Shigeru Miyamoto's 1999 GDC Keynote

[Music] good evening welcome back uh to the lovely Civic Auditorium for the highlight of the 1999 game developers conference um I'd like to ask you all to please turn off all your cell phones pagers anything digital right now this is going to be a special event we'd like to have it be uh uninterrupted there's one he's out go get him yellow shirt no just kidding but please if you can turn that on off and also no um laser pointers please that's disruptive thank you um this is really an historic moment for the game developers conference and for the community that it serves four years ago uh when Miller Freeman began working with this event we asked our conference Advisory Board what would the dream conference look like what would be the Pinnacle of success for this event the answer as voice voed by one

Ernest Adams came in two simple words Shero mamoto well much has happened since then we've had four wonderful years literally hundreds of inspiring speakers many great parties and wonderful connections have been made but this year our dream of four years has come to fruition there is no greater validation of this community and this event than the presence of the world master of game design I'm going to ask you all to help me answer the question that's going to be bugging me as soon as this event is over which is what are we going to do next year but focusing on the present for now um there's a number of people I'd like to thank um most importantly Jim Merck and Pen Kaplan and many others at Nintendo for making the case Cas for the

company's support of this event there's also many people on the Miller Freeman staff including Alan you are in Intrepid and incredible program manager go Allen Gabe zickerman Greg Kerwin Kathy schach there are many many others who've contributed to this I'd like to thank them all and particularly particularly of course to Mr mamoto himself for sharing his wisdom with us today so I'd like to introduce to you the man who is responsible for third party relations at Nintendo and largely responsible for this event tonight please join me in a warm welcome for Mr

Jim Merrick thank you [Music] Jim thank you Jennifer on behalf of Nintendo I would like to thank and congratulate the game developers conference for another great conference Nintendo is fortunate to have one of the video game industry's greatest designers on staff a man whose Legacy goes back to the very roots of this industry and yet he is still indisputably on top of his game today Shiro mamoto has turned many of our fantasies into realities Mario taught us determination Donkey Kong made us laugh and Link has touched our hearts and challenged our minds mamoto has in so many ways shaped the industry that has brought us all

together here today let's take a moment to look at a little videotape that gives some background on this remarkable man at 24 he became the very first staff artist at Nintendo here he began the journey that would help create a whole new world of entertainment and build a flourishing industry that would rival the annual sales of the feature film business his work with his team at Nintendo has resulted in more than 60 game masterpieces that have sold over 250 million Game cartridges to passionate players around the world it was in video game arcade that the first memorable characters came to [Applause] life in 1983 Nintendo introduced the famicom in Japan which soon became known as the Nintendo nint Entertainment

System throughout the world this Benchmark system brought the video game experience and Mario into millions of homes [Music] everywhere with the Zelda series players were introduced to an enormous world of Adventure that provided hours of involving play [Applause] in 1991 Nintendo introduced the super famicom and Super NES and shagaru mioto acquired a new set of tools his Unforgettable characters now moved with the power of 16 [Music] bits [Applause]

the next evolution of Zelda immerse players even deeper into the classic [Applause] Legend Super Mario Kart combine Moto's beloved characters with a Ness in interactivity and two-player action not yet seen in racing [Music] games the Star Fox game brought to life wonderful new characters in a polygon based 3D world that used the super FX chip to push the limits of 16 B

bit in 1996 Nintendo shook the Video Game World with the Breakthrough N64 mamoto creativity now had free reign and an exhilarating new era in interactive entertainment was born n64's Flagship game has been called his Masterpiece it's me Mario here we go with N64 the Star Fox characters were given voices and a cinematic realtime 3D environment

everybody stay alert 1998 once again sharu mamoto leads the way redefining what a video game can be Shigeru mamoto Creator teacher Visionary leader he rides his bicycle to work and plays bluegrass banjo he's as original

and inventive as the games he creates his work with Nintendo will continue to blaze the trail in interactive entertainment together they will inspire and delight and keep the child within All of Us Alive people always ask what is next from mamoto and to help answer that question here is one of his newest personas bound to compete with the likes and looks of Laura Croft [Applause] [Music] oh it is my distinct honor and pleasure

to introduce to you the first inductee to the academy of interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame ladies and Gentlemen please join me in welcoming all the way from Japan Mr Shiro [Applause] mamoto it's going to be [Applause] great thank [Applause] you thank you very much good J please thank you I'm very honor thank you very much good evening thank you very much for your warm welcome I'm very happy to be

