Shigeru Miyamoton tapa suunnitella pelejä / Miyamoto's View over Someone Else's Shoulder

Nintendon toimitusjohtaja Satoru Iwata puhuu mm. Marion ja Donkey Kongin suunnitelleen Shigeru Miyamoton tavasta suunnitella pelejä. Ym. ajatuksia.

http://www.1101.com/iwata/2007-08-31.html

Miyamoton mielestä idea on sellainen, joka ratkaisee kerralla monta ongelmaa. Jokainen voi ratkaista ongelmia yksi kerrallaan, mutta rajallisilla resursseilla tähän ei ole aikaa. Pitää kaivaa syvälle ja tunnistaa mikä oikeasti on ongelma (Stanfordin professorin Bernie Rothin tapaisia ajatuksia). Lisäksi luodakseen toimivia pelejä Miyamoto on hänen mielestään mestari yhdistämään oman näkemyksensä tietoon, joka on saatu tarkkailemalla peliä kokeilevaa henkilöä.

Sitaatti: "After starting to work with Mr.Miyamoto for a while, I started to see. I was only looking from the "designer's point of view", but he was different. His aim does have a higher percentage of becoming a hit, but he does make mistakes. After all he's not God, you know. The difference lies in how he corrects his mistakes. He brings an employee who has nothing to do with the game he's designing, and hands him/her the controller and says, "Go ahead, try it."

...So he hands him/her the controller and tells him/her to go at it, and all he does is watch him/her from behind. I used to call it "Mr. Miyamoto's View over Someone Else's Shoulder". I didn't realize how important it was until I started to work with him. Only then it occurred to me that this was it. We're not able to go to customers explaining the details of the game's intention, or how they should enjoy it. The product is all you've got.

...But a product is incomplete when it comes to explaining something in detail. Every detail of the design of the game is not always understood by the player. Mr. Miyamoto watches them play and checks in detail how they respond, playing it without any previous knowledge. He finds out what they don't understand, what they let past, which triggers they miss. There are tons you can find from the view from behind.

However experienced he may be, he never drops the notion that "if the players don't understand it, there's fault in the design I made"