Today in Yokohama, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto gave the keynote address at the 2018 Computer Entertainment Developers Conference. The speech was about an hour long, and here are some of the highlights.
It was a packed house, and websites Afternoon News and Famitsu were in attendance, reporting the following:
The Spread Of Smartphones
When the spread of smartphones, the number of people carrying games in their pocket has increased, Miyamoto pointed out. He joked that “I said, “The DS was already doing this” before I could say, “[Steve] Jobs is doing ‘touch!’”
The Success of Minecraft
“I think the incredible success of Minecraft is amazing,” said Miyamoto. The famed game creator said that he had an idea for a building-block game. However, there were questions as to what kind of game it should be.
For example, should it be a racing game? An adventure game? “The discussions went off the rails,” Miyamoto said. The game never happened.
Minecraft, however, did. Miyamoto later saw how someone had made a convenience store in Minecraft and was amazed. He was impressed with the game system and how the game was designed for everyone to play. Miyamoto even admitted it was “regrettable” that they [Nintendo] didn’t come up with the game. “But I’d be happy if this game had come from Japan.”
Not Wanting To Make an MMORPG
“A few years ago, when MMORPGs were coming into fashion, I didn’t want to make one,” Miyamoto as he was against the billing model. “Since I get tired of things easily, I don’t want to keep making one game,” he said.
Instead, Miyamoto wants to move on to the next project. But with an MMORPG, the developers must continually add content and do regular maintenance and updates. That development style apparently doesn’t suit Miyamoto’s personality.
Where Do Ideas Come From?
“Everyone is always thinking of ideas, but it’s whether or not those are good ideas,” Miyamoto said, adding that ideas coming during relaxed moments. His ideas just happen to be brilliant.
Comments
4 responses to “Shigeru Miyamoto Doesn’t Want To Make An MMORPG”
I’m similar to Miyamoto in that I get tired easily of doing similar things and want to move on. It’s why I’m an automation analyst, there’s always something new to solve or implement automated mechanisms for. I’ve found I just don’t have the fortitude required for long term application development and bug fixing.
Well he’s a game mechanic inovator. his personality revolves around coming up with new exciting ways to play games. people who spend time with long projects like mmos are either perfectionists who want to get something as mechanicaly sound as possible or love expanding on an initial idea more than doing something radically different. both kinds of people are important to the industry I think.
I don’t think many MMOs really do what you describe though. A lot of the big ones – thinking of WoW and its ilk here – often need to focus primarily on new content to keep people engaged, often at the expense of continually improving a system. WoW itself, for all its accomplishments, is kind of notorious for how often they manage to break or damage balance and existing systems with new expansions, and for how some new systems (like Legion’s legendaries) fall totally flat and overstay their welcome. There’s very little room for perfectionism in that kind of development cycle.
If we’re talking about a long, continuous project where the goal is constant improvement on what they’ve already made, I’m inclined to think that games like Dota 2 and Overwatch, with a single release and ongoing maintenance + minor content updates, are far more in line with what you’d expect. The focus on content consumption and exhaustion is almost non-existent by comparison to your typical MMO, and some of these games almost exclusively focus on (attempted) system & balance improvements.
Spatoon2 follows that model to a degree. We’ve had new stages and weapons dropping since launch although I think that might have tapered off now?