over the history of videogames - that the games have got better or do they just look better?

If you look at human history games themselves and playing itself haven't really changed a whole lot over time. But as for computer games we have seen a lot of new developments a lot of new gameplay, we've added to it. But I think that one of the problems is because of the demand and markets game developers don't have the time to spend thinking of new ideas and thinking of ways to integrate them into games. They feel that they're being pressed to get them done and pressed to get things out. It would be nice to give them a bit more freedom and that's what we want to do.

You've said that Mario needs to grow up. So when are we going to see the new Mario?

I've been thinking that this Summer I might be able to show you something of Mario. Actually when I said that Mario needs to grow up what I was thinking of was that the design needs to change. I think it was appealing to much to a younger age group and really I'd like to see him as the kind of character that appeals to a very wide range of ages. So that's really what I meant and I'm planning this Summer to hopefully show something of Mario.

But in the meantime we've Luigi's Mansion.

This is playable on the show floor so I hope you'll take some time to play it. The ghosts appear behind Luigi so make sure you turn around to flash your flashlight on them. This kind of startles them and then you can get them in your bag. The camera doesn't spin around in this game, it's kind of a fixed camera so actually almost close to a 2D game. It's actually kind of hard to move the flashlight in all the different directions. Actually a lot of my staff members have been saying "Are we doing Mario again, are we doing Mario AGAIN!? Can't we do something with Luigi?" So we decided this time that in between doing the last Mario and the next one that maybe we could squeeze Luigi in there somewhere. But I did want to put Mario in there somewhere so I did suggest that maybe he could come out from underneath a bed or something but they didn't really like that.

And Pikmin - it's a strange game. How did you come up with that idea?

First of all there's one thing that I was worried about and that's that both Pikmin and Luigi have no jump. It's very rare for me - as I'm sure you'll know - to make a game where there is no jump! So I was worried that we would be able to make something that was fun without that kind of action-jump element to it. Another reason that it happened was because we're always trying to figure out what's interesting about computers, what's fun about computers and what they can do. So we're always conducting experiments with what we'd be able to do with the technology. At the same time I've been really interested in plants and gardening and the natural world for quite a while so I actually had five or six plans for games based on gardening. So really Pikmin came out of that. All the background scenery for the game - I walked around my neighbourhood and took pictures and then put them in the game. You can actually see the light of the sun moving around as the day goes by.

The general idea of the game is based on the little plants called Pikmin. You take them out and you find food for the nest and you bring it back to the nest and you get more Pikmin. And as you get more Pikmin you can build bridges, tear down walls and you can build fortresses. And that's the general idea of the game. These Pikmin are little animals but they're also like plants so you can plant them in the ground and they'll grow. They'll grow a leaf up first and then a bud and then a flower. So when you pull them out of the ground, as a leaf, a bud or a flower, they have different abilities depending on what stage they're at.

So really I want this to be the type of game that when you go home and you play it you'll walk around and you'll look outside and maybe look down at your feet and thing "Are there really Pikmin down there somewhere?"

Just for the record, where did you get the idea to use Italian plumbers, where does the name Donkey Kong come from and where does the name Zelda come from?

Back when we made Donkey Kong, Mario was just called Jumpman and he was a carpenter. That's because the game was set on a construction site so that made sense. When we went on to make the game Mario Brothers we wanted to use pipes, maybe a sewer in the game so he became a plumber.

For Donkey Kong I wanted something to do with 'Kong' which kind of gives the idea of apes in Japanese and I came up with Donkey Kong because I heard that 'donkey' meant 'stupid' so I went with Donkey Kong. Unfortunately when I said that name to Nintendo of America nobody liked it and said that it didn't mean 'Stupid Ape' and they all laughed at me! But we went ahead with that name anyway.

With Zelda we wanted a good name for the female character and we wanted something eternal, timeless. I was talking with a lot of writers and staff and the idea came from the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife who was named Zelda. She was a famous woman who was kind of strong, so we decided to go with her name.

