Shigeru Miyamoto Discussed Nintendo Game Design

On November 6, 2024, the official Nintendo website published its online investors meeting Q&A and during that time, Shigeru Miyamoto—game director at Nintendo and creator of franchises like Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Pikmin—gave a short speech about his philosophy on game design. He also provides some insight on how the company trains its new recruits. [Thanks, Famitsu!]

Miyamoto brings up his idea of game design at Nintendo after an investor asked about the speech that Miyamoto gives new employees every year. This information comes from articles about the Nintendo Museum. The investor also asks how Miyamoto succeeds at making creative games, stating that from an outsider’s perspective, it feels like Miyamoto can do so because he’s a genius. In response to that, Miyamoto notes that many new employees go up to him after he gives his speech to say that he’s actually a very normal person, which he agrees with. It’s less about genius and more about mindset.

He first states that he always thinks about how he can make a game a “hit” success and how he can efficiently perform his duties at work. While a lot of new employees want to make a more intricate or elaborate version of a game they’d enjoyed in the past, Miyamoto states that’s not the right mindset to have. Instead, you should look around you and consider what would make for a fun video game. That’s the core of game design. Then, you can start considering what’s even possible. For example, what processing power will your game need and what hardware will it be on? Afterwards, you can start the trial and error process of development.

According to Miyamoto, many new employees comment that this method of game design isn’t what they imagined, and they find it quite interesting. Others can empathize with this view of creativity. Part of the orientation involves looking at Nintendo’s history of creating real-life game items like hanafuda and mahjong tiles. So this history of making physical games might have affected how Miyamoto and Nintendo look at digital products.

You can read the whole Q&A here.