Interviewing Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto On the Appeal of Pikmin 3 - “When it comes to interactive media, a connection to oneself is the most fun.”

To Meet Expectations for Wii U, We Want to Make Up Ground Starting This Summer

4Gamer:

Let’s change the conversation for a moment. In addition to what we discussed before about TVs going HD, when you are planning on which game to make, do you also have some space in your head set aside for something like how far the audio and visual landscape has come?

Miyamoto:

It isn’t that extreme but when the average household is going to incorporate the newest things is something important that we consider and look out for.

Now that I think of it, there was a time with Mario when a poll about the popularity of characters in America said that he had pulled past Mickey. At the time it was something like Mario was seen as being more interesting and I think that is why he rated higher but I had an interview about it where they asked me “What do you think about surpassing Mickey?”

Against my better judgement I said something like “Oh, I’m delighted” but Mickey Mouse was around 40 years old at the time and Mario was only about 3 or 4 years old.

4Gamer:

It was like he was just born.

Miyamoto:

What hit me at the time was that if Mickey was a character that grew with the animation genre, I made up my mind that Mario would grow together with digital media.

4Gamer:

Together with digital media, huh?

Miyamoto:

Correct. So as new digital media techniques started to make their way into people’s homes, it was decided to make a new Mario game with them. Mario was seen as classic and we shoved him to the forefront of home digital entertainment. We decided that Mario would be the first we would put into 3D and we planned to be the first to bring 3D to the world of gaming.

In America, Mario came of age with digital media and came to be known as always at the forefront of each generation.

4Gamer:

I definitely thought that at the time.

You could say Mario took on the roll of introducing new techniques.

Miyamoto:

Furthermore, looking at the time when the 3DS was coming out, I didn’t have an answer as to if it would be best to make a game that featured glasses free 3D.

Yet still, the thing I think that was even more important than making the game was making the interface and animation unified. For example, from the point of view of developers making games for the 3DS, glasses free 3D was a requirement.

Something like that or the idea that to make games for 3DS, there definitely needed to be an emphasis on glasses free 3DS was not the case. For people making games for the 3DS, the emphasis was to use what you want freely.

4Gamer:

At the very least, there was the freedom to not use it.

Miyamoto:

Yeah. Even for the Wii U, it’s not that you must use the GamePad but that everything is in the GamePad and please use what you want freely. It can also be assumed that pretty much every device is connected to the internet nowadays so…

With other gaming devices, they may not sell if they don’t have enough extras but there is little concern given to if it is giving the consumer landscape something different and I think being able to make games is extremely important.

4Gamer:

I understand what you are talking about. Still…

Miyamoto:

I know. But that’s why Nintendo has to do our best and sell Wii Us. (laughs)

The Wii U has a web browser and two screens so even if you just watch YouTube it is convenient but still, if you don’t use it to do so, it’s hard to understand. We have to keep picking up speed with the system.

4Gamer:

At this point, the amount of Wii U sold continues to not really waver, right?

Miyamoto:

Right. The biggest thing more so than anything is that there aren’t enough games you can play out. That is something I’ve had to reflect on.

4Gamer:

What is the reason for that?

Miyamoto:

Pikmin 3 and Wii Fit U among others were originally planned in the lineup from around January to March.

At this time last year we were still working on them with that in mind but the truth of the matter is that we had our hands full working with shaders in HD. At this point we’ve found one way to work with them so I think we’ll be able to make up lost ground. Even still, the hardware development itself was delayed. If that is delayed, pre-development also gets delayed and it has an effect on the game development.

If you develop a game once the hardware is already out there, there isn’t too much of an effect but when you are improving on both together, there is an effect, unfortunately.

4Gamer:

I see.

Miyamoto:

Furthermore, in regard to Pikmin, and this was the same with 1 but there are some elements that until you bring everything together, you don’t know how things are going to turn out. If the base elements are fun, a game will be made. However, if they aren’t fun, the game won’t be. The end result was that 1 was fun so it was made. For Pikmin 3 too there were some elements we didn’t know how they would work until they all came together.

4Gamer:

It also supports the all new GamePad device.

Miyamoto:

That’s the reason after we played it for a bit, there was the feeling that we wanted to make things even tighter. So when we weren’t going to make February, we thought maybe we could get it out by April but for this game we decided to take our time to make everything tight.

We had also decided at the same time that the summer would be the perfect time to start to release a lot of games in a row.

4Gamer:

By doing so, Pikmin 3 would usher in the lineup beginning from summer.

