CNET recently had the opportunity to chat with Mighty No.9 and Mega Man co-creator Keiji Inafune about a range of subjects including Nintendo. Inafune believes that the Kyoto based company has a struggle on its hands once its famous designers such as Shigeru Miyamoto retire. He says that this isn’t just a problem for Nintendo but the Japanese video games industry as a whole as there aren’t very many well-known content creators.
CNET: I was going to ask you about Nintendo, because, from my perspective, it has the model to follow. We know its creators, and even people such as Iwata. As Nintendo gets older, and the creators we all know begin to retire, do you think that it will be able to successfully continue that effort? No one really knows how to relate to Iwata’s successor, Tatsumi Kimishima. We don’t know who he is or what to think about him. He doesn’t the same kind of history that we can relate to. Do you think that Japanese creators will continue to earn international recognition, or is it nostalgia that’s keeping the original creators relevant?
KI: The reason Nintendo pushes more of their creators is because the founder, Yamauchi-san, is the one who actually pushed Miyamoto as a creator. To continue that tradition, it will become harder and harder, especially after Miyamoto. It’s really tough to say how we can change this, because, there will be fewer and fewer people well known to the media and the Western world, so I really don’t know what’s going to happen to the industry in that respect. Even Kojima: I think some people in Japan know him, but even Kojima is not that well known by the general public. It’s a really tough time.
Thanks, MasterPikachu6
So… he was talking about the Gaming world of Japan or the whole world?
“CNET recently had the opportunity to chat with Mega Man and Mighty No.9 creator Keiji Inafune”
No, no, no. Inafune can be roughly considered the co-creator of Mega Man. Mega Man (the caracter) design came from Akira Kitamura, and the game design concept came from Tokuro Fujiwara.
The guy himself explains the matter:
– Inafune also revealed that he wasn’t responsible for the creation of Mega Man himself. “I’m often called the father of Mega Man, but actually, his design was already created when I joined Capcom,” he explained. “My mentor [at Capcom], who was the designer of the original Mega Man, had a basic concept of what Mega Man was supposed to look like. So I only did half of the job in creating him. I didn’t get to completely design a Mega Man [protagonist] from scratch until Zero (Mega Man X, SNES).
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/tgs-07-mega-man-celebrates-20th-anniversary/1100-6179759/
Fixed!
Nah, that happens, Sickr!
Keep up the great job!
Well considering the people who produced Splatoon wasn’t Miyamoto, I’m not to worried about him retiring :)
Cheers to that! As long as we have young creative people doing different types of games… We shouldn’t worry as much. :)
Miyamoto mentored the guys who made Splatoon, and helped train them to think like him, he was basically a supervisor to Splatoon. The devs wanted to just have squids at first, no kids, Miyamoto was like NO NO that wont catch on. And they changed it.
That’s the reason that you’re a squid you’re kid you’re squid noooww! Jokes a side. The dev team has told the huge print of Miyamote in them work; they said this in a interview ” [After] the prototype phase, we had all these ideas about the height, the ink, the characters, and the image of the character and the squid, but we couldn’t kind of filter it down to a final result that would result in a simple, fun game. And during this period, we were being scolded by Mr Miyamoto all the time.
He was saying, ‘I don’t understand. What do you want to do? There’s no appeal to this game.’
We had the basics and then we were like, ‘Let’s add the hiding [in ink] feature; let’s add jumping; we need height, because it’s a 3D map.’ And then we thought, ‘We need to be able to shoot up and down.’ And we realised we’d added all this stuff, and we got confused. We didn’t know what the game was about.”
This is why developers like Sakurai need to quit being lazy in their job as leader & actual train his damn team. He won’t be around forever so he should be doing his best to create a successor either out of his entire team or out of one of the individuals in his team. He’s so focused on doing all of the work himself like a control freak that he forgets another important part of his job: training his damn team to replace him or pick up the slack when he can’t.
Miyamoto seems to be the only guy in Nintendo right now actually trying to train people to take his place; or at least the only one we’re actually aware of. First it was Aonuma & now the team behind Splatoon. Miyamoto might be a bit out of touch but he’s not that out of touch.
And some idiots here actually wanted Sakurai to become the new CEO of Nintendo!? LMFAO They’d be in worse shape with him in charge than what they are now.
