8 ms·

Nintendo's secretive creative process

161 points by gyre007 8y ago

susanhi 8y ago
“The thinking that guides us is: what can we do to pleasantly surprise players? It’s not that we’re consciously trying to innovate; we’re trying to find ways to make people happy. The result is that we come up with things other people have not done.” Love this. Focuses you without restricting what you’re doing. We have a now 10 year old app/social community that we’ve been trying for several years to grow/innovate. In past years, we focused on growing revenue, which we needed to do to pay the bills. It helped some but not as we expected. Recently we decided to double down on our product, innovating our community and app to try help users. I really like the concept of “pleasantly surprising” our users. Will be putting that into play.
- tropshop 8y ago
  Care to share a link? I’m interested in community software and how the market will evolve to serve these groups.
- lazydon 8y ago
  Reminds me of the way Bezos writes about Customer Obsession in his letters to shareholders: "There are many ways to center a business. You can be competitor focused, you can be product focused, you can be technology focused, you can be business model focused, and there are more. But in my view, obsessive customer focus is by far the most protective of Day 1 vitality. Why? There are many advantages to a customer-centric approach, but here’s the big one: customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied, even when they report being happy and business is great. Even when they don’t yet know it, customers want something better, and your desire to delight customers will drive you to invention on their behalf. No customer ever asked Amazon to create the Prime membership program, but it sure turns out they wanted it, and I could give you many such examples. Staying in Day 1 requires you to experiment patiently, accept failures, plant seeds, protect saplings, and double down when you see customer delight. A customer-obsessed culture best creates the conditions where all of that can happen."
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    > obsessive customer focus is by far the most protective of Day 1 vitality. It's a nice way to look at it, but then it's hard to explain why they force-feed Amazon Fire TV Sticks as a poor man's alternative to Chromecasts and prevent Chromecasts from being sold on Amazon at the same time. Costumer focus much?
    - dingo_bat 8y ago
      They are focused on their customers, not Google's.
      - BartBoch 8y ago
        I bet a huge chunk of their customers is Google users/customers as well.
    - cassianoleal 8y ago
      Also how they force-feed you Prime Video and make you pay extra for it (compared to Prime prices before they launched this) even though you already have other streaming services or generally not interested in it at all.
    - godzillabrennus 8y ago
      Not to mention how many consoles are sold by third party and are imports. I’ve stopped buying expensive electronics on Amazon. It’s too much of a pain to deal with. I will buy cheap junk because at least I am paying for what I’m getting.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  > I really like the concept of “pleasantly surprising” our users. Except that when users complained about the WiiU not being fun or remotely interesting, nobody listened at Nintendo and they kept marching to release it as is. It's nice to have narratives, but when facts don't match it, it's just a nice PR story and nothing more.
  - rangibaby 8y ago
    Nintendo have released some turds of consoles before (Virtual Boy, N64, Wii U) but they all had some good games. Super Mario 64 was the first 3d platformer and it is still fun and innovative now. The only thing dated about it is the camera control and it’s not that bad.
    - eckza 8y ago
      > N64 In what universe is the N64 a turd? (I am asking objectively, not as a frothing-at-the-mouth fanboy.)
      - khedoros1 8y ago
