Email: You’re far, far behind Miyamoto

Hey there man. I just read your post (email response) talking about the math of games.

I just think you’re a tad bit wrong. Well, wrong’s not the word… I’ll just say what I want to say and you’ll understand.

I don’t think it’s right to say it’s about math, but rather, that it’s about logic. This is where Miyamoto comes in.

If you don’t mind, here is a quote from Miyamoto regarding “the essence of Zelda”, from the Iwata Asks of Twilight Princess. I’m not sure if you read it or not since you’re not interested in the game:

• Iwata:

  I see… Miyamoto-san, when you’re asked what defines Zelda, how do you normally respond? Can you give a definite answer?

• Miyamoto:

  Sure. For me, what makes a game “Zelda-esque” is actually much the same as what makes a game “Mario-esque.”

• Iwata:

  And what might that be?

• Miyamoto:

  Basically, I think it’s the way these games respect our customers’ intelligence. When our customers play our games, they will do all the logical things they would do as if they were doing something in real life, and if there’s something that does not seem to be working the way they should be, they’ll get upset. So, the fundamental principle of Zelda is that these logical elements must be neatly integrated into the game. When they’re not, it no longer becomes Zelda. That’s when I say “Wrong! This isn’t Zelda!” So when I’m upset, it’s on behalf of the players who would think “This is unbelievable! What’s the matter with this game?” (laughs) I have always made games on the basis that my voice is the voice of the player. And if we released it without making adjustments, the situation would ultimately be a lot more serious if we angered our customers. To me this point is absolutely fundamental, and it’s the same whether it’s Zelda or Mario. While both games have that attitude as their foundation, I would say that Mario is fun in a very accessible, immediate way while Zelda really gives you that expansive feeling that you are developing along with the game. Those are really the only differences between the two; fundamentally they are actually the same.

I think Miyamoto sums it up better than me (and you, if you don’t mind me saying). He also said this 3 years before you, and I’m sure he knew this for 30 years before you.

Just for the record, Miyamoto and Aonuma both mention in that interview that Miyamoto only came into Twilight Princess near the very end of development. I don’t think it’s right to blame him for the story emphasis of that game. He clearly knows what’s wrong with Zelda, but he isn’t given enough control to fix it.

The point is, I agree with both of you when you say that, that games are about the logic of it. Who cares if there’s a story or social interaction between characters? I want to do things and I want the results of those things to be meeting my expectations. If they meet my expectations, I am satisfied. If I swing the Wiimote in different angles, I EXPECT the ball to curve differently, and when it does, it’s an enjoyable experience. Therefore, it is not about me doing the math and being satisfied from that, like you said, but rather, it’s me experiencing what I expected to experience based on my actions (that I calculated using logic), and therefore enjoying the game.

There’s no logic to predicting what characters will say to each other and how they will respond. In addition, most of the time, the dialogue is so badly written that what they say doesn’t even answer your predictions.

I’m not saying you’re completely wrong, but the point of this email is to maybe put your thoughts into better words spoken by Miyamoto himself.

______________________________________________

Miyamoto is just saying that the player associates the game through their real life experience. So if X does Y in real life, it should do X does Y in the game as well.

One thing that has been harming gaming is the belief in the “Game God”, in some magical developer whose vision shapes the game. This is extremely harmful to gaming in general. No single person should be put on the pedestal. But it is being done, and the result is many developers, young and old, trying to place themselves on the pedestal.

Miyamoto, Wright, and others do not belong on that pedestal. Do you know who belongs on that pedestal?

It is the customer.

It is the customer and the non-customer who are the true “Game Gods”. It is they who developers must appeal to. It is they who are the true kings. The developers are servants to those kings.

I’ve found the “Developer-As-Game-God” to be destructive to gaming whether it is Wright, Miyamoto, or someone else. It puts the focus away from the consumer and toward something else.

In one way, it has been a brilliant Nintendo plan to sabotage their competitors. By propping Miyamoto up as a “Game God”, it creates the impression that other game companies need “Game Gods” as well. So when people try to become “Game Gods” and inflict their ‘vision’ on us, it takes their eye off the ball, their eye off the customer, and it creates their ruin.

