The teacher Shigeru Miyamotofather among others of the series Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda, explained in an old interview dating back to 1999, exhumed and commendably translated by the site shmulations, his concept of game design clearly and directly.
He talked about it together with Toshihiro Nagoshi of SEGA, currently known for the Yakuza series, but then mainly engaged on the company’s arcade titles. To explain his vision of game design, Miyamoto started from a very simple example, related to Super Mario Bros. More precisely, from the complexity of the simple “jump“:
“Yes, take Super Mario for example. As you know, it’s an action game where you move sideways by jumping. But that word, ‘jump’… what does it really mean, and how is it handled in the game? Is there a formula that describes the arc of the jump? Is it all a sequence of pre-defined animations? And if so, what happens when you jump from a high height versus when you jump from a low height? Also, how many frames does the jump take and how does this relate to the pressing the jump button? You can write all these details in such a way that even a child could understand them, but a child would still have no idea how complex the simple concept of taking a leap is. Find a way to express all of this in numbers and building a real game is the meaning of game design.”
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