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So let's say you want to make a video game. Where do you even begin?
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Some developers start with a story
they want to tell, or a premise they want
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to explore. Others start with some emotion
they want the player to feel, like terror
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or accomplishment.
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Others still start by using the technology
to simulate something, like a planet, or a
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universe. And, of course, plenty of developers
start by taking a game that already exists,
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and adding in a few extra features.
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But Nintendo is, predictably, quite different.
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Whether it's making a brand new game or the
latest entry in the long-running Super Mario
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series, Nintendo always starts with the same
goal: coming up with a new way to play.
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So what you do in the game, and how you do
it, is used as the catalyst to drive everything
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else - from the design of the main character,
to the way you deal with enemies, to the genre
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of music on the soundtrack.
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"That’s how we make games at Nintendo,"
says Shigeru Miyamoto - creator of Mario,
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Zelda, Pikmin, and more. "We get the fundamentals
solid first, then do as much with that core
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concept as our time and ambition will allow".
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And so, in this episode of Game Maker's Toolkit,
we're going to look at how one of the world's
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greatest game developers finds success by
prioristing play.
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In many of its games, Nintendo starts by coming
up with some interesting new action for the
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main character to perform. The late Gunpei
Yokoi,
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said "I first take the character which you’re
going to control and replace them with a dot
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as a placeholder, then I think about what
kind of movement would be fun".
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The most famous outcome of this way of thinking
is this guy. You might know him as Mario,
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but when he arrived on the scene he was simply
known as Jumpman because this portly Italian
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plumber is defined by his leap.
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Not only does he have the most dynamic and
expressive jump in all of gaming - 2D or 3D
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- but his breakout game, Super Mario Bros,
is all about the jump.
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Mario leaps onto platforms and over pipes.
He jumps into bricks to break them and blocks
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to unleash power-ups. And that includes the
fire flower which shoots at an annoying 45
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degree angle meaning you have to jump to get
a good shot. And the flagpole is always one
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brick off the ground, so you have to jump
to finish the level.
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Miyamoto toyed with other ideas, including
a shoot 'em up stage, but dropped them because
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"we wanted to focus on jumping action".
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Oh, and don't forget about jumping on enemies
to kill them. That might seem like an obvious
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way to dispatch foes as that's how Sonic,
Aladdin, and scores of other platformer heroes
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do it but - get this - no one did it before
Mario.
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Miyamoto came up with that by asking: what
is the logical way to defeat an enemy in a
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game about jumping?
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There's a real advantage to forging a game
around a strong main mechanic.
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When you can interact with almost everything
in the game by using this mechanic, Nintendo
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can make a game where the player's range of
actions is very small and easy to learn - but
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the number of things they can interact with
is huge.
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When talking about Pikmin, Miyamoto said "the
basic action that you conduct is very simple.
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It's a matter of simply throwing the Pikmin
at tasks and calling them back. And yet with
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the Pikmins’ abilities and the breadth of
strategies available, it opens up broad possibilities
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of how you can approach the gameplay".
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Other examples of unique actions include shooting
a water gun, firing ink, turning into a painting,
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plucking things out of the ground, and using
a vacuum cleaner.
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In Luigi's Mansion for Gamecube, Luigi interacts
with the world almost exclusively through
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his vacuum cleaner. He can't even jump but
where his brother overcomes every challenge
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with a big springy leap, Luigi uses his hoover
to solve puzzles, suck up ghosts, collect
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loot, check for booby-trapped doors, and more.
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So while some developers might say their game
is about prejudice or ideology or the decline
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of the American frontier, how many games are
literally about using a vacuum cleaner?
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And when Nintendo needs to add in extra mechanics,
it can attach them to those main actions.
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For example, Splatoon is primarily about shooting
ink and swimming in ink - and so, you can
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reload your gun or climb up a high wall by
shooting ink on the floor and then swimming
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in it. No extra buttons required.
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God that's good.
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Of course, not every game is built around
some brand new mechanic. Nintendo is, after
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all, not exactly known for making entirely
new games and characters - or new IPs as the
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industry calls them - and there are only so many things you can strap to the back of a Mario brother
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But Nintendo games are still driven by new
ways to play and so sometimes it's about putting
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a new twist on an already established mechanic.
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That might involve reinventing 2D gameplay
in a 3D world, as we saw in Mario 64 and Zelda:
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Ocarina of Time. It might be about putting
those old mechanics in an interesting new
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context, like Super Mario Galaxy which is
still fundamentally about jumping - but now
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in micro gravity. Or how Pikmin 3 is still
about commanding Pikmin, but now with the
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added stress of juggling three heroes.
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And sometimes, Nintendo looks to come up with
an interesting new system that governs how
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you play - like the three day timer in Majora's
Mask or the interconnected map of Metroid.
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Whatever the case, there's got to be some
new gameplay that can help drive things - or,
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Nintendo says there's no point making the
game.