I come from the realm of disinterest, from since the 16-bit Era until the current generation of not playing console games. So I have a very different experience and vantage point.

I don’t see Miyamoto as a genius at all. Nintendo’s sales were in steady decline until the Wii. I see Nintendo re-using the same fictional universes that was made over twenty years ago with Mushroom Kingdom, Hyrule, and Planet Zebes. I see the Starfox series destroyed. I see Zelda being run into the ground (something that kids used to be excited about no longer have kids excited. Only people who grew up on Zelda appear to be the ones who still play the game). I see games like Mario Sunshine and even Mario Galaxy as an abomination of what Mario is. And I’m not the one who is harsh. It is the market who is the harsh judge. I’ve been trying to put into words of why the market, like the oracle it is, moves the way it does.

What sets Miyamoto apart from others is that he is a life-quester. This means he is personally driven to explore and improve life and his games are a reflection of that drive. For example, he goes on a quest to lose weight. This results in him weighing himself daily with many charts. This ends up becoming Wii Fit. Wii Fit’s appeal is not that it is a game about fitness or that it includes a new gadget. Wii Fit’s appeal is that it is about changing the customer’s life, improving it, to become “fit”. Miyamoto must have been in awe, at one point, with Alice in Wonderland. By combining the magic of Alice in Wonderland with “Mario Brothers”, he introduced the magic of Alice in Wonderland through the game Super Mario Brothers. The children who grew up with Mario were actually fascinated with Alice in Wonderland (a classic book by the way).

[Lewis Carroll, who wrote Alice in Wonderland, was a mathematician and very much believed that math was pleasurable. Food for thought.]

Life Questors seem to differentiate the top entertainers from the merely good. Talent was the same, but it was the Life Questors who are on another plane. The Life Questor literally changes the customer’s life because the Life Questor is striving to change his own.

Miyamoto also has another unique skill. In order to be a game developer, you must require a certain amount of skills. These skills would include a fascination with computers and what they can do. And, mostly, game developers have historically been programmers.

The type of people who are attracted to computers and become programmers are a very, very different type of personality from the rest of the population. Think of most entertainers. Do you see comedians with the personality of a programmer? No. Do you see magicians with the personality of the programmer? Of course not. The movie director? The author? The rock star? No, no, no.

The skills necessary to understand computers and to program them are completely different skills of what it takes to create an entertaining experience. The skills necessary to become a computer engineer are very, very different than what it takes to be an entertainer.

The “Game Industry” keeps relying on ‘technology’ and things like ‘graphics’ and gets excited over it because most of the people in the “Industry” are closer to the computer engineer than to the entertainer. This is perhaps why there is so much mediocrity, why there are so many games that are ‘technically good’ but not very entertaining at all.

Miyamoto is clearly not the “computer engineer” type of guy. He doesn’t have any of that baggage. Before working at Nintendo, Miyamoto did entertain. He played music for people. He wanted to make little puppets. In the West, a game company would have sneered at such a guy because he was not a “computer engineer” let alone put him in charge of designing games. Every “computer engineer” type of personality I’ve met always quietly believes in their own genius. Perhaps that is useful when staying up all night trying to code something and solving bugs. But that belief is fatal in entertainment.

So Miyamoto’s rise as a game designer early in life put Nintendo in the correct configuration for entertainment: the engineers carry the water, they don’t order others to say how the water is to be drinked. The programmers and all know to learn from Miyamoto and that entertaining the audience comes first and foremost before technical excellence or even entertaining themselves. Incredibly, this is not widely known in other game companies.

One of the problems of the “computer engineer” type of personality is that they think they are genius because they ‘know math’. Of course, entertainers have to know math as well (such as the musician or even the poet). And since computers were (and still are) seen as the “transforming civilization and society”, computer engineers believe they are “Ubermen” and are inherently superior to other forms of humans and professions.