I can’t say Miyamoto is “Out of touch” He has stated before he is aware people want a new F-Zero and such. So Miyamoto pays attention. But the thing is when it comes to game development, it’s HIS game he is CHOOSING to make it the way HE wants it. And with his success you can’t really argue against it lol. For example people say he is out of touch for not putting Multiplayer in Starfox Zero, it’s his franchise, his game, his plans. Granted I fully would be on board with online multiplayer especially dog fights. But Miyamoto stated an online mode could happen (Project Guard) but saying he is out of touch, simply isn’t true.
I think calling Sakurai “lazy” about anything is a little insane. The guy is killing himself making his games, he doesn’t really have time to be lazy. I agree with you about him needing to train others so he doesn’t have to carry the workload himself, he definitely brought that upon himself. Just calling him lazy, eh, it doesn’t feel right. A bad mentor? Yeah. But he’s only in his 40s, while Miyamoto just turned 70, so Sakurai definitely has time left if he’s planning on running a full course like Miyamoto.
Sakurai, yeah, to work with a team for years and to still feel like they don’t have what it takes to keep working on Smash on their on? What’s up with that?
Well, Nintendo has those brand new developers who made Splatoon, which was a massive success. I think they will be worthy successors. They will perhaps surpass even Miyamoto himself seeing as they are more inclined to adopt aspects of Western games as well as Japanese games.
Miyamoto, nowadays, is pretty stuck in the past. His ideas are not new anymore and are very, very simple and child-like. Even the new Star Fox game looks very simple, as if it were being made 10 or 15 years ago. He never evolved. He is virtually a shadow of himself many years past his prime.
Which is fine. He is a legend and his name alone sells. He created most of Nintendo’s foundation, in terms of popular franchises, and they have been allowed to grow into new fantastic forms of themselves.
I think Nintendo is on the right track. They have been saying the “right thing” for the past couple months and the NX is sounding like it will be a move in the right direction. I am not worried for Nintendo’s future, but I am excited!
Miyamoto never evolved…..(Get the fuck out before I throw your ass out!)
Why are you here?
Please don’t show you so ignorant. Miyamoto was the surpervisor and mentor of splatoons’ dev team. : ” [After] the prototype phase, we had all these ideas about the height, the ink, the characters, and the image of the character and the squid, but we couldn’t kind of filter it down to a final result that would result in a simple, fun game. And during this period, we were being scolded by Mr Miyamoto all the time.
He was saying, ‘I don’t understand. What do you want to do? There’s no appeal to this game.’
We had the basics and then we were like, ‘Let’s add the hiding [in ink] feature; let’s add jumping; we need height, because it’s a 3D map.’ And then we thought, ‘We need to be able to shoot up and down.’ And we realised we’d added all this stuff, and we got confused. We didn’t know what the game was about.”
Like always, Miyamoto is already 1,000 steps ahead of the game. He has been training the new young blood devs at Nintendo to think like he does, and approach games his style of way, always pushing the envelope, always making something new and wacky! His work is already paying off with Team Garage, their first ever game as a group Splatoon has one of the best sales of ALL Wii U games so far lol.
Kojima is one of, if not, the most popular name in game development in the world, especially here in the west. anyone who game will know Kojima’s name before they can tell you a local dev’s name from their own country.
Miyamoto is the most well known game in the world. Kojima is up there, but he doesn’t surpass Miyamoto.
“The next game will require 4x the money and 8x the kickstarters for 7 DLC levels and the soundtrack. It’s just a few million dollars, what’s the harm?”
||There will only be the legacy of the void, everything will be obsolete once my master returns……
There are lot of games which sale without having a well known developer.I don’t know what the problem is. Even if Nintendo wants to follow the same model and Miyamoto-san retire now, they won’t be a major crisis cause they are other well known devs like Tezuka-san or Aonuma-san.
Lot of companies don’t have well known developers and there are still selling games. My guess is that when designing a game with someone, a decent engineer will pick up some trick, stuffs and learn from each experiences. Miyamoto-san will retire soon (unless Nintendo pay him milions to stay) and I think they (Nintendo and him) already dealt with the situation when he was head of EAD.