Miyamoto:

Correct. After that there’s Lego City Undercover and the Wonderful 101. And beyond that there’s Super Mario 3D World, Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze, Mario Kart 8, and others in the pipeline.

So the idea is the Wii U will be selling! From this summer we’d like to catch up in the numbers. The Shiro Premium Set is also going to be available too.

(Note: In this section they refer to the white and black Wii U systems as shiro and kuro written in Roman letters, not Japanese so I’ve left them as “shiro” and “kuro.”)

4Gamers:

There were people who said they wanted a Shiro Premium Set from the time the Wii U first went on sale.

Miyamoto:

The truth is we wanted to make Kuro and Shiro from the very beginning. However, when planning the amount of units we could produce in the beginning, we had to narrow it down. In the American marketplace, people wanted Kuro as well.

Story, Mission, and Bingo Battle - There’s About the Same Amount of Content for All Three

4Gamer:

Wii U has the image of being something for the living room but I feel Pikmin 3 is more the kind of game you want to play by yourself shut up in your bedroom. What are your thoughts about it?

Miyamoto:

That makes sense… But still, I think Pikmin 3 is fun for the family to even watch. I feel like it is something that can be enjoyed by just looking at it. When someone watches from behind the player, they run out of things to say. It is even possible to split up jobs with a sibling where one is in charge of the TV and the other the GamePad.

4Gamer:

Yeah, that makes sense when you think of it like that.

Miyamoto:

Also, while “you only play games and never study…” is something gamers are often told, I think there are places here and there in which playing Pikmin 3 can make you sharper mentally.

Your test scores most likely won’t go up but, at it’s most basic, it is a counting game and you are more or less regularly counting in groups of 10 to 20 so it is kind of like numbers visualization training. In addition to that, there is also practice coordinating and planning. So I’d definitely like parents and children to play together.

At the very least in the worst case scenario, even if the whole family doesn’t get it, we have made it so you can turn off the TV and play on the GamePad. (laughs)

4Gamer:

As I take in what you have to say about various topics, it seems like the main focus for being able to play with only the GamePad is less than on the up and up. (laughs)

Miyamoto:

With Pikmin 3, that is the case. According to our staff it was fun to play on the GamePad and enjoy a more solitary experience but there were also times where there were enjoying the lack of freedom. (laughs) In the end, the conclusion was that using both screens was best.

Still… With Virutal Console games you get this feeling like holding a big Gameboy Advance and it is really fun playing with just the GamePad. I feel there are lots of people who wanted something like that during the Super Famicom era. It let’s you avoid competition for control of the living room TV.

4Gamer:

It is really appealing to be able to play a game made for the TV without using the TV while wrapped up in a sleeping bag.

Miyamoto:

Right?

That reminds me, Pikmin 3 has a mode called Bingo Battle that I think can fire up the living room. Up to two players can play but it can be played in a way that the other people around the players can better see what is going on and give the people playing directions or distract them.

4Gamer:

There is definitely room for people watching to join in.

Miyamoto:

With Pikmin 3, since you can have fun by yourself with Story Mode and Mission mode or have fun competing with someone in Bingo Battle, no one mode is the core and it more fits the situation.

When making the game, it was supposed to be Story Mode as the core with Mission Mode as the extra content to Story Mode and Bingo Battle as something similar to Pikmin 2’s Battle Mode but taking a look at the completed game, it feels more like each of the three modes has the same amount of content.

Bingo Battle mode had it’s own director and while I said something like “do we really need someone just for that?” at the time, it came together so well that now I feel like “good thing we had him.”

4Gamer:

The reaction from players has been great too.

… Now I thought of this when you mentioned versus battling but was there a plan to support online versus?

Miyamoto:

We gave up on that. It’s because it became clear that to get that working, there would have to have been various sacrifices in other places.

Even though people say, and this is especially true in America, that online versus must be included in a game, the game turned out fun even without it.

4Gamer:

"Once you finish the Story Mode, there is nothing else to have fun with other than multiplayer" is not the case?

Miyamoto:

It’s not. This is not only limited to this game but is an important position for Nintendo and maybe you can call it having over expectations but our goal is to continue selling our games even 3 years after their release. At the very least our basic goal is to make games that will continue to sell up to a year after release. We like to have our games regularly available like a back catalog so they can all be played an enjoyed.

To that end, the kinds of games that you buy, beat in three weeks, and then never play again are not good. There has been a clear customer response that Pikmin 3 is not one of those games.

Still, beyond that, we’d like to use our network service to consider how to get people to keep playing.

4Gamer:

Ah, even though online multiplayer isn’t supported, there are plans to use the network service for something else?

