Shigeru Miyamoto is perhaps the most legendary figure in all of gaming and over the years we’ve heard plenty of stories about how he’s often changed the course of development, or come up with a ground-breaking idea that’s changed the industry forever.
Although he is a living legend, Pikmin 4 chief and programming director Yuji Kando recently mentioned in an interview with Game Informer how it’s not just about making “Mr. Miyamoto happy” during the development cycle. Here’s part of the exchange:
GI: I imagine it is scary to have Miyamoto look at your game and offer feedback. How do you feel about that process of working with a legend like Miyamoto?
Kando: I always feel honored to be able to work with Mr. Miyamoto. With that said, I hope people don’t take this the wrong way, but we don’t work on a game with the goal of “to make Mr. Miyamoto happy.”
Kando added to this, explaining how “deep” discussions with Miyamoto normally lead to thoughts about “how thoroughly” teams have considered a game’s design, and this can result in scenarios where adjustments are made, or ideas are added based on Miyamoto’s feedback.
One scene in Pikmin 4 that Miyamoto apparently “put a lot of care and thought into” was the part where the “GBA, drops and pops open”, according to Pikmin 4 planning director Yutaka Hiramuki.
Miyamoto mentioned himself during Nintendo’s ‘Ask the Developer’ interview series for Pikmin 4, how he realises his “words carry a lot of weight” – describing how people would often “get flustered” if he provided a “random bit of feedback” during the development phase of a game.
Miyamoto has taken a step back over the past decade and is now overseeing projects and sharing his knowledge of game design with younger developers at Nintendo. In an interview earlier this year touching on what Nintendo would one day be without him, Miyamoto said it would “probably be the same” in the sense that “everyone” has a “shared understanding of what it is to be Nintendo” within the company.
