Shigeru Miyamoto’s Best Tips for Creativity
Today is the birthday of Nintendo game designer and producer Shigeru Miyamoto , and to celebrate, we decided it was time to take a look at some of his views on the creative process.
Shigeru Miyamoto joined Nintendo back in 1977 and has since developed legendary games such as Donkey Kong , Super Mario Bros. , The Legend of Zelda and many more . Currently, he is not only a designer, but also one of the main faces of the company, constantly publishing announcements of games and videos. Despite having worked at Nintendo for almost 40 years, he is still one of the main producers and directors of almost all of its projects. So how does he do it? Let’s take a look.
Let your employees challenge you
When you are transitioning into a leadership role, it is easy to let that power go to your head. Add to that nearly 40 years of experience, and most people become tyrants in power. From the outside, it’s obvious that this is a terrible way to do things, but it still happens all the time. Miyamoto made a conscious decision not to fall into this trap. In an interview with Time, Miyamoto said the following :
“I try not to create an atmosphere in which they think, ‘I’ll be better than Miyamoto’ or ‘I’ll make a game to please Miyamoto,’ he says. “Based on my own experience, I try to encourage the directors to be bold and work towards their goal and ask them questions about whether the game really delivers the experience to the players as intended. I try not to get too carried away with the content of the games they develop. “
Miyamoto is well known for having a more mentoring mentality in his leadership role, but he seems to really take this idea to heart. If you try to impose your ideas on your employees, creativity won’t flourish. Sometimes you just need to let them do what they do and guide them along the way.
Ignore profits
Countless artists over time have condemned the idea of thinking about profitability in art, but rarely does this idea come from someone who is so deeply rooted in both the business and the creative side. Nintendo is in business to make money, but it also has to get creative to stay relevant. Miyamoto knows this. From an IGN interview :
The peculiarity of this business is that creativity is one thing, but the mind of a marketer is another. This is an entertainment industry, so game designers need to be creative and also be able to resist the marketers in their company, otherwise they cannot be creative. There are not so many people who fit this description. But when we look strictly at creative minds, I think there are many. I think if they had more freedom in their offices to make the games they want, we would make much better games.
Of course, it takes both creativity and marketing to be successful, but letting market opportunities overtake creativity is a bad long-term business approach. The more freedom you give yourself in the beginning, the better the results will be, even if you end up tinkering with things to make them more appealing to a mass audience.
Be open to inspiration from everywhere
One of the challenges that many creative people face early in their careers is a commitment to inspiration. When you are so focused on your work, you tend to look for inspiration in your environment. This creates a cyclical pattern that will never allow you to create something truly new. For example, in an interview with NPR, Miyamoto describes the inspiration behind the Legend of Zelda and Mario 64 franchise :
When I was younger, I grew up in the countryside of Japan. And that meant I spent a lot of time playing in the paddy fields, exploring the hillsides and enjoying the outdoors. When I entered high school, I really got into hiking and mountaineering. There is a place near Kobe where there is a mountain and you climb the mountain and next to it there is a large lake. We went on this hike and climbed the mountain and I was so amazed – this was the first time I ever climbed this mountain and saw this big lake on top. And I took inspiration when we worked on Legend of Zelda, and we created this epic outdoor adventure in which you walk through these narrowed confined spaces and out onto this great lake. Around the same time, I really started to use my childhood experience and use it in game development …
… When I turned 40, I took up swimming and was very enthusiastic about swimming as a physical exercise. And right after that we did Super Mario 64 and I used my great swimming experience to create scuba diving scenes with Mario in this game.
Inspiration comes from everywhere , so be open to it. When you focus too much on one environment, you deprive yourself of the opportunity to see other unique perspectives and worlds.
Don’t compare yourself to others.
Nintendo’s success (and sometimes failure) has always depended on doing things differently from everyone else. The Nintendo console is completely different from the PlayStation or Xbox, and there is a reason for that. In an interview with the Guardian, Miyamoto puts it bluntly :
I think when you talk about competing with others, the problem is that you are referencing what has already been done and trying to outperform it. Instead of looking at what other companies are doing, Nintendo focuses on uniqueness. Providing new entertainment is important.
This trap is easy to fall into. If you’re a writer, you tend to compare yourself to other writers, if you’re a game designer, you look at other games, and so on. This type of competition naturally engenders imitation because you are constantly playing at someone else’s job. When you do this, it is difficult to make your art truly unique.