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When Miyamoto was told that fans wanted to
see a new F-Zero game, he said "I’d like
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to ask those people: Why F-Zero? What do you
want that we haven’t done before". To Miyamoto,
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the thought of just making another racing
game with more attractive graphics is unfathomable.
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Nintendo designers are big fans of the design
principle "form follows function", which basically
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means that how something looks is determined
by how that thing works. It's something that
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Miyamoto likely picked up when studying industrial
design at college.
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And it's why boos blush when you look at them,
and why enemies that charge at you in Super
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Mario World look like quarterbacks, and it's
why whenever Nintendo re-releases the original
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Mario Bros it swaps turtles for Spinies because
everyone keeps trying to jump on the damn
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turtles.
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But Nintendo goes further than that, and uses
the new gameplay at the heart of a game, to
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determine almost every aspect of the presentation.
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Once Splatoon's mechanics had been developed,
producer Hisashi Nogami says "we then conceived
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the characters and the world vision to match
perfectly with the gameplay".
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So if you ever got to play Splatoon during
the prototyping phases, you would have controlled
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a big white block. The designers came up with
the squid kids afterwards, when they needed
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to find a character that could swim in ink,
and would clearly separate the inking and
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swimming mechanics.
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And entire characters can come about as extensions
of the mechanics themselves - like Navi, who
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is a personification of the z-targeting system
in Ocarina of Time. Or this Lakitu, who carries
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the new-fangled camera in Super Mario 64.
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Or the Luma who hides in Mario's hat and shows the player when Mario's spin move is recharged.
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In this way, gameplay needn't be abstract systems but organic parts of the game world.
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Splatoon's producer also revealed that because
shooting ink is a bit like spraying graffiti,
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the game got its punk rock music and 90s aesthetic.
Similarly, the only reason Super Mario Sunshine
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is set on a tropical island is because the
water pistol gameplay made the designers think
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about summer.
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The mechanic can even drive the narrative.
Sorry to burst your bubble but the story in
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the Zelda games isn't part of some grand overarching
narrative but it's simply there "to bring
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out the best of the fun and interesting gameplay
elements", according to late Nintendo president,
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Satoru Iwata.
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A Link Between Worlds has a mad artist for
an antagonist because Nintendo needed some
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reason for why Link can turn into a painting.
And even Ocarina of Time's beloved story came
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from a process like this. Miyamoto wanted
both young and teenage Link in the same game
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so the writers had to come up with a time
travel plot to make it happen.
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This might seem like a crazy way to come up
with a story, but it can help ensure that
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there's a deep connection between what you
do in the game, and what happens in the story.
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Consider Yoshi's Island, which has a narrative
about protecting baby Mario, and gameplay
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mechanics about protecting baby Mario.
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Most developers come at the other
way round. They dream up stories, characters
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and worlds, and then work backwards to figure
out what gameplay mechanics might fit. It's
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no surprise that they're rarely very successful.
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But, okay, I shouldn't paint Nintendo as some
game design gods and every other developer
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as just getting it completely wrong. Though,
maybe...
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No, no. Nintendo gets it wrong sometimes.
And other developers get it oh so right - indie
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developers, for example, are particularly
good at building their games around unique
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gameplay. And I loved how the new Doom completely
orbits around the melee mechanic - it's at
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the heart of the combat system, it gives you
health, and it ties into movement. You even
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use the melee button to open doors, just like how Samus
opens doors by shooting them. Doom might
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be the most Nintendo game that Nintendo would
never, ever make.
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And then you get a game like Portal, which
is so beautifully built one super smart bit
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of interactivity that it's no surprise Miyamoto
has said that game was "amazing".
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Because for Nintendo, the way you play a game
is simply more important than anything else.
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So it's not just the jumping off point for
a new project, but every other element - the
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enemies, graphical style, locations, music,
stories, and characters - are picked and produced
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to frame the most fundamental aspect of a
game.
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And when every aspect of the game is suggesting
the way you play it, it becomes effortless
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to pick the game up and get stuck in. And
so this is one big reason why Nintendo's games
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often feel quite different to everything else
on the market.
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They're more playful and toylike than most other games.
They're more accessible and inviting - but no less
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complex. And, quite frankly, they're some
of the most elegantly designed games ever
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made. And so, even after missteps and miscalculations,
we're there. Ready and waiting for whatever
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this iconic Japanese developer comes up with
next.
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Hey there, thanks so much for watching. This
episode was a pretty big undertaking but I
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hope it sheds some new light on what makes
Nintendo such a fascinating game developer.
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I wanted to say a huge thank you for helping me reach
100,000 YouTube subscribers, and extend another
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thank you to everyone who has taken the time
to translate the subtitles on these videos
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into other languages.
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Game Maker's Toolkit is proudly funded by
its fans, over on Patreon. Who don't just
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