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.'"

Comments

"Creative Risks"

[Aladrin]

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.

From the Todd Hollenshead Book of Success:

[Alzheimers]

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!

Re:Since when did Miyamoto make creative risks?

[Glacial Wanderer]

Let me try...

Ipod, shrink a boom box and add some headphones. Porsche, take a wagon and add an engine. Aircraft carrier, put a small village on a boat and add some guns.