Miyamoto on making “small projects”, possibility of Project Guard in Star Fox Wii U, says it’s the year of Star Fox
Entertainment Weekly has put up a new interview with Shigeru Miyamoto. You’ll find his comments below.
On providing the value of the GamePad…
“As people have looked at Wii U, people maybe haven’t understood how useful of a device it is, and everything it can do. We’ve also had people who had thought maybe that Nintendo was struggling to fill up these GamePad experiences. We wanted to speak to both of those audiences and show them, ‘No, we’ve got a lot of great ideas that use the Gamepad, and these are all the things that Wii U can do.’”
On working on smaller projects…
What I define as “small project” is actually the more experimental phases. Even a Zelda game would start with a small team. We’d create the core of the gameplay, and then we expanded it out to a full project form there. So when I’ve said in the past that I’m going to be working on small projects, it’s really those experimental phases that I’m referring to. But somehow that got misinterpreted into somebody thinking that I was retiring, or that I was going to start working on smartphone games. That’s not the case.
On what it’s been like bringing Star Fox to the Wii U…
We worked on some ideas around Star Fox back during the Wii days. But the problem was that we didn’t have any new ideas to bring to the game. I wasn’t particularly interested in just making another Star Fox game with better graphics and better sound. So we set that aside back then. This time, as we were doing our experiments, and we found this idea of doing the two-screen gameplay. I was particularly interested in a new style of play, where you’d have the cockpit view on one screen, and you’d have the third-person standard Star Fox view on the TV screen, and how those two screens could interact with one another.
The idea of having a helicopter-style game, and being to then to drop a robot down and tether it, and operate the robot that you dropped while you’re controlling the helicopter: [There are] a lot of new and different ideas that we simply couldn’t have had, if we didn’t have that Wii U Gamepad.
On how the level of customization in games changes his job as a designer…
My approach has always been less “I’m going to create something, and I want them to play it a certain way.” I’m always trying to design games in a way that the player will think about what might be possible, and come up with their own ways to play the games. So I’ve always had sort of an affinity for course editors, for the players to have a customization element, dating as far back as Excitebike on the NES, which was the first game that we built a course editor for.
What’s interesting about Mario Maker is that it started out as a tool set for our development teams to create levels themselves. As recently as Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES, there was still a time when we were designing the levels by drawing them out on paper. It took a lot of work to do that [laughs]. Since then, as part of the game development, what we’ve always done is develop tools that allow us to develop level design within the program.
On how much paper Nintendo used just designing a single level of Super Mario Bros. 3…
We didn’t use that much, because we would do the initial drawing of the level on paper, and then we would layer tracing paper on top of that. We would trace the level on top. And we would add color to that. If we had changes, we would change the colors to indicate where the changes were.
The ones who had the hardest time with that process were the programmers, who then had to sit there and look at this paper as they typed, and try to implement what was on the paper, turn it into code.
On whether the advance of technology makes the designer’s job easier or harder…
On the one hand, the technology has gotten so powerful now. If you decide to use that that technology to create amazing graphics, what that ends up doing is creating a whole lot of work for the artists and the designers in trying to use that power, to create something that looks so detailed. In the past, the systems were simpler. Even if you didn’t understand the math behind physics programming, it was okay.
On the other hand, at the same time that the hardware’s been approved, they’ve also improved the programming languages. So now you have things like Unity, tools like that will make it easier. Even if you’re not trained specifically in mathematics or programming language, you’ll still have an ability to get something up and running within a tool like that. So that side of it can be, in some way, easier.
On any video game trends that excites Miyamoto right now…
I don’t spend a whole lot of time focusing on that kind of stuff, but even if there was something interesting that I noticed, I probably shouldn’t say it [laughs].
This goes back to what I was saying about the tools, the technology, the programming. Game development itself is relying more and more on the programmers and the artists to bring those games to life. My focus, really, is on the work of the game designer, and the game designer’s ability to think up new structures for play, or bring new ideas to the table, in a way that then can create new ideas for video games, and new ways to play.
For me, I think the challenge is that we see a lot of people who are putting all their energy around using the technology to create hyper-realistic graphics, and those sorts of things. I like to look for more novel ways to use the technology to do things that couldn’t be done before. A simple example is something like Project Guard. Now, with the power of the system, we’re able to display those twelve different cameras onscreen at one time. How can you use those twelve different screens to create an interesting interaction for the player to enjoy? That becomes the core of the new piece of gameplay.
On whether Project Guard will become its own game or part of a larger game…
Perhaps if you noticed in Project Guard, there was a Star Fox logo on the cameras! I have different ideas for what would be possible, but I haven’t finalized anything yet. One idea that I had for Star Fox is something like the Thunderbirds TV series, where they had all these different vehicles and Mechs that they could use. I’m not certain, but one thing I think about Star Fox is that, instead of just a ship-based adventure that we’ve seen in previous Star Fox games, there’s multiple different mechs and vehicles and things that they use. And maybe, within that, the Project Guard style of gameplay could be one element of sort of a larger-scaled thing.
The other analogy I’ve been using with the team is that the Star Fox games that we used to make were Star Fox for the movie theater, a big dramatic adventure. And this time, with our focus, it’s a little bit more of Star Fox if it were a TV series. So maybe Project Guard is the TV series of Star Fox that runs late at night, and the main missions of Star Fox are the TV series that runs in primetime.
On other projects Miyamoto is working on now…
I also still have a producer role on other titles. Splatoon is another one that I’m overseeing as producer. That game is being developed by members from the Animal Crossing team, as well as the previous director of Star Fox, as well as the art director from Nintendo Land. So they’re all working together on Splatoon, and I’m overseeing that as a produer. I’m also overseeing Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, which is being developed by our EAD Tokyo Studio.
The games that we’re showing at the show floor, I’m involved in probably about half of them. But the ones that I have direct development on are the three that I mentioned,Star Fox, Giant Robot, and Guard.
On his favorite Smash Bros. character…
I haven’t played Smash Brothers thoroughly yet, but my suspicion is that I would probably play as Star Fox. Playing as Kirby might be a little bit easier, but…
This is gonna be the year of Star Fox. I’ll play as Star Fox for awhile.