Is there anything more to see of Zelda at the moment?

Please wait until Spaceworld in August. Then we'll show you something.

Are any of the original Metroid developers helping Retro Studios with Metroid Prime?

We were thinking of showing Metroid Prime as a playable game here at E3 but we felt that it wasn't the right opportunity for us to show it. But work is progressing and things are moving along. As Producer I am overseeing it and working with the developers and so you don't need to worry about anything, the game is going well.

What is it you ask the hardware designers for at Nintendo in order to make the games that you want to make?

Because hardware is so specialised I can't get in there and tell them how to make how to make the hardware. What is really important for me, especially with the new hardware systems is that because we use the systems that they've created and we know the capabilities of each system - things like the speed of the processor, the speed of the graphics chip - we can see where these speeds fall, causing the overall output of the hardware to drop causing a limitation which we have to work around when we program. So, when we're creating a new hardware it's important for me to list those experiences we've had with previous hardware to explain to them where we found the limitations, what kind of limitations there were and how they can be fixed for the upcoming hardware.

A lot of people consider hardware to be the internal components of the machine itself to me the hardware really is the system as a whole - including the controller and how that interacts with the game. Like the Game Boy Advance and how you can link that up. We've been planning for this since back in the days of he N64. These are the kind of things that I plan for and work with.

How important do you think it is to have a compelling story in game design?

It's hard for me to answer this without any misunderstanding but for me the most important thing is the gameplay and that's what I put my focus on.

How do you feel about people using emulators (on PC and Mac) to 'study' your old NES and SNES games?

A question like this affects everyone concerned with the selling of games. But we're actually progressing with emulator development and in Japan we've a game called Animal Forest - that's a rough translation - and in this game we've included an NES emulator. In this game you have a house and you can buy furniture, and clothes and things and among the things you can get is an NES then you can go in, in your house and you can play NES games in your house in Animal Forest. The question of emulation raises issues with people who are selling used games and are still carrying games for SNES or something. The other issue is that an emulator that is emulating one of the many third-party games that's been done for our systems, we can't guarantee how well those games are going to work. And that's the reason why in Animal Forest the only games that we're emulating are games that we've made ourselves.

Which game designers influence you, or which are doing work that you find of interest?

At the time I started creating games there really weren't any other game designers before me so it's hard to say that any game designers have influenced what I've done. I grew up on comics and cartoons and in Osaka in Japan there were the Yoshimoto comedian troupe and kind of the older styles of wordplay that are popular in Japan so those are the kind of entertainment that have influenced me.

As far as game designers that are doing interesting things now, I have a lot of very good Directors beneath me and I think they're all very good people and are doing wonderful things!

Do you think that games that previously weren't released outside Japan will be more likely to be released over here thanks to the low costs of the Gamecube discs?

There will be a trend that we will see some of that happening. And we'll also things like - just because of the format - I couldn't do things like a Director's Cut version of a game. So now we'll get to see Director's Cut versions on the discs. As for games that wouldn't leave Japan we're actually considering that happening now.

The N64 helped push gaming to the next level - full 3D gaming. What new level do you think the next generation of hardware and Gamecube will enable us to reach?

I think we've seen - repeatedly, over and over - the capabilities of the hardware systems dramatically increasing. And now we've seen it again here and we'll see it again in the future - you're going to get machines much more powerful that what we have here. Really I think that - and we're lucky that we've caught this when we have - we're at a stage where developers competing to maximise the capabilities of a system are finding that the development costs and the rewards that can be reached from those costs in terms of sales no longer match. It's become so expensive to fully maximise the power of the system that you can no longer take the types of risks and challenges that you need for innovation.

We're lucky that we've noticed this when we have and so really the challenge for us is to find that new key and what it is that's going to be able to create these games simply and have them packed full of fun and entertainment in a way that they are going to sell to the masses. And that's a role that all game designers are going to have to take in this next generation and it's hard to say what that 'key' is going to be right now.