Miyamoto:

Right. At the very least, Miiverse allows the sharing of information and we are continuing to watch how the players are playing while preparing different things.

Also, when it comes to this game, I think it is the most interesting game yet to watch other people’s play videos of. Even if you can’t do the same things in the videos, it is fun to learn about techniques that didn’t even occur to you previously. I’ve received and am watching exceptional videos made by some of our debuggers and saw various techniques that never even occurred to us on the creation side.

To that end, I’d like to make some means to show off your play videos in some form.

4Gamers:

I’m excited to see how that shapes up.

Firstly, to Make People Interested, A Short Anime Version of Pikmin is in Development

4Gamer:

In this game, it feels like Mission Mode and Bingo Battle Mode are made so they can be finished in a relatively short amount of time. Can you explain your aim in doing so?

Miyamoto:

Well, the time is made to fit with the pace of people’s lives nowadays. For the most part it is made to be playable from about 6 to as long as 15 minute at a time. It wasn’t done to cut down play time. We wanted to make it so that those modes can played more casually.

I think there are a lot of people who feel that playing 20 to 30 minutes on average is a bit much. We hope to get someone to start playing casually and then suddenly get sucked in and lose track of time.

4Gamer:

If it feels like too much, you don’t start playing in the first place.

Miyamoto:

Exactly. Many people nowadays say things like they don’t have the time to play games but the truth is that they don’t have the desire to start a game and I think that is what they mean by not having time for playing games.

I’ve heard lots of stories where someone thinks they’re going to play a casual game just once and next thing they know, they’ve played all night long until the morning. So, as much as I can, I pay careful attention to making games in that style.

4Gamer:

Recently game systems tend to have a long bottleneck process of turning the system on and then waiting for it to start up and then from starting up waiting for the game to start…

Miyamoto:

That’s the case with the Wii U but you don’t seem to realize it. (laughs)

For example, in Wii Fit U, you can do pretty much everything on the GamePad. It’s made so you only need to turn on the TV for when you decide to do serious training. There is the concern that it does use a bit more electricity* but there is a resume mode where you can leave it for a long while and as soon as you grab it, there is a “bong” sound effect and only the GamePad turns on at first. That is the image we’d like people to have of Wii U.

We designed the Wii U wanting it to be like a gateway sitting directly in front of you when you get home and built it’s capabilities around that so if you are going to have only one system in your home, it should be Wii U. However, before that can be understood we need to make fun games for it first and right now, we are giving our all doing so.

4Gamer:

One of the ways people can understand is by Pikmin 3 but still, since what is good about the Wii U cannot be understood until you get your hands on it, there is the impression that you are struggling with how to do that.

Miyamoto:

That’s the truth… When it comes to things you have to get your hands on to understand the value of, I think how to get people to try it or how to get them interested in it is a very difficult question.

4Gamer:

Yeah. Before getting their hands on it, you have to get them interested…

Miyamoto:

To that end I am currently working on putting all the elements that can’t be conveyed only by a game together in one package and am experimenting with making a Pikmin anime. The truth is for the past two years, I’ve been spending more time on the Pikmin anime than the game. (laughs) We’d like people to develop a more fond connection with the Pikmin themselves. In fact, at last year’s E3 many of the Pikmin things we passed around were made from elements we used for the Pikmin anime.

Furthermore, since December of last year at Toho Cinema movie theaters there are Pikmin in the logo shown before movies. Even during the parts where they ask people to please put on their 3D glasses, there are Bulborbs running around. These are one piece of the things we’ve done in preparation for the anime.

4Gamer:

So you were moving forward with that plan at the same time as making the game. When will the completed anime itself be released?

Miyamoto:

Right now we are considering how to release it. In any case, we’re still devoting energy to Pikmin.

When It Comes to the Allure of Games as Interactive Media, A Connection to Oneself is the Most Fun

4Gamer:

Of course it depends on the person playing but when it comes to Pikmin, it feels like the fun of videogames is really brought together.

Miyamoto:

Yes. With Pikmin we were aiming for people to see its game elements as being fun and, in a sense, it is as if it is maintaining the classic game style. Not in an outdated sense but more as conveying the original point of video games.

4Gamer:

Original point… ?

Miyamoto:

I’ve been stressing this for a number of years but what I mean is that in the end I think it is a shared understanding between the person making the game and the person playing it.

To that end, it is whether the person playing the game can take something away from it or if they can learn from the game.

