Miyamoto Gives Advice to Game Design Hopefuls

grenada writes "As reported by Ars Techncia, Shigeru Miyamoto has some good advice for aspiring game developers. Instead of telling kids to focus on video games, he actually says that it's beneficial to diversify your education and personal interests. He says that meeting people and familiarizing yourself to different fields will give you the best perspective of the world in the long run, which will help in your game-developing career. 'While young people are still students, I think it is important for them to not just focus on something like programming or just focus on video games. Instead they should do things that you can only do while you are in college. Get out, meet people, and talk to people.'" As a follow-up, N'Gai Croal at Newsweek has up an interview he did with Miyamoto-san entitled the Artist's Way.

Comments

More likely...

[UbuntuDupe]

Here's what actually happened:

Miyamoto: What the heck is wrong with you people? Get a life! I mean, I love success as much as anyone else, but I can't stand by and watch this any longer. Video games are supposed to be a side hobby, not something you build your life around. I almost fainted when I heard we'd be licensing Mario bedsheets. I mean, get out there. Get a date. Take down the Kirby poster...

*fat guy in suit waddles up*
*pulls Miyamoto aside*
*starts scolding in Japanese*
*makes huge gestures with his hands*
*makes gesture for "small child"*
*makes gesture for "big house"*
*makes gesture for "money"*
*makes "cutting neck" gesture*
*Miyamoto bows to him*
*returns to stage*

Miyamoto: What I mean is, if you're going to design a game, you should have separate interests...

crowd: *Hm, what sage advice*

Re:More likely...

[Applekid]

That's the trouble with putting value judgements on people's motivations. Whether or not YOU believe the best things in life are free is quite different from suggesting that people that do believe it do so because of sour grapes.

Money is big but certainly not everything. There's lots of value in bettering oneself. It's too bad a prevailing consumerist culture has convinced so many that being wealthy is the only way to live.

Or have I just been watching too much Star Trek lately? :)

Re:More likely...

[MeanderingMind]

Firstly, I have plenty of money. I don't think money is everything.

Secondly, Miyamoto's greatest games have all been inspired by things he did that weren't video games. If he had been focused on video games his whole life and nothing else, we wouldn't have many key Nintendo franchises we have today.

Lastly, people are not static. We change, we grow and we diminish. Our desires and needs do likewise. While some people are as you say, not everyone is. Change, like anything else, is best in moderation. Not too much, not too little.

Wait, what?

[Applekid]

"Get out, meet people, and talk to people."

What are these "people" he speaks of? Is that some kind of new interactive game demo that's outdoors?

Re:Wait, what?

[mrchaotica]

What's this "outdoors" you speak of? Is that some kind of new RPG?

Re:Wait, what?

[techpawn]

I heard the frame rate and bump mapping on the "outdoors" is amazing!

Re:Wait, what?

[Verteiron]

*sigh* Times are tough.

Re:Wait, what?

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

You are. I can't pick you in the "new game" menu. As a matter of fact I can't even find the "new game" menu on this outdoor game. Nor any other menu, so the UI is pretty bad on that part. However the game itself plays very smooth. Not to mention the Force Feedback. When I pushed the tough looking guy, it really felt like pushing him. And his reaction showed damn good AI and it really felt like being beating up. Amazing!
But I don't think this game will be around for much longer. I've found nudity and even hard core sex at several places and they weren't very well hidden either. Guess we've got another Hot coffee episode coming up.

College

[Alzheimers]

"Instead they should do things that you can only do while you are in college."

Translation: Take lots of acid. Then you too can create the next Mushroom Kingdom.

Re:College

[Tackhead]

> "Instead they should do things that you can only do while you are in college."
>
> Translation: Take lots of acid. Then you too can create the next Mushroom Kingdom.

"Thank you, Mario! But your princess is in another guy's dorm room!"

Just what I think

[Esc7]

This is good advice for everyone not just hopeful game designers. Seriously everyone, life is too vast to focus on one small thing.

Re:Just what I think

[flyingsquid]

Charles Darwin is a good example of why you need a broad education. He didn't come up with the idea of natural selection by reading a lot of biology papers, he came up with the idea by reading Malthus' book on human population growth.

If you focus exclusively on your field, then the best you can do is learn everything that is already known in that field. That may be fine if you just want to be a craftsman, using time-honored techniques. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but if you want to really push boundaries, you need to go outside your field and bring in pieces of knowledge which are foreign, even revolutionary.

Re:okay kids...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called experience.

Exactly, and in this case the experience we're talking about is life experience, which I believe is a fundamental prerequisite for the type of creativity that makes a good game designer. This has nothing to do with programming.

My opinion

[Darkstormeffect]

Basically Miyamoto is saying you have to enjoy life while at college because all you will do afterwards is work. So go outside and be social while you still can.

An Ironic experience for me . . .

[Badgerman]

I was a computer and game enthusiast for over two decades. I wrote business software, websites, databases, and soforth. Nothing exciting like gaming supposedly is, and my skillset wouldn't have worked in the gaming world except, perhaps, as a webmaster.

When I became a Project Manager? THEN I got interviews at game companies.

You never know.

miyamoto-san?

[Anonymous Coward]

> As a follow-up, N'Gai Croal at Newsweek has up an interview he did with Miyamoto-san

Look, you're writing in English, the name is Miyamoto. This just makes you look like some goofy otaku fanboy.

Re:miyamoto-san?

[patio11]

Lots of Japanese people I meet at my job (technology incubator in Japan) will go out of their way to stick a Mister on my name (or a close approximation thereof), because they think its polite. Even when they're talking in Japanese, which obviously lacks "Mister". Even when they're addressing me on a first name basis, for some folks. Many foreign businessmen who don't speak word one of Japanese will put a -san on everything in sight, because they think its polite. My policy is to accept both in the spirit they were offered.

Ditto the tiny minority of folks who request their name to be reordered, for whatever reason. Most Japanese people abroad adopt a Western name order, most Western foreigners in Japan keep their Western name odrer. A teeny sliver of people ask for the reverse. I think that, hey, its their name and thats a fairly reasonable request to be able to make, for whatever reason. (There are Japanese politicans who have asked foreign newspapers reporting on them to respect their culture and put the family name first, and there are foreigners resident in Japan who on principal do not want to stick out any more than they have to and so want a Japanese name order. Plus it results in less confusion when your bank thinks you are Mr. Bob instead of Mr. Smith because the data entry clerk put things in the way she always does, family name first.)

For a related example, how exactly is English supposed to treat the name N'Gai? I used to be an English teacher, and I don't recall a capitalization rule for that case. My untutored supposition would be that the g is lower case, but if he writes it with a capital G, then I'll take the hint, rather than saying "Hey punk, this is English, not Klingon. Drop the apostrophe and the screwy casing convention". Thats needlessly rude.

Article Link Points to a Game Review

[TexVex]

The link in the article points to a review of "Cooking Mama". What's up?

Re:Article Link Points to a Game Review

[VJ42]

First off, seeing as you read TFA, You must be new here etc. etc. ;P

To answer your point, scroll about a quater of the way down the page, past a bunch of other articles, and you'll finally reach the article. Not the best thought out link in the world, I agree.