The Work of Two Games Designers

I will be discussing and evaluating the work of two games designers in this blog post.

First is a man called Shigeru Miyamoto, a famous Japanese video game designer who works for Nintendo. He has contributed greatly to the games industry, and produced various iconic video game intellectual properties, such as Super Mario, Pikmin, Nintendogs, F-Zero and The Legend of Zelda. As discussed by (NPR, 2015), he has created some of the most famous video game characters ever made and characters link Mario and Link are pop-cultural icons who have been widely recognisable for decades. He also helped revolutionise the games industry with the NES release of Super Mario Bros. With the decline of video games from 1978 onwards (evaluated by (Den of Geek, 2013)), around that time there were a huge surge of poor-quality games being shoved into the market for quick and easy money, and the novelty of video games had long since worn off by then. People eventually failed to see the appeal of these bad games, and demand sunk to drastically low levels.

This video game crash continued until September 1985, when the NES launched bundled with high-quality titles developed by Miyamoto, like the big hitting 'Super Mario Bros', which took inspiration from previous platforms like Donkey Kong and Bubble Bobble, while expanding upon the foundations these games set by refining the gameplay mechanics and introducing new concepts of its own (like the Mushroom and Fire Flower power-ups). This game was one of the first side scrolling platformers in existence that was the best-selling exclusive game for nearly thirty years longer (until he beat his own sales record with Wii Sports at the start of the Wii's lifetime). Each level in the game was drawn individually by hand and designed to teach the player by doing, not telling (Nintendo, 2015) using clever placement of blocks and enemies which forced the player to avoid or collect them. Sales turned around at that time and started to quickly increase again, as the NES was marketed as an 'entertainment system', not a games console. This helped ditch the bad reputation games were getting after the video game crash previously, and a re-brand was a  tactical decision by Miyamoto.

Miyamoto has also been behind some of the best selling games ever made. From a list posted by (Pooley, 2015), games like Nintendogs, Mario Kart Wii, Super Mario Bros, Wii Sports, New Super Mario Bros Wii and Mario Kart DS. And each of those games sold millions of copies, due to their widespread appeal and understandable mechanics. So to summarise: Miyamoto has just pushed innovation forward through so many games so many times, from introducing the first independently controlled camera ever in a video game with Super Mario 64, to introducing video games to the masses wireless motion sensors with Wii Sports, the industry today just wouldn't be in the place it is now without him and his ideas. Many of these games have set the standard for base gameplay mechanics even years later which many games still use, so for example, if any game released today has a camera which can be moved and rotated independently to the player character's movements (with many examples, Like Guild Wars 2 and the Dragon Quest series), then that game has something to owe to Super Mario 64, for being the first game to introduce such a concept and use such a clever technique to introduce it to the masses. This was done in an incredibly interesting way, since the game's camera is quite literally shown to be a flying turtle acting as the 'cameraman' in the game, who follows Mario around his adventure filming him. This is a genius way to introduce a new concept of a camera in a game to a new audience, by comparing it to something they're already used to understanding (in this case, the production of films and television).

Shigeru Miyamoto (Vincent, 2014)

The next games designer I will be evaluating is Markus Perrson, a man who's very different to Miyamoto on multiple levels. He has big range of skills that allow him to be very flexible with his work, as posted by (H Battjes, 2011), his knowledge spans from art, web development, programming, games design etc. A big difference between him and Miyamoto is that since the start of his career he only worked for himself (and founded his own company later), and his one game: Minecraft, a simple sandbox game about building whatever you want, is now one of the best selling games of all time as a one-off standalone title (whereas all of Miyamoto's most successful work is in a game series like Mario Kart and Super Mario Bros, and none of which have been as open as Minecraft is). In fact, Minecraft's adventuring and combat element was actually inspired by Miyamoto's Legend of Zelda series, as in Minecraft, like Zelda, the player explores dungeons, collects items and fights monsters with a sword. The game didn't just copy formulas from Zelda though, it expanded on them and innovated in its own right. Introducing customisation as a key element to the gameplay with many more possible types of weapons (like axes and pickaxes), which can also be crafted out of various materials like stone, iron and gold. Compared to Zelda games only really having one or two swords throughout the whole game as the main point of combat, it's a solid improvement.

The game Minecraft all began when Perrson, who was a simple forum user nicknamed 'Notch', posted a very early prototype of his game idea onto an indie games development forum in 2009 (as posted here on this very thread (Notch, 2009)). The game quickly took off, and as the constant updates and improvements were released as it transcended through an alpha, beta and then final release phase, it continued to sell well until this day, where as posted by games journalist (Sarkar, 2015) it currently has sold a staggering 70 million copies worldwide as of June 2015. It continues to receive updates to this day as it's continuously improved with a strong flow of new content, it's shocking to think 7 years ago it was a prototype developed by one Swedish man as a hobby which is now a cultural phenomenon.

Minecraft had an enormous effect on the games industry once it went multiplatform, it was originally coded in Java as a PC-exclusive release. But afterwards Perrson and his small team began gradually rewriting the code from Java to C++ and releasing them one-by-one to almost every current and last gen console, as well as mobile iOS and Android devices. The game really took off helped spark the imagination of everyone from children to adults since they could create whatever they desired through the limitations of the game. As of 2016 Minecraft, originally a simple sandbox game that involved placing and destroying blocks. is even being used in schools to teach education like Maths, History and Science to children (Peterson, 2014), since the popularity of the game and accessible nature is perfect to keeping children engaged, and it having multiplayer helps encourage teamwork too. As published by (Peterson, 2014). Markus Perrson unfortunately sold off the rights for his game Minecraft to Microsoft (one of Nintendo's, and thus Miyamoto's, direct competitors), for over a staggering 2.5 billion US dollars, and Microsoft have started doing other things with the brand like selling a wealth of merchandise and also developed a separate narrative-driven game titled 'Minecraft: Story Mode'.

Through Perrson's success he's even bought himself a 70 million US dollar mansion to live in (Ohlheiser, 2014) and started development on some other game projects with that money like Breaking the Tower and Minicraft (which admittedly never sold as well as Minecraft or Miyamoto's constant spring of ideas did). And he continues to visit conventions to greet fans and share his knowledge to them to help create other innovating game developers. Minecraft has inspired various other games from its inception in 2009, which such a variety of games many of which being cheap mobile mobile games or even more fleshed out console titles, which usually take the established Minecraft formula and put their own spin onto it (like Dragon Quest Builders making it into more of a turn-based RPG or Lego Dimensions adding tonnes of famous and iconic characters across popular-culture), At this point a sandbox game when you pick up and place objects has almost become its own genre thanks to Minecraft, as its creative influence has spread throughout almost every gaming platform out there. In the end though it's undeniable that both he and Miyamoto both had a huge impact on the games industry in their own ways, and it's individuals like these who will continue to push the industry forward into the future with their springs of innovation and creative mindsets.

Markus Perrson (H Battjes, 2011)