Most game industry executives, when condescending to speak to the public, fall back into careful, manicured, corporate-focused management talk that is almost completely devoid of character or, indeed, information. Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata was different.
Yes, Iwata often spoke dryly about Nintendo’s business realities, especially in the Q&A sessions that accompanied Nintendo’s quarterly earnings calls. But in his 15 years as president of Nintendo, Iwata often opened up publicly in speeches, interviews, and a series of candid “Iwata Asks” interviews with his fellow Nintendo employees. Because of this, Iwata often shared memories of his time as a coder and developer for HAL Laboratories and Nintendo, expressed intensely personal feelings about the state of game design, and urged the industry to push hard for more creativity.
Following Iwata’s untimely death this weekend, we reviewed these public statements and extracted some of the quotes that we believe best illustrated his life, philosophy and management style. We believe this collection honors a CEO who was unique in the industry and whose presence will be greatly missed.
-
Prior to joining Nintendo as president, Iwata did programming and other work on a number of Nintendo games for HAL Laboratory. 1985 Balloon fight on the NES was one of the first. The rest of this gallery highlights a few other titles he has worked on directly.
-
F1 race (NES-1984)
-
Pinball (NES-1984)
-
NES Open Tournament Golf (NES, 1991)
-
Kirby’s Dreamland (Gameboy, 1992)
-
NCAA basketball (SNES, 1992)
-
Earthbound (SNES, 1994)
-
Super Smash Bros. (N64, 1999)
-
Pokemon stadium (N64, 1999)
On his days as a programmer
“On my business card, I’m a corporate president. In my mind, I’m a game developer. But in my heart, I’m a gamer.”
-GDC 2006 keynote speech
“My first creation was a baseball game. I don’t think anyone can say it had bad graphics because it didn’t have any graphics. The gameplay was only represented by numbers. But seeing my friends play that game and have fun made it feeling proud. For me, this was a source of energy and passion.”
– GDC 2005 keyntoe speech
“At the time I made one Star Trek-themed game by myself. I managed to get around the calculator’s limitation of only allowing 224 steps per program by using 6 different magnetic cards. It was a masterpiece of calculator programming!”
—4Gamer Interview (2014)
“[At HAL] I was a programmer. And an engineer. And a designer. And I marketed our games. I also ordered food. And I helped clean up. And it was all great fun.”
—GDC 2005 keynote speech
“There was definitely a period after I started working at HAL when I imagined myself to be the most accomplished software engineer in the video game industry. Believing things like that allowed me to write better NES code than even Nintendo’s (EAD) engineers or if I could write the fastest, most compact code.”
—4Gamer Interview (2014)
“From [HAL’s] offices, it was possible to see Mount Fuji, which many say is most impressive if you are willing to wake up and see it at sunrise. But in this period [debugging Super Smash Bros. Brawl], just like years ago with our Kirby games, at HAL we would see the sun shining on the mountain before we ever went to bed. Many say the sight of the first light on Mount Fuji inspires them. But for me, I hope I never see it again!”
—GDC 2005 keynote speech
“From outside Nintendo, I was always observing [Shigeru Miyamoto], my eyes like saucers, wondering, “Why does Miyamoto-san always succeed?” Now, by a curious twist of fate, we’ve ended up in these relative positions to each other…it’s really funny how things turn out!”
– “Questions for Iwata” interview (2006)
“When I first started, I more or less randomly decided that Miyamoto was my rival, although that’s embarrassing to admit now. Would you believe that for a long time I just decided within myself, completely randomly and not reciprocated at all, that [Miyamoto] was my rival and I wanted to do something to just give him hell?”
—4Gamer Interview (2014)
Iwata (right) and Shigeru Miyamoto show off the New Nintendo DS in 2004.
Toshifumi Kitamura, Getty Images
On expanding the gambling market
“We started with a very simple question: why does someone feel comfortable picking up a remote for a TV, but many people are afraid to even touch the controller for a video game system? This was our starting point.”
-GDC 2006 keynote speech
“During the history of game development, the game control mechanism has become more and more sophisticated. Perhaps those who have stopped gaming or who have never played games look at the game controller and think that it is too difficult to play even before they dare touch it.”
—Nintendo “Revolution” controller debut event (2005)
“I believe that if we don’t take steps to make people who don’t play games understand them, the position of video games in society will never improve. Society’s image of games will remain largely negative, including things like that about playing the all the time games that seriously damage you or rot your brain or whatever.
– “Questions for Iwata” interview (2006)
“If we spend more time and money chasing the exact same players, who are we leaving behind? Are we making games just for each other? Do you have friends and relatives who don’t play video games? Well, why don’t they And I would want to ask: How many times have you challenged yourself to make a game that you might not play?”
—GDC 2005 keynote speech
“Online gaming is normally among the most aggressive players, and they can be a very vocal group. For the casual player, this kind of interaction can be very intimidating. I believed if we focused only on this very vocal group of hardcore players , we could never really expand the audience.”
-GDC 2006 keynote speech
Iwata shows off the Wii U in a video presentation from 2012.
On hardware power
“Making games look more photorealistic isn’t the only way to improve the gaming experience. I know, I’m at risk of being misunderstood at this point, so remember I’m a guy who once programmed a baseball game without baseball players. If anyone appreciates graphics, it’s me! But my point is that this is just one way to a better game. We have to find others. Improvement has more than one definition.”
—GDC 2005 keynote speech
“Please understand I am not saying technology is unimportant. I understand technology is important. But if we just focus on technology and invest in IT production plant to come up with better processing performance [chips]we’re not going to succeed.”
—Gamespy interview (2004)
“Because graphics were so primitive by today’s standards [in the NES era], we wondered how we could stimulate the imagination of the players as a substitute for what we couldn’t display on screen. Think about this: one day our games won’t look any better. What are we going to do then?”
—GDC 2005 keynote speech
“Some people put their money on the screen, but we decided to spend ours on the gaming experience. It’s an investment in actual market disruption. Not just to improve the market, but to disrupt it.”
-GDC 2006 keynote speech
On creativity
“Of course it’s valuable to come up with an offshoot of a current idea. But coming up with a brand new idea of what a game can be is priceless.”
—GDC 2005 keynote speech
“Understandably, in order to reduce risk, many publishers feel most comfortable relying on high-budget sequels to already successful games. As a result, our business is beginning to resemble a bookstore where you can only buy expensive full sets. buy encyclopedias. Not romantic novels. Not paperbacks. Not magazines.”
-GDC 2006 keynote speech
“If we only made sequels, people would see us as a company that is not ready to take on new adventures. That’s not the person I am.”
—MTV Multiplayer Interview (2006)
“Of course someone who has been making games for a long time will have come up with a standard set of solutions to problems that come up during game making. … The more you grew up with games, know about games and work with games, the easier it is to fall into that trap, I think. The more standard your solutions are, the less impact they have on the public. In other words, your solution might solve things, but it also makes them boring and ordinary.”
-Interview with Earthbound creator Shigesato Itoi (2011)
“I actually felt it would have been more frightening to take the conventional path [in designing the Wii]. Of course, no one knows the ideal moment for change. When we decided to change the direction of the ship, so to speak, we didn’t know how long it would take for people to understand what we were trying to achieve. … We knew there was no future on the conventional path. That path would eventually lead to a battle of sheer brute force with our competitors, and fewer and fewer consumers would be able to keep up.”
– “Iwata questions” interview (2006)