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Rolling Stone Interview: Japanese Game Development Philosophy


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Rolling Stone recently published an interview with Jordan Amaro, a game designer at Nintendo who previously worked and trained with Western developers including Ubisoft. GoNintendo posted the interview highlighting a section where Amaro talks about why Nintendo would restrict player options in Splatoon 2, i.e. rotating maps and limited Salmon Run availability, but the whole interview is a pretty interesting insight into game development philosophy, particularly how Japanese and Western approaches differ. Check out the article here.

 

The restaurant analogy in particular seems quite apt, considering the way players sometimes complain about wanting to play a game their way instead of within the confines that the developers have created. It may still seem like arrogance to set strict boundaries but it's interesting to see it explained a bit.

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You think you know what we want better than we know what we want?
We think we know what you don’t know you want.

You think you know what you want. But we know what you will want once you understand it.

This is a good summary, and personally I don't see this as arrogance one bit. The phrase "what we want" shouldn't even come up in a discussion of a creative medium. I know games are still commerce, but think about how many great films/songs/etc. are delivering "what we want" versus "what we didn't know we wanted" (or needed, for that matter) Splatoon as a gameplay concept wouldn't even exist if they were just interested in delivering what players wanted.

Edited by Young P
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