Shigeru Miyamoto Said He ‘Couldn’t Do Anything,’ so He Became a Producer

In a recent conversation with Hobonichi’s Shigesato Itoi, Shigeru Miyamoto said that he feels like he “couldn’t do anything anymore” when working in games and recalled the process which led him to him becoming a producer at Nintendo.

When Itoi asked Miyamoto for the tentative title of this talk, Miyamoto submitted the title of “I couldn’t do anything, so I became a producer.” Both Itoi and Miyamoto recalled their work days during the Famicom and Super Famicom era, when developing games required fewer people and smaller teams.

The developer said that it was during his late 30s and early 40s that he felt like he was unable to do any game work without a team anymore, and at the age of 60 he became a producer. However, since projects require high-level experts nowadays, Miyamoto feels like he can’t replace or provide support at the same level, even as a producer. Miyamoto said his way of leaving his mark on a project is to help and make people think “I’m glad he was there” or “I’d like to work with him next time.”

The developer mentions that his position as producer requires him to provide whatever might be missing in a team, and that he wouldn’t know which role he’d need to fill until the team starts to work on a project. Miyamoto clarified that the best teams to produce for would be those that didn’t need his input, and that if a team needed his help that would mean the team had problems that needed solving.

Shigeru Miyamoto is a renowned game developer and producer behind the creation of the Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Pikmin series, among others. The recent conversation appeared in the second of a series of talks between Itoi and Miyamoto. There are 12 conversations scheduled to appear daily between January 1-12, 2024 on the Hobonichi website.