here the video game industry has been so many crisis has continued on as a strong and growing business thanks to that I'm still making games and I get to speak to you about them today I owe lot to a number of people who have been involved in this business and also to the newcomer in this industry who have been grow up playing Nintendo games and continue to buy them today making use of this opportunity I'd like to speak about my own experience in the past 20 years if if I uh if what I tell you

today can help games to consistently be fun to play it would make me happy in fact I like making games so much that would like do it for free [Applause] but don't tell Mr Yi that and now I hope you will me a big favor and allow me to speak in Japanese my friend thank my friend Bill Tran will translate for me thank you [Music]

today there are three main subjects that I'd like to speak to you about first I'd like to take a look back at the history of game design and tell you about my ideas about what a game designer should be second I'd like to talk about some of the concepts behind the development of The Legend of Zelda okarina of time and finally I'd like to share with you my ideas about the future of game design until the time of Donkey Kong which was

the first game that I directed programmers and Engineers were responsible for game design those were the days when these Engineers were even composing the music and drawing the pictures themselves they were terrible weren't [Applause] they [Applause] when I as an artist first became involved in game design I boasted to myself that I was one of the five best designers in the world the reason for this is that there were very few artists involved in game design at that time

with games like Donkey Kong we saw the birth of a new trend in game design for the first time we saw stories accompanying the games and writing the stories and drawing the pictures became the work of game designers this trend continued for about 10 [Music] years we saw many artists entering the industry as game designers and we also saw not a few music composers joining us as well then do particular to the success

of Dragon Warrior and the Legends of Zelda in Japan there emerged a new trend in which scenario writers took a leading role in Game design it was at this time that I was inundated with designers to be bringing me their really thick scenarios hoping to get a game whipped out we also saw a number of famous authors working together with music composers hoping to get a game out just for the sake of business let us look back once again in the days since I have joined the industry we have seen a qualitative change in the nature of game play

with arcade games our objective was to see how many quarters we could get the users to drop into a machine at the arcade it was with this objective in mind that I created the Donkey Kong series and yet at the same time we saw a new style of game emerge that contradicted the model one example is a baseball game in which you must play nine full innings in order to complete a game but at one quarter an inning it's too expensive whereas from the view of the arcade

operator players can play one inning much longer on the same quarter than they could on say another game like Mario Brothers another example is our own Mario Brothers where two players compete but with this game the better you get the shorter your play time was it was these types of Concepts that users simply could not accept it was at this time that I became involved in the development of the Nintendo Entertainment System this offered us an environment outside of the arcade for which to to make games

for with cost in mind we put a higher priority on two simple handheld controllers rather than one Ultra functional controller opening the doors to games like baseball and Mario Brothers with the NES the business of selling gameplay time transformed completely and evolved into the business of Simply selling playtime throughout these changes I have maintained the same style of game design

although I am not an engineer I have always included in my designs consideration for the technology that will make those designs a [Music] reality people have paid me a lot of lip service calling me a genius Storyteller or a talented animator they have even gone so far as to suggest that I try and make movies because of the work that I do now is already similar to movie making but I feel that I'm not really a Movie Maker but rather that my strength lies in my pioneering Spirit to make use

of technology to create the best interactive Commodities possible and use that interactivity to give users a game that they can enjoy and play comfortably I feel that I've have been very lucky to be a game designer since the dawn of the industry I am not an engineer but I've have had the opportunity to learn the principles of game design from scratch slowly over a long period of time and because I am always trying to remain at the Forefront I have grown accustomed to First creating the very tools necessary for game design from

scratch I have seen both the evolution of new hardware and the Advent of hit software titles but I have seen that not all the ideas for new hardware come from hardware technologists and Hardware professionals and engineers and I've seen more than a few examples in which the idea for a hit title have popped out from the simple hint in a conversation with an ordinary [Music] person uh next I'd like to talk about something that game designers may or may not want to hear but here we

[Music] go recently I personally have encountered many instances in which we hit a brick wall in development and we just can't quite finish the game I think maybe perhaps some of you out there have maybe been in the same boat there may have even been some people who realized they had no choice but to actually release a game that wasn't totally complete much to your own mortification