        I like the N64, but for the sake of argument (from a few different directions, and each one debatable whether it made it a "turd"): - Sony moved over three times as many Playstations, and there were about 2600 PSX games and 400 N64 ones. In contrast to the previous generation, the SNES handily outsold the Genesis, even with somewhat fewer released games. - The cartridge format caused problems with production price and storage potential, which disk-based systems didn't have - It was an overly-complex, difficult-to-program machine - The 4K of texture cache and other weird design choices really hampered the graphics quality.
        eckza 8y ago
        Aha. That's the answer I was looking for. All fair points, all objectively true. Thank you!
      - orbital-decay 8y ago
bitwize 8y ago
One of the really impressive things about Nintendo is their corporate culture has encouraged passing on of institutional knowledge to younger minds within the company. Shigeru Miyamoto is coming up on retirement age, and some of us have been wondering how Mario and Zelda would fare without him. Well, we needn't wonder: Miyamoto was not very actively involved in the development of Mario Odyssey or Breath of the Wild, and those games turned out great.
- nothis 8y ago
  And, as the article says, in Japan! There has been some fair criticism of the Japanese games market lacking in innovation compared to the West. Their indie scene is pitiful, AAA games stuck in 90s mechanics with fairly boring use of modern 3D hardware and a complete avoidance of online gaming trends. But, except for the online thing (although Splatoon might be among the strongest Japanese contenders), Nintendo manages to be maybe the most innovative AAA game developer in the world (especially when you consider their integration of hardware innovation in input devices). It’s quite remarkable. It’s an example of a very different culture being able to arrive at success in entirely different ways. It’s refreshing.
greggarious 8y ago
It must be hard to be as creative as they are, since JP punishes weed possession so heavily ;)
- TheDong 8y ago
  I flagged this comment because it reads as flamebait and off-topic to me. If it were worded as "I've heard that some artists use drugs to aid in the creative process, but I think Japan has strict drug laws.... does that practice happen in Japan?" that would be a way to actually start a discussion about a subject. As is, it's not providing a useful starting point for a discussion and, IMO, it's most likely to start a totally off topic and factually-devoid discussion of shouting back and forth about whether weed makes someone more creative or not.
  - greggarious 8y ago
    Sorry you feel that way - sounds like you need to relax :) You can always use the downvote button if you feel strongly about a post, flagging something you don't agree with is a bit extreme.
ggm 8y ago
There is a kind of game design which works for me, and keeps me coming back. I don't think you can bottle it, any more than you can sell pixar to disney without keeping the brains inside the can. If you just sell the name, you don't get whats marked on the bottle. Amici di / scuola di "Nintendo", but moved forward from the renaissance? Seriously, maybe you have to study at the feet of the master and accept his/her teachings and method, to make one just the same (but different) ?
Sniffnoy 8y ago
Non-mobile link: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2018/apr/25/nintendo-interview-secret-innovation-lab-ideas-working https://www.theguardian.com/games/2018/apr/25/nintendo-inter...
dmitriid 8y ago
I highly recommend Mark Brown's video "Nintendo: Putting Play First, https://youtu.be/2u6HTG8LuXQ https://youtu.be/2u6HTG8LuXQ (and his other essays on Nintendo)
- TillE 8y ago
  There are millions of people making videos about games, but Mark Brown is the only YouTube person I've found who always has something interesting to say about game design. The Zelda series was particularly good.
ChildOfChaos 8y ago
