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Expert Insight From Miyamoto, Todd Hollenshead
njkid1 writes "Nintendo's legendary Shigeru Miyamoto, id Software's Todd Hollenshead and BioWare's Ray Muzyka offer up their expert advice on how to rise to the top of the industry at GameDaily. Miyamoto says his secret to success is that he makes sure sequels are entirely new games rather than just minor updates to the same engine. From Muzkya's comments in the article: 'BioWare's success is based entirely on the fact that we have a lot of very humble, hard-working and smart people at our company who are allowed to take creative risks. We put quality as our number one studio priority, because we believe it leads to long-term success, and as a result we don't release a game until we've achieved and exceeded our high quality targets.'"
I think this is the key, more than the 'no lame sequels' bit. If you don't allow your people to take creative risks, they can't produce anything truly new, which means any sequels will indeed be the same game with new graphics.
Nintendo takes a lot of them, too... Turning SMB into a 3D game... Then turning it into a 2D/3D hybrid RPG... Link went from a side scroller to a 3/4 overhead RPG to a fully 3d realistic-looking RPG... They've split just about every game off into side-games like Dr Mario and Yoshi's Cookie... They're masters of this.
It's also possible to fail utterly while taking the risks, of course. The other half of the secret of their success is strict quality control. You let your people take risks, but you let them know with no uncertainty if they fail one of them. And you don't ship the product until it's good.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Miyamoto is a genius and possibly a demigod, but sometimes what he says just doesn't make sense to me... I think that his success is largely attributable not to the fact that he innovates within his franchises (especially considering the Pokemon franchise, Twilight Princess going back to the "Ocarina" design, Mario Kart for DS being essentially MK64, and so forth), but with two other things:
1) it has to do with the fact that these franchises started off SO AMAZINGLY HIGH-QUALITY (for their time, at the very least) and retained that quality regardless of whether they were "re-imagined" or not. More of the same (design-wise) is great if it was awesome to begin with.
2) it has to do with the fact that some of Nintendo's innovation is also VERY HIGH-QUALITY. When I say this I mostly think of Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time, but the Wii as a piece of technology is another example. (The Virtual Boy isn't, hence the "some innovation" ^_^)
A more rubbish developer/publisher can innovate within its franchises all it wants, but it won't reach any level of success unless the franchises start strong and the innovation keeps them strong by being well designed/executed. Likewise, a strong developer does not need to innovate within a franchise (to the degree that Miyamoto suggested) to remain successful. Halo, Ninja Gaiden, DMC, Pokemon, Smash Bros, Mario Kart, and even Zelda are examples of very strong franchises that remain[ed] strong even without massive innovation in successive titles.
I like basketball!!1!
Every Zelda game has followed the same formula since the nes.
Super Mario Sunshine??? Take Mario 64 and give him a water pistol! Mario Galaxy, put Mario 64 in Space. hmm. There's not denying he makes great games, but they are hardly original.
Step 1) Find a John Carmack
Step 2) Feed him lots of junk food and soda
Step 3) Harness his creative energy to publish some tech demos thinly disguised as games
Step 4) Sell the engine to someone who can make a game better than you can
Step 5) Profit!
Toilet humor and violence, oh and a massive game world worked wonders for GTA and the sequels
Up for it.
Was still disappointing. Bravo, Tom.
The words 'bioware' and 'creative risk' do not belong in the same sentence. They really don't. Played one Bioware game, played them all. The graphics have improved and they've changed the setting every so often but they all play the same and the stories are all very much generic fantasy. Their games can be fun, I'll give them that, but stunningly original they are not.
Someone's bound to bring up Jade Empire but that's far from original in anything but a superficial way. It's just the same old thing dressed up in Eastern mythology. Same old Chosen One saving the world while accompanied by a freak show with an added hint of betrayal to give the plot a twist. Even the morality system is basically just KOTOR's simplistic light/dark meter redux in the end; it started out with promise of more but quickly degraded into the same old goody two-shoes/raging psychopath dichotomy that's been present in, well, has there ever been a Bioware RPG that didn't have it?
Wii Sports and Wii Fit perhaps? I think he was working on several Wii titles or concepts. Wii Music is another one.
If you like the exploration part of the Zelda games, you might want to have a look at "Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland" for the DS. It's not officially published in the US, but it is in Europe, and the Europe version has an English language mode.
You don't play Link, you play Zelda, and the game is basically all exploration. It's one of my favourite games right now, especially due to all the inside jokes about Zelda.
Damn, I meant to write "You don't play as Link, you play as Tingle."