G I'm sure that each case has its own unique cause but I know that often times when game designers and producers make their plans without a sufficient grasp of the Technology and Engineering necessary to make their game they will often fail also I think we may have all had experiences where no matter how hard we try and work on a game it just in the end isn't that much fun

recently when new technology and exquisite Graphics are regarded as the core of a game's element of fun it becomes difficult to evaluate a game before launch because those fun aspects of it can only be judged after it has reached a certain degree of completion [Music] in these cases the answer to the question of how many more months of tinkering will produce a truly enjoyable game depends depends upon a variety of new emerging Technologies until the technology is complete game designers are unable to evaluate how the game will be

now in my understanding in these cases game designers are solely to blame but on the other hand since there has been no concrete definition of what a game designer's job entails I cannot say that it really is the fault of the designers [Music] as I mentioned earlier in the history of game development there was a time when designers were engineers who were less capable of composing and creating

Exquisite Graphics then we had designers who were painters but who could not understand the technology behind the games they didn't know what they could and could not do how were they to express their ideas so that they could be understood by programmers and realized by the CPU later we saw scenario writers Take the Lead but they too had a low level of understanding of the technology involved [Music] fortunately because I've been a part of the industry since its Dawn I at last come to the conclusion that the role of a game designer is to design a complete game system by first comprehending the technologies that will enable and

realize that system I believe that one of the jobs of the designer is design itself how will the ideas that I have in my mind be reproduced by the computer how can the power of the CPU be best allotted in order for the computer to convey those ideas to the user

how can I bring my own constructions and expression of ideas together with a technology that creates that new level of enjoyment within the hardware and budget limitations placed upon me this is what I mean by Design I consider games to be entertainment Commodities and therefore I place great importance upon user reaction I realize that I am one of the users to be monitored when I play a new game for the first time while we have this long process of development we also have at the end when a variety of different ideas and opinions will appear it is important to design the

whole game creation process so that users needs will be reflected effectively and quickly in this last stage and this is why game directors must be deeply involved in the design process I think another aspect of video games that is very interesting is say for instance trying to shorten the height of Mario's Jump by just a few dots now this is something that can be done very quickly and easily and yet it could affect the whole entire appearance of the game so is with to meet these opinions and match these requests and needs of the users the directors really must be

deeply involved accordingly at Nintendo all designers must undergo Technical Training graphic designers make games by comprehending the ROM and RAM memory Maps which Specialists are taking the lead in game design depends upon the trends of the day but this Technical Training is a basic requisite in continued success in game design let me offer you some basic examples

suppose a designer offers the following specification for an action game the enemy will randomly search the actions of the player [Music] character of course randomly search sounds like it's an authentic specification but the programmer can't put something this something like this into code and later on in the game the designer is not going to know where to begin tinkering to try and get that game back towards its original concept

but what if the following specification was presented the enemy shall change course based on character movement once every 30 game frames and one in three times it will randomly select a direction to progress in this second example should be more easily programmed in the first and later on when problems appear we have an idea of where to begin modifying it in a best case scenario you may be teamed up with talented programmers who can go ahead and do this kind of thing on their their own and even when they do it it's still

fun in those instances who knows maybe I won't even be needed no but honestly speaking I have been very fortunate to be teamed up with some very excellent programmers [Music] the next necessary element of design is skillful management of the memory map and accurate estimation of processing speed as I'm sure many of you know when we make games for consumer console machines it is important to take into account The Limited ability of the

console the processing speed and the transfer rate the and of course players and even company management producers who do not have a very deep technical grounding make the mistake of thinking that the world that we have created on the in the game is the same as the natural world this is a matter of course we see a man running and there's a hill in front of him we naturally expect he's going to run up the hill and

if there's a car bearing down on him well we kind of get the feeling that maybe he's going to get hit and when the car is moving of course the wheels should be spinning but if the wheels are spinning when it stopped well something's [Music] wrong but what these users and even company management may not understand is that these so-called laws of nature is something that we've created in this virtual world and as we get into the later stages of development we often hear complaints about why do I have to wait so long here what's with this processing

speed and why is this taking so long but at that point in time at that stage in development we can't fix it when we were making games for the NES just having a sound in the game actually used CPU power so before we had the final sounds finished we would put sounds from other games into games we were developing just so we could estimate the processing speed and I I recall back in the day when I was playing Super Mario Brothers with

the background music of excite bike got a go and Mario's jump did not have its characteristic Bo but instead it had the of excite [Applause] bike [Music] but this kind of consideration is necessary for taking the interface into account and in order for us to focus our attention on those areas of the games that we would like to put our creative priority [Music] on and in another matter lately there have

been many cases in which we miscalculate the necessary time to prepare parts of the game that are often taken for granted and of course the less experience that is designer has the more apt he is to make this mistake but when we think about it the amount of programs and sequences which are unique to Any Given game are actually limited and represent usually less than a third or a quarter of the total taking the example of an RPG there are