Although my view is irrelevant, I have never liked a single thing Nintendo has done, I hate all there games, Mario is terrible compared to sonic, all there consoles recently suffer from being underpowered and seem pointless to me. Why are people getting excited about things like Skyrim on the switch, a game that’s been out for a long time and already has been played by people that wanted it and when big triple A titles like Fifa come to the platform it’s horribly cut down. To me they are disappointing users, not surprising them. However... I understand my opinion is different to that of others and I do find that this kinda single minded approach of the “secret creative process” seems to yelid great results. I think Apple often does something similar and it’s often why outsiders misunderstand them. It’s a focusing principle, a frame, something that directs all that “creativity” and “innovation” through a lens that produces great results, I think otherwise everything is just to many ideas and too many thoughts. I love this idea.. “The thinking that guides us is: what can we do to pleasantly surprise players? It’s not that we’re consciously trying to innovate; we’re trying to find ways to make people happy. The result is that we come up with things other people have not done.”
megaman22 8y ago
I find it a little weird the exalted position that Nintento seems to occupy in most peoples' minds. Maybe it's that I've always been a PC gamer first, and that's skewed my whole view forever, but Nintendo's offerings have always felt a little... meh. I don't have any use for actiony platformers, and the cutesy art style doesn't do much for me. Nor do I care about gimmicky controllers. Since the end of the SNES generation, their catalog of third-party games has lagged behind the other options. It's all pretty underwhelming. I expect this to be an unpopular oppinion, but it needs to be said.
- on_and_off 8y ago
  >it needs to be said What exactly do you feel needs to be said ? You not liking what Nintendo does, while fair, does not sound like a very interesting opinion to me.
  - megaman22 8y ago
    I have a compulsion to poke at sacred cows and point out when the emperor has no clothes. It's really hard to rein in. Edit: It's also quite entertaining. There's certain fan groups that have elevated liking a product into quasi-religious stature. Pointing out the absurdity of that tends to bring out the sticks and pitchforks.
    - soneca 8y ago
      Now you presume you know the "truth", not that is a personal opinion of yours. That you are the only one in the crowd with the wisdom to see things as they are. That's why you are downvoted, not because your opinion is unpopular. If you presented your opinion as just a subjective opinion, not the revealing of truth to illuminate the ignorant, your opinion would be treated fairly I'm sure. BTW, I believe that there are a lot of people who are not impressed at all by Nintendo products. You are not that special.
    - LMYahooTFY 8y ago
      Yeah but there is some degree of arrogance when you don't preceed such statements with "[...when I think] it's a sacred cow or the emperor has no clothes...".
jordache 8y ago
they source game/creative ideas from developers? I'm sure it's not impossible to achieve success from that source, but more likely not.
erikpukinskis 8y ago
I don’t think the author understands console cycles. These are decade long cycles. Nintendo released Wii, one of the best selling consoles of all time, in 2006. Then they released the 3DS, another of the best selling consoles of all time, in 2010. Then they released the the Switch, the fastest selling console ever for them, in 2017. This is not a company who is “on the ropes” and then off again. This is a company that is consistently at the absolute top of the charts year after year. You can say the WiiU was a failure, but that risk helped them nail the switch. The only sense in which they were “on the ropes” is that they take risks which don’t work every single time. But that’s an absurd expectation. Of course bets don’t pay off every time. The author is anthropomorphizing the design process. As if failed experiments are some sort of existential moment for the company. But these are just the natural ups and downs of an ambitious design team.