If we’re talking about Pikmin, it is learning what the meaning of what is going on in front of your eyes is just by watching. If you make this element clear, the point of playing becomes clear and what kind of planning needs to be done also becomes clear. If you are naturally able to impart that understanding on to the player, there is a shared understanding with the creator and a relationship of trust is born.

In you start to think to yourself with that process in mind, I think games become more interesting.

4Gamer:

So it’s not just pressing buttons based on on-screen directions. If you are able to impart your thoughts into the game, it is something beneficial for the player.

Miyamoto:

Don’t you agree? Still, when it comes to more presentation-based games there is more of a trend to forward a player’s understand with the story and what you present them with. Although games are interactive media, I think there is unfortunately more weight being placed on games being movie-like passive media. That isn’t a bad thing but we at Nintendo want to make things that players can think about what is going on by themselves based on simpler designs and more active play.

The graphics in Pikmin 3 are gorgeous but they are made simply and our expectation is for the person playing to feel like “Action Games with things like this are fun.”

4Gamer:

When playing Pikmin 3, while you don’t know what is causing it, somehow you really get into the world. The reason for that isn’t because of the heroes or even the Pikmin.

Miyamoto:

Another way of saying that it’s because you yourself are there. You can call it Nintendo but all the games I make aim to achieve that.

Even for Mario, Mario isn’t the hero, it is yourself. When it comes to Zelda, even though the hero is Link, the title of the series is “The Legend of Zelda.” In Pikmin 3, even though the heroes are Charlie and friends, the title is “Pikmin 3.”

4Gamer:

The hero’s name(s) aren’t splashed on the game’s title.

Miyamoto:

That’s correct. No matter which game it is, since you yourself are there, the heroes not casting a very long shadow is fine.

People who tell me they like Zelda or people who tell me the feeling of going on their own adventure is great are those who have taken the most away from the game.

4Gamer:

The feeling is that they tranfer themselves into Link.

Miyamoto:

Even still, Pikmin may be pretty much the most special of out them all.

The heroes may be the most memorable and have a pretty recognizable way of running around but the whole overall world the player is seeing is memorable as well and those two aren’t directly tied to one another. At the same time, only the Pikmin’s existence is oddly realistic. I think that is pretty important point.

4Gamer:

Feeling sad when a Pikmin dies or feeling uncomfortable when a Bulborb shows up completely originates from within the player. It’s not something the heroes are feeling that they player picks up on.

Miyamoto:

That’s because the hero is essentially just the interface. (laughs)

4Gamer:

It is definitely not physically you yourself or even Charlie and friends doing the work. Instead of that, there is a genuine feeling that the Pikmin are doing it. I think these games impart a very usual feeling.

Miyamoto:

I’d like you to think of that as what it is that is appealing about interactive media. That is to say the things that are the most interesting are those that are connected to you.

No matter what else, when the story is central, it is common to wonder what is going to be revealed next but, for example, when you beat Dragon Quest, the reason you are moved is because you’ve put 40 hours of yourself into it. I want to leave players with that good feeling.

4Gamer:

If you want to be moved by a story that isn’t connected to you, you can choose things other than games.

Miyamoto:

Right. It’s not making a demo video to bring people to tears but a style based around your own hard work and putting in time that leads to feeling moved. I think that is the most appealing aspect of interactive media and it is what we are always aiming to recreate.

4Gamer:

We are all looking forward to enjoying whatever comes next.

Well, finally, could you give us a message for the readers of 4Gamer?

Miyamoto:

Although Nintendo is seen as making games designed for casual players and tends to be mistakenly thought of as ignoring game lovers, the people making our games are game lovers.

Pikmin 3 is especially made for game lovers and since we gave it our all when making it, please try it out. Of course, since the game is balanced for casual players to be able to enjoy it too, aside from everyone reading this playing Pikmin, I’d like people who don’t normally read 4Gamer to please try it too. (laughs)

4Gamer:

Thank you very much.

It seems like you heard the people who say you your games are all only for casual players. (laughs)

Miyamoto:

… Well, we are caught between a rock and a hard place. When making games, we do hear people say “make this game this hard” or “this game is hard, right?” while on the other hand we hear people at the same time say “make this one easy.” Perhaps instead of being between a rock and a hard place, you can say we are pulled back and forth. (laughs)

Still, we are now focused on making up ground with all of these things and are getting good responses to the things we are are making so I really want you to try them out. Since the time of 1 we’ve had a cute promotional song for this but if you give it a try, you’ll see how deep the game is and I think we worked on it until we got the most into it.

4Gamer:

We’re looking forward to seeing the reactions after it goes on sale.

Thank you very much for coming today.

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