{"id":51740,"date":"2025-09-08T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/?p=51740"},"modified":"2025-09-08T15:57:57","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T06:57:57","slug":"at-nintendo-every-developer-is-a-director-if-you-make-excuses-you-get-removed-from-the-team-motoi-okamoto-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/news\/at-nintendo-every-developer-is-a-director-if-you-make-excuses-you-get-removed-from-the-team-motoi-okamoto-says\/","title":{"rendered":"At Nintendo, \u201cevery developer is a director.\u201d If you make excuses, you get removed from the team, veteran says"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cIf a director can\u2019t judge whether a game\u2019s specifications are good or bad without first implementing them, are they incompetent?\u201d There\u2019s been a good deal of discussion going on about this topic among Japanese developers on X recently \u2013 with some criticizing game designers who ask for systems to be implemented \u201cjust to check,\u201d increasing the workload of programmers. Offering a counterargument to such talking points, game developer Motoi Okamoto shared some insights about the predominantly \u201chands-on\u201d development process that goes on at Nintendo.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although he is now known as the producer of Konami\u2019s Silent Hill series, Okamoto started his game career at Nintendo, where he worked for almost ten years, participating in the development of multiple Mario and Pikmin titles. Joining in on the recent discourse, Okamoto commented on X<\/a>, \u201cI\u2019ve been seeing some takes along the lines of, \u2018Can\u2019t you tell whether a game specification is good or bad without implementing?\u2019 and \u2018Directors who can\u2019t judge without implementation are incompetent.\u2019 But at Nintendo, implementing and playtesting is precisely what matters \u2013 they don\u2019t make decisions based on what they see on paper.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Pikmin<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

He goes on to add that \u201cProgrammers who are lazy about implementing things, and project managers and programmers who try to avoid the trial-and-error process using deadlines and budget restraints as an excuse are removed from development teams without hesitation.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly, Okamoto describes Nintendo\u2019s development environment as a culture of \u201ceveryone being a director,\u201d which suggests that each developer on the team takes on some degree of decision-making when it comes to improving the game. \u201cIf a programmer finds a spec boring, they\u2019re free to just implement it in a way they believe will make it entertaining. That\u2019s what professional game programmers do.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, he emphasizes that this doesn\u2019t mean fleshing things out fully only to scrap them. \u201cWhat\u2019s frowned upon is when a developer can\u2019t make a judgement without elaborate graphics. If you can\u2019t tell whether game mechanics are entertaining based on only stripped-down graphics, you may be treated as incompetent.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe biggest danger to creating revolutionary games and hits,\u201d Okamoto explains, \u201ccomes from so-called \u2018game design experts\u2019 and know-it-all critics who stifle the necessary trial-and-error process. What\u2019s important is not to hesitate to try out even specs that might seem unreasonable at first.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"New<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As prime examples, Okamoto brings up Mario series creator Shigeru Miyamoto and late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, who have, in his opinion, maintained a humble hands-on approach to making games despite being regarded as \u201csages\u201d in the industry. By contrast, he comments, \u201cif you claim you can tell without actually making something, I think that\u2019s just plain arrogance.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, he also acknowledges<\/a> that this kind of development style doesn’t necessarily suit every genre, particularly narrative driven games (which Nintendo very rarely develops in-house). For story-driven games, waiting until implementation to make judgements can possibly mean rebuilding expensive assets such as cutscenes, which isn\u2019t viable with the average development budget. Instead, Okamoto says that ideally, the trial-and-error process should be done in the plot stage, with as many iterations as possible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related Article: Nintendo ace Shigeru Miyamoto\u2019s background in industrial design explains his pragmatic \u201cproduct, not art\u201d approach to making games, former colleague says<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former Nintendo veteran Motoi Okamoto talks about the company’s “everyone’s a director” approach to game development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":51744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_gspb_post_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[64,3],"tags":[17,33],"class_list":["post-51740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-development","category-news","tag-japan-related-news","tag-nintendo"],"blocksy_meta":[],"yoast_head":"\nAt Nintendo, \u201cevery developer is a director.\u201d If you make excuses, you get removed from the team, veteran says - AUTOMATON WEST<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Former Nintendo veteran Motoi Okamoto talks about the company's "everyone's a director" approach to game development.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/news\/at-nintendo-every-developer-is-a-director-if-you-make-excuses-you-get-removed-from-the-team-motoi-okamoto-says\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"At Nintendo, \u201cevery developer is a director.\u201d If you make excuses, you get removed from the team, veteran says - 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