161 points by gyre007 8y ago

“The thinking that guides us is: what can we do to pleasantly surprise players? It’s not that we’re consciously trying to innovate; we’re trying to find ways to make people happy. The result is that we come up with things other people have not done.” Love this. Focuses you without restricting what you’re doing. We have a now 10 year old app/social community that we’ve been trying for several years to grow/innovate. In past years, we focused on growing revenue, which we needed to do to pay the bills. It helped some but not as we expected. Recently we decided to double down on our product, innovating our community and app to try help users. I really like the concept of “pleasantly surprising” our users. Will be putting that into play.

tropshop 8y ago
Care to share a link? I’m interested in community software and how the market will evolve to serve these groups.
lazydon 8y ago
Reminds me of the way Bezos writes about Customer Obsession in his letters to shareholders: "There are many ways to center a business. You can be competitor focused, you can be product focused, you can be technology focused, you can be business model focused, and there are more. But in my view, obsessive customer focus is by far the most protective of Day 1 vitality. Why? There are many advantages to a customer-centric approach, but here’s the big one: customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied, even when they report being happy and business is great. Even when they don’t yet know it, customers want something better, and your desire to delight customers will drive you to invention on their behalf. No customer ever asked Amazon to create the Prime membership program, but it sure turns out they wanted it, and I could give you many such examples. Staying in Day 1 requires you to experiment patiently, accept failures, plant seeds, protect saplings, and double down when you see customer delight. A customer-obsessed culture best creates the conditions where all of that can happen."
- ekianjo 8y ago
  > obsessive customer focus is by far the most protective of Day 1 vitality. It's a nice way to look at it, but then it's hard to explain why they force-feed Amazon Fire TV Sticks as a poor man's alternative to Chromecasts and prevent Chromecasts from being sold on Amazon at the same time. Costumer focus much?
  - dingo_bat 8y ago
    They are focused on their customers, not Google's.
    - BartBoch 8y ago
      I bet a huge chunk of their customers is Google users/customers as well.
  - cassianoleal 8y ago
    Also how they force-feed you Prime Video and make you pay extra for it (compared to Prime prices before they launched this) even though you already have other streaming services or generally not interested in it at all.
  - godzillabrennus 8y ago
    Not to mention how many consoles are sold by third party and are imports. I’ve stopped buying expensive electronics on Amazon. It’s too much of a pain to deal with. I will buy cheap junk because at least I am paying for what I’m getting.
ekianjo 8y ago
> I really like the concept of “pleasantly surprising” our users. Except that when users complained about the WiiU not being fun or remotely interesting, nobody listened at Nintendo and they kept marching to release it as is. It's nice to have narratives, but when facts don't match it, it's just a nice PR story and nothing more.
- rangibaby 8y ago
  Nintendo have released some turds of consoles before (Virtual Boy, N64, Wii U) but they all had some good games. Super Mario 64 was the first 3d platformer and it is still fun and innovative now. The only thing dated about it is the camera control and it’s not that bad.
  - eckza 8y ago
    > N64 In what universe is the N64 a turd? (I am asking objectively, not as a frothing-at-the-mouth fanboy.)
    - khedoros1 8y ago
      I like the N64, but for the sake of argument (from a few different directions, and each one debatable whether it made it a "turd"): - Sony moved over three times as many Playstations, and there were about 2600 PSX games and 400 N64 ones. In contrast to the previous generation, the SNES handily outsold the Genesis, even with somewhat fewer released games. - The cartridge format caused problems with production price and storage potential, which disk-based systems didn't have - It was an overly-complex, difficult-to-program machine - The 4K of texture cache and other weird design choices really hampered the graphics quality.
      - eckza 8y ago
        Aha. That's the answer I was looking for. All fair points, all objectively true. Thank you!
    - orbital-decay 8y ago

bitwize 8y ago

One of the really impressive things about Nintendo is their corporate culture has encouraged passing on of institutional knowledge to younger minds within the company. Shigeru Miyamoto is coming up on retirement age, and some of us have been wondering how Mario and Zelda would fare without him. Well, we needn't wonder: Miyamoto was not very actively involved in the development of Mario Odyssey or Breath of the Wild, and those games turned out great.

nothis 8y ago
And, as the article says, in Japan! There has been some fair criticism of the Japanese games market lacking in innovation compared to the West. Their indie scene is pitiful, AAA games stuck in 90s mechanics with fairly boring use of modern 3D hardware and a complete avoidance of online gaming trends. But, except for the online thing (although Splatoon might be among the strongest Japanese contenders), Nintendo manages to be maybe the most innovative AAA game developer in the world (especially when you consider their integration of hardware innovation in input devices). It’s quite remarkable. It’s an example of a very different culture being able to arrive at success in entirely different ways. It’s refreshing.

greggarious 8y ago

It must be hard to be as creative as they are, since JP punishes weed possession so heavily ;)

TheDong 8y ago
I flagged this comment because it reads as flamebait and off-topic to me. If it were worded as "I've heard that some artists use drugs to aid in the creative process, but I think Japan has strict drug laws.... does that practice happen in Japan?" that would be a way to actually start a discussion about a subject. As is, it's not providing a useful starting point for a discussion and, IMO, it's most likely to start a totally off topic and factually-devoid discussion of shouting back and forth about whether weed makes someone more creative or not.
- greggarious 8y ago
  Sorry you feel that way - sounds like you need to relax :) You can always use the downvote button if you feel strongly about a post, flagging something you don't agree with is a bit extreme.

ggm 8y ago

There is a kind of game design which works for me, and keeps me coming back. I don't think you can bottle it, any more than you can sell pixar to disney without keeping the brains inside the can. If you just sell the name, you don't get whats marked on the bottle. Amici di / scuola di "Nintendo", but moved forward from the renaissance? Seriously, maybe you have to study at the feet of the master and accept his/her teachings and method, to make one just the same (but different) ?