countless features that are taken for granted such as the title and name registration screens the dialogue system item select windows and so on I call these parts of the game labor I am always trying to design games which feature as few of these as possible unfortunately we can't get around making them and many game many game blueprints contain a number of these elements and is often work on these labor elements that exceed our time estimations that lead to the Troubles of games not reaching

completion so with this in mind we can all reduce this labor by just creating an entirely new genre of games that no one has ever thought of before although I've talked mostly about technical matters I would now kind of like to talk about something that's at the other end of the spectrum we must not forget the importance of human Ingenuity and creativity in game design naturally it is new and unique expression of ideas that gives birth to

new games recently I've been very sorry to see that for a number of titles the technology and the specialty development tools have taken on the lead role in the game uniqueness and the personalities of the designers has been diluted [Music] the for me game creation is a lot like expression through music or poetry

well I'm always trying to hit upon new ideas when I'm designing or working as a game director I place great importance on the tempo of the game and the sound [Music] effects I feel that those directors who have been able to incorporate Rhythm and emotional stimuli in their game have been most successful when I am holding the control or and setting the tempo I feel that my own personal game is in the midst of creation but in order to reach this level of expression you have to have that basic understanding of technology that I talked about before

game designers are apt to boast of the technical aspects of their games and I too have sometimes fall into this trap speaking of my own case I tend to highlight new technologies when I'm less confident about the new IDE I am putting forward in the game of course I always regret it when I do this I think it is important for us to remember that technology can Inspire new ideas and help us realize the ideas those ideas but it should do so from the background next I'd like to talk about a little

game that I've been working on recently some of you may or may not have heard about it let's take a quick [Music] [Music] peek h

[Music] uh thank you uh uh we started development with about four or five different teams each working on basic experiments related to game design first was the scenario and planning team both very necessary the team discussed primarily the position of this title in the whole series it included myself and a dedicated script writer

[Applause] the next team was related to Links action and the 3D improvements of items found previously in the Zelda series this included myself and Mr yoshiaki koizumi who has worked on player characters since the days of Mario as well as our head programmer we are very lucky today to have Mr Kumi here in the audience I think he's here somewhere Mr Kumi where are [Applause] you thank

you if you happen to see him at the conference please say hello to him he may have something important to tell you we we also had another team working on a variety of camera experiments these were conducted by myself Mr Kumi and several designers and programmers we worked on incorporating new methods such as background virtual boxes which we did not use in Mario as well as fixed camera modes like we used in the castle

scenes another team worked on bringing the items that link touches and uses that lay at the basis of the game into the 3D World we also had an entirely different team which was working on motion capture production and tests for the creation for the converter used in Zelda's animation so as we conducted these various experiments we brought them into the

entire game design and we also formed new teams according to our needs for instance we also had our sound team which worked on oakarina play and 3D sound throughout the game we also had a team working exclusively on special effects another team worked on the flow of time in the background and background calling appropriate for Zelda

[Music] additionally well actually what was unique here was not just what was visible in the background but progressing with design and integration of terrain specific sound and movement camera moves and enemy data as well as developing the tools effective for manipulating this data we designed the entire game by organizing these small teams and conducting tests to confirm memory size and processing

speed let us recall Hyrule Field the great plane in The Legend of Zelda the characters that appear in the field actually share their Ram [Music] that is we have in the field the great bird G and the skeleton enemies so then once the bird has left the field the Marathon Man will appear and when link becomes an adult then the horse comes into play and he begins

riding the horse and at this time only ghost appear so in this instance we actually wrote the scenario to match these design specifications I'd like to add that in depending on the type of game we may not necessarily start with so many teams but rather focus on character movement and of course not all the experiments we conduct are going to be adopted in the final game these are the technical aspects behind Zelda's development

but I would now like to talk about the concepts behind the development of Zelda through our experience making this interactive media called video games we have uncovered a number of methods to stimulate a emotion one of those methods is to use cinematic sequences as you know seeing with one's own eye can often give a more pronounced effect than the player's imagination and with that let's take a look at some of Zelda's Cinema scenes [Music]

[Music] oh

[Music] ah [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] a

[Music] go [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] is [Music]