It is much, much easier to become a computer engineer than it is to become a successful comedian. It is much, so much easier to become a computer engineer than to become a successful novelist or even a successful actor, director, or radio personality.

The “computer engineer” is unhappy with his lot. He, too, wishes to become an ‘artist’ like the movie director, the composer, or the novelist. However, since he didn’t respect the sheer uphill climb it takes for a entertainer to be successful, he thinks he, since he is inherently superior to all other professions, is entitled to what people in Hollywood and other successful entertainers make. He demands statues. He puts in cinematics in his game and believes that puts him on the same level as a Hollywood movie director. But he cannot understand why Hollywood keeps laughing at him.

Miyamoto would have been successful in any entertainment industry. He was already an entertainer before he was hired at Nintendo.

It is not so much that Miyamoto is a “genius” but that other developers are so “dumb”. Most game developers do not even recognize that the audience is your king. They think that if they “make the game fun for them, it will be fun for everyone else” and that is not true. I believe the “Game Industry” heaping praise and calling Miyamoto a “genius” is nothing about Miyamoto but about themselves. No one wants to look at the mirror and say, “You’re dumb.” So instead of these computer engineer personalities facing that entertainment mirror, they just proclaim Miyamoto is a “genius” so they, themselves, do not have to face the truth that they are mediocre.

Younger people should look at Shakespeare, Beethoven, Mozart, and Newton as geniuses. Not Miyamoto or any other game developer. Maybe centuries later people might see him as a genius. Maybe Miyamoto will be forgotten. Who knows. But I do believe Miyamoto’s strength is that he is precisely not the “computer engineer” type of personality (which is what the “Game Industry” attracts). [The true entertainment types are still attracted to Hollywood and other traditional entertainment industries.]

In order to make gaming mainstream, we need more Miyamotos and less “I want to be an artistic genius” computer engineer. We need to focus on the rules of entertainment, not the rules of computer technology. We need major attitude adjustments in order for people who understand entertainment to be ordering the computer engineers around. The future game design leaders are going to be novelists, musicians, radio personalities, and movie makers. They are not going to be programmers or engineers.

You say you want gaming’s equivalent of Citizen Kane? Then we ought to remember that Citizen Kane was directed by a 25 year old kid who never directed a movie before. However, he established himself and excelled in radio. By understanding entertainment on radio, he could apply it to the visual realm.

What a game developer should learn from Miyamoto is not his ‘game design’ or anything as obvious like that. Watch a typical game developer on stage (at E3 or somewhere else) and then watch Miyamoto. Notice the difference? The typical game developer sounds monotone, is inanimate, acts as if he has a pole up his butt, talks in a nasal tone, and you just don’t want to look at him at all. Miyamoto is very different. Miyamoto is animated, his voice (even though it is in Japanese, and you don’t know what he is saying) is filled with passion, and he is bouncing around on stage like a squirrel loose.

People will mistake this and say, “He is passionate, and it shows.” But it isn’t passion. It is something else. As a former salesman, I recognize it in other salesmen. Entertainment is similar to the salesman in that it takes a unique personality to do it. No one really fully understands it. It takes a certain type of energy that is inherent to the person and cannot really be *learned*. You either have it or you don’t. You either can sell or you cannot. You are either monotone when giving speeches or you are not.

It is a type of specialized energy. It is the chief ingredient of the actor. Acting is not about looking good and reading a script. You have to exude the correct energy. And I notice this, in part, with all entertainers, even the literary novelists. Listen to the novelist when he reads from his own book. Very, very animated. This same energy is in entrepreneurs (of course, entrepreneurship is salesmanship as well). This is why I think the narratology ‘scene’ in gaming with its academic papers and all is totally missing the point. If they spent their time doing sales jobs instead of writing paper bullets from the brain, they would be far closer to the source.

So it is not that Miyamoto is a genius as it is that everyone else just sucks. And this explains why gaming hasn’t become mainstream. Much of the “Game Industry” hasn’t even accepted the premise that gaming is in the entertainment business.