In an interview with Wired’s Game|Life, Shigeru Miyamoto paid tribute to the American spirit of innovation with his statement that “America has always been better at creating unique products.” This might seem odd coming out of the mouth of Miyamoto, he of endless creativity, but the point he is trying to convey is that most video games are created by large organizations in Japan. The indie game movement really isn’t so strong on that side of the Pacific according to the venerable Miyamoto.
It’s one of the classic criticisms of corporate cultures, innovation takes a back seat to guaranteed profitability:
“In Japan, the technology required to create videogames tends to be concentrated in the bigger corporations,” says Miyamoto. Game publishers tend to make conservative games that will always be profitable, rather than taking risks on experimental games, he says.
In the U.S., with games like Portal emerging from small teams of developers, indie games have more space to breathe:
The difference with America, says Miyamoto, is its thriving garage-games movement. “Here in the United States, you have these independent developers who have managed to get the skills and the training and the development, and also have managed to get access to the technology and the hardware needed to develop it,” he says. “They’re able to let their own personality and their own kind of unique interests really flourish in the games that they’re creating.”
According to Miyamoto, the majority of innovation in Japan takes place on the PC, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into more innovative video game developers:
Miyamoto says it’s his job to try to get Japan’s relatively small indie game movement involved with Nintendo. “In Japan, there is a group of people who use the PC to create fun, interactive pieces of art. They haven’t really come into the videogame industry, but there is still the possibility within those communities to find some unique ideas.”
To encourage that variety of small team development, Nintendo is launching WiiWare. That development environment is ripe for much smaller teams. Perhaps such an environment could pique Miyamoto’s creative interest:
Nintendo has been trying to illustrate, with games like Brain Age and Wii Fit, how a small team can create a profitable game, Miyamoto says. But how about the smallest of small teams? With the resurgence in indie games, would Miyamoto — who designed Donkey Kong on his own almost 30 years ago — ever try his hand at a one-man project again?
“Yeah, I think it would be fun to do that,” he says.
I have always wondered how much of the acclaim heaped on Miyamoto in recent years has been due to his hands on work with projects and how much was due to reputation. It would be great to see what sort of game he would make all by his lonesome. Now there’s a WiiWare title I would line up to buy.
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