Nobody does it quite like Nintendo. When you’re playing a first-party Mario, Zelda, Metroid, or whatever else, there’s a feeling that other games can’t quite replicate – something akin to magic. But of course, magic isn’t real, and games are productions created by flawed human beings just like anything else. So what makes Nintendo’s so special? Part of it comes down to who’s still around, all these years later. On the latest Aftermath Hours, we talk about that.
This time around, we’re joined by Keza MacDonald – currently of The Guardian and formerly of Kotaku UK way back in the day – to talk about her new book, Super Nintendo: The Game-Changing Company That Unlocked the Power of Play. We discuss Nintendo’s vast history, dating all the way back to 1889, as well as how its innovative past gave way to the Switch 2 era, perhaps its most iterative yet.
Keza also tells us all sorts of stories about legendary figures like Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto, who despite his sunny exterior, is actually a very intense boss. Also, that famous “a delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad” quote? He didn’t say it! Oh, while we’re dispelling misconceptions, Nintendo hasn’t avoided mass layoffs just because its executives are uncommonly forward thinking. Thank Japanese labor law for that one. Then we dig into what makes Nintendo Nintendo, including the intergenerational approach it takes to both its characters and its staffing. Finally, we talk about our favorite journalism rabbit holes, of which we have many.
You can find this week's episode below and on Spotify, Apple, or wherever else you prefer to listen to podcasts. If you like what you hear, make sure to leave a review so that Aftermath can also become an intergenerational enterprise, with sprightly youths reporting to 70-something versions of us decades from now (we'll be a lot crankier, though).
Here’s an excerpt from our conversation (edited for length and clarity):
Keza: That intergenerational nature of the market, I think, will safeguard Nintendo for a while, but also they have intergenerational teams. If you are the newest guy making Mario, you are sitting in the same team as Takashi Tezuka who made the first Mario. I think that is the case on every team. It’s always a mix of people who have literally been there for decades – maybe made the first game in that series – [and younger folks]. If you are struggling with a technical problem, you can go ask the guy who made that console. He’s over there. And all the documentation is apparently super tight. They’ve got incredible documentation of their own work.
I think this intergenerational development process is a key to why their games keep being so good. There’s both the insight and the institutional knowledge; the spirit of the game has remained kind of [the same]. Zelda is a good example. It feels sort of the same. The core of it is the same as it has been for decades. How do they do that? It’s because they keep the same people on it. But then you also have this freshness. You have new people – very talented younger people who are core parts of the teams.
So yeah, that intergenerational nature of its products and its teams and its audience, I think that’s the thing that really defines Nintendo now – and that will probably define it in the future as well. It’s gonna become like a Disney situation, although hopefully not evil. We will see.
Chris: I did forget how long Hidemaro Fujibayashi had been working on this stuff. He directed Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages. That’s crazy.
Keza: Yeah, he was the director on those. They poached him from Capcom. And that’s the thing: The “new” director of Zelda has been working on these games for decades himself.
Chris: He’s, like, 53!
Keza: Yeah, they’re seen as spring chickens because there’s Eiji Aonuma and Miyamoto, and they’re still there. When you first start to see a Nintendo developer’s name – when you first start to see them cropping up – they have been there for ten years or more by the time that happens. That kind of talent development is pretty solid. They seem to do a good job of bringing people up and not just keeping it with the established generation.
Nathan: With that in mind, do you think that tendency of previous generations to stick around well into old age stems from pride in their work and care and craft, or do you think they’re afraid to let go – that they’re afraid to completely take their hand off the wheel because they don’t entirely trust that things will keep working the way that they should if they leave and finally go enjoy retirement?
Keza: I do think there’s an element of that, probably, for quite a lot of Nintendo’s old guard. I know that Miyamoto took a long time to very slowly withdraw from game development. He’s not involved in games anymore. He does theme parks and movies and stuff. He’s become a student of film scripts because he’s trying to understand how to get the best out of Nintendo’s film partnerships and stuff. But that was a slow, slow, slow process.
Apart from anything else, can you imagine what would happen to Nintendo’s stock price if Miyamoto retired? So I do wonder the extent to which people are sticking around because they kind of have to for business reasons – especially the old guard. But then they do seem to enjoy their lives. I mean, you see these people on the product cycles; you see them every three or four years. But I’ve never interviewed a Nintendo developer who doesn’t have the light in their eyes.
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Nathan Grayson
