Miyamoto on putting more female characters in games, possibility of having the girl rescue the guy
Have you realized that females are being more represented in Nintendo’s games as of late? Peach is playable in a mainline Mario game. Pikmin 3 has a playable female character. Dixie is back in Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. Mario Kart 8 has a selection of female characters such as Peach, Daisy and Toadette. And Bayonetta 2 features a female lead.
With Kotaku having notice the rising prominence of female characters in upcoming Nintendo titles, the site had the following exchange with Shigeru Miyamoto:
Kotaku: Way back, 25-30 years ago, it was always that you were the guy and you were saving the girl. You were saving Princess Peach, and she was helpless damsel in distress. Is this something you noticed, that you wanted to have people play more female characters? Was that feedback you’ve gotten?
Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo: Well, yeah, back in the days when we made the first Donkey Kong, that was a game we first made for the arcades, the arcades were not places girls went into often. And so we didn’t even consider making a character that would be playable for girls.
But typically with the DS era, what we found is, you know, gradually, more and more women began playing games—both young girls and adult women, playing games like Professor Layton and Animal Crossing, so more and more … and even as far back as Mario Kart, we had females who wanted to be able to play as female characters and we obviously saw the addition of Princess Peach early on in that series. And gradually, over time, we started to see the desire for other-balanced female characters. And so we’ve added heavier female characters in the Mario Kart series for them to choose from. So I think it’s just a natural tendency.
Miyamoto went on to discuss the possibility of reversing roles – having the girl rescue the guy:
Kotaku: Do you have daughters? Have they asked to be able to play as girls in the game?
Miyamoto: Yeah, I have a daughter, but she doesn’t really ask me that very much. She loves Zelda and she always plays as Link, but she’s actually never asked me why she can’t play as Princess Zelda. [laughs]
Kotaku: This has come up more, I think, in America, where people are talking about the idea that usually, in games, it’s the girl that has to be rescued by the guy. Have you ever considered doing a game where it’s the guy getting rescued by the girl?
Miyamoto: So, yeah, certainly, I think there are opportunities to do it. One, I think we could do it as a parody of everything else we’ve done. But I think, certainly, we would want something where it would feel like the natural way for the game to play and in that case we would certainly take that approach.
I guess, for me in particular, the structure of the gameplay always comes before the story. And so we’re always looking at, when we’re putting that together, what is the most natural story to take place within that structure. Pikmin is a good example of that. In Pikmin, the original structure of the gameplay was centered on all these individual little creatures moving around like ants. As a result of that, the world that you’re in is kind of earthy and natural settings and the creatures you’re fighting seems sort of like insects, because that’s what the gameplay centers on.
So, if we end up creating a gameplay structure where it makes sense for, whether it’s a female to go rescue a male or a gay man to rescue a lesbian woman or a lesbian woman to rescue a gay man, we might take that approach. For us it’s less about the story and more about the structure of the gameplay and what makes sense to be presenting to the consumer.