[Music] so I know [Applause] [Music] we have seen several examples of these Cinema scenes but it's important to know that we position these sequences as only one part of development in Zelda there's over 1 hour and 30 minutes of these Cinema

sequences but the staff involved in creating these sequences was kept at a bare minimum with only three individuals for the most part of the development process and in the latter stages only six or seven the reason behind using such a simple process is as I'm sure many of you have experience in the workshop there is a total limit on team energy there's a limit to the work a team can do and there's a limit to my own energy

we opted not to use that limited time and energy on pre-rendered images for use in cinematic sequences we opted instead to use them on other interactive elements and polishing up the game to create a product that can players can enjoy and play more comfortably actually I changed the scenario just a few months before completion and although the staff was rather unhappy about taking apart something that we had already created the although the staff was unhappy about taking apart something they had already

created we were able to make the fixes in a short time so it did not cause any problems in scheduling now some people may think it's possibly an excuse but it's not because the Nintendo 64 doesn't have a CD ROM that opted for realtime movie processing quite the contrary to the greatest extent possible we were able to make use of truly cinematic methods with our camera work without relying on the kind of data typically used to make cinematic sequences

our president at Nintendo Mr Yami says that each each product has its own mission we set interactivity as the mission for our products thanks to that we have been able to experience development that no one had experienced before I've talked about a number of different topics this evening but since everyone is always asking me about the future I'd like to talk about the future of game design right now shall I begin making Zelda for our next

Generation Hardware at this point in [Applause] time I'm sorry to say but at this point in time the answer to that question is no now the reason for my saying this is that the majority of the elements for which Zelda has been praised so much were already Incorporated in the game more than one year before it was completed at a time when I personally thought the game wasn't very fun to play

[Music] I think that the real reason that Zelda has been so praise does not lie in the n64's level of experience of expression does not lie in the unique camera system and the auto jump system nor in the gorgeous cinematic sequences and spectacular boss [Music] fights it is true that some other team may realize the level of expression that we achieved with Zelda but of course it will not be the exact same as Zelda

even if we were to get a very high-tech Hardware system of course Zelda would be have a quicker response time it would have more highly refined Graphics but at this point in time just because of the hardware I can't guarantee that the game's going to be fun [Music] and this is something that I think we as designers Must ALL consider at this point in [Music] time also I want to constantly make efforts

to create new ideas I want to propose new game ideas without worrying about the headaches of management such as inflated development [Applause] costs the game one of course video games have become far more popular amongst the general P public than they were in the past but I'm afraid that we've just been repeating much of the same experiments in this small unique Market even with the latest installment of Zelda I didn't feel that sense of freshness that I had with the original

Super Mario Brothers I would like to make efforts to convey the charm of video games to the general public that is currently outside the reach of the industry in which we do business I really want to feel the unique zest of the entertainment industry where one simple idea can create an unexpected social [Applause] phenomenon let's take a look at a game I'm not sure if you can really call it a game that I'm working on now called Talent [Music]

[Applause] [Music] maker what you are seeing now you also saw one shot I think in the introduction uh is a new game called Talent maker in which you can create your own characters by utilizing the Game Boy camera and of course you can make all these characters [Music] dance [Music]

and all these scenes that you've seen here including the one of me in the beginning were all made very quickly and easily by my staff using this Talent maker game in the N64 Nintendo is also going to be making efforts to create new types of Commodities by combining the Game Boy The Game Boy camera the rumble pack and others with the N64 inan in Japan we have already launched the N64 title Pokémon Stadium which makes use of the Game Boy Pokémon

games we are also selling Pikachu genu a game which makes use of voice recognition technology soon we will introduce a system in which the Game Boy can actually be used as a controller for the N64 we have expanded this industry to its current market size by welcoming new users with Innovative products that continue to surprise and impact the masses

at a time when we were busy working on Sid scrolling games like Mario Tetris was born thanks to a team that tried to make a new product with Game and Watch style software and when we at Nintendo were stuck on talk of the spectacular 3D Graphics of Mario 64 and racing games we saw a huge hit in the form of tagoi a tiny keychain posting pictures made up of no more than 10 or so dots at that time I thought that Mario 64 had lost to

Tomi yeah I'm serious I'm [Applause] serious [Music] for in conclusion I want game designers to be the designers who make technology their tools and use it to express their own individuality their own uniqueness and their own Rhythm and I want them to be the Entertainer who make this world a more enjoyable one it is with this extravagant hope that I wish to end my speech

tonight my friends let us design truly unique fun software that boasts new appeal let us take on new challenges so that the world of gaming is not left behind a separate closed off world and in the process let's see if we can't make some [Applause] money thank you very much thank you thank you very much thank you very much thank you so much