Sniffnoy 8y ago

Non-mobile link: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2018/apr/25/nintendo-interview-secret-innovation-lab-ideas-working https://www.theguardian.com/games/2018/apr/25/nintendo-inter...

dmitriid 8y ago

I highly recommend Mark Brown's video "Nintendo: Putting Play First, https://youtu.be/2u6HTG8LuXQ https://youtu.be/2u6HTG8LuXQ (and his other essays on Nintendo)

TillE 8y ago
There are millions of people making videos about games, but Mark Brown is the only YouTube person I've found who always has something interesting to say about game design. The Zelda series was particularly good.

ChildOfChaos 8y ago

Although my view is irrelevant, I have never liked a single thing Nintendo has done, I hate all there games, Mario is terrible compared to sonic, all there consoles recently suffer from being underpowered and seem pointless to me. Why are people getting excited about things like Skyrim on the switch, a game that’s been out for a long time and already has been played by people that wanted it and when big triple A titles like Fifa come to the platform it’s horribly cut down. To me they are disappointing users, not surprising them. However... I understand my opinion is different to that of others and I do find that this kinda single minded approach of the “secret creative process” seems to yelid great results. I think Apple often does something similar and it’s often why outsiders misunderstand them. It’s a focusing principle, a frame, something that directs all that “creativity” and “innovation” through a lens that produces great results, I think otherwise everything is just to many ideas and too many thoughts. I love this idea.. “The thinking that guides us is: what can we do to pleasantly surprise players? It’s not that we’re consciously trying to innovate; we’re trying to find ways to make people happy. The result is that we come up with things other people have not done.”

megaman22 8y ago

I find it a little weird the exalted position that Nintento seems to occupy in most peoples' minds. Maybe it's that I've always been a PC gamer first, and that's skewed my whole view forever, but Nintendo's offerings have always felt a little... meh. I don't have any use for actiony platformers, and the cutesy art style doesn't do much for me. Nor do I care about gimmicky controllers. Since the end of the SNES generation, their catalog of third-party games has lagged behind the other options. It's all pretty underwhelming. I expect this to be an unpopular oppinion, but it needs to be said.

on_and_off 8y ago
>it needs to be said What exactly do you feel needs to be said ? You not liking what Nintendo does, while fair, does not sound like a very interesting opinion to me.
- megaman22 8y ago
  I have a compulsion to poke at sacred cows and point out when the emperor has no clothes. It's really hard to rein in. Edit: It's also quite entertaining. There's certain fan groups that have elevated liking a product into quasi-religious stature. Pointing out the absurdity of that tends to bring out the sticks and pitchforks.
  - soneca 8y ago
    Now you presume you know the "truth", not that is a personal opinion of yours. That you are the only one in the crowd with the wisdom to see things as they are. That's why you are downvoted, not because your opinion is unpopular. If you presented your opinion as just a subjective opinion, not the revealing of truth to illuminate the ignorant, your opinion would be treated fairly I'm sure. BTW, I believe that there are a lot of people who are not impressed at all by Nintendo products. You are not that special.
  - LMYahooTFY 8y ago
    Yeah but there is some degree of arrogance when you don't preceed such statements with "[...when I think] it's a sacred cow or the emperor has no clothes...".

jordache 8y ago

they source game/creative ideas from developers? I'm sure it's not impossible to achieve success from that source, but more likely not.

erikpukinskis 8y ago

I don’t think the author understands console cycles. These are decade long cycles. Nintendo released Wii, one of the best selling consoles of all time, in 2006. Then they released the 3DS, another of the best selling consoles of all time, in 2010. Then they released the the Switch, the fastest selling console ever for them, in 2017. This is not a company who is “on the ropes” and then off again. This is a company that is consistently at the absolute top of the charts year after year. You can say the WiiU was a failure, but that risk helped them nail the switch. The only sense in which they were “on the ropes” is that they take risks which don’t work every single time. But that’s an absurd expectation. Of course bets don’t pay off every time. The author is anthropomorphizing the design process. As if failed experiments are some sort of existential moment for the company. But these are just the natural ups and downs of an ambitious design team.