In 2021, Nintendo began a brand new series of developer interviews, intended to draw
attention to new first-party releases.
This series, Ask the Developer, is clearly inspired by the previous series, Iwata Asks,
in which the late Nintendo President Satoru Iwata interviewed his employees about their
work on games.
There’s just one problem with Ask the Developer.
These interviews…
are terrible.
Okay, maybe terrible is an exaggeration, but they’re not exactly brimming with deep insight.
Normally there are a few good anecdotes scattered around in there, but a lot of these interviews
come down to little more than a list of new product features.
And, to be clear, my complaint is not just about Nintendo developer interviews.
I feel like a corporate blandification of the interactions between developers and the
public is a symptom of Nintendo trying to micromanage media coverage of their games.
The discussion surrounding Nintendo products is becoming far less nuanced as a result.
Here are some of the “questions” (they’re not always actual questions) that developers
are asked during the most recent Ask the Developer, all about Tears of the Kingdom:
“So this title picks up after the events of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.”
“Being able to dive from the sky to the surface and into a pond seamlessly in this
title sure does feel exhilarating.
It truly feels like an open-air game this time around.”
“So you're saying that being able to look over Hyrule from above and descend from the
sky further expands the scope of the gameplay, right?”
“Since this is a sequel, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is the foundation, but
I see there are also various considerations for new players as well.
By the way, if you're using the same world, don't you need to put effort into creating
differences in the graphics and sound?”
To be clear, I’m cherry-picking these from the first page of the interview just to highlight
my frustration, but do you see what’s wrong with these?
First off, while there are questions in the interview about the actual development, a
lot of the questions are just asking the developers to describe features that are in the game
– for which, you could just as easily read a press release.
Another issue is that when they are asked to give genuine answers, they’re often asked
yes/no questions without much room for going into detail.
For example, this question: “I immediately noticed that Link looks a
little different in this title, doesn’t he?”
To which Eiji Aonuma responds: “Yes, his right arm.
“We wanted an iconic feature that would make it obvious at first glance that it's
the Link from this game.
Speaking of Link's arm, ‘hands’ is a major theme in this title.”
Do you see how Aonuma is desperately trying to steer the interview to something more interesting
by bringing up one of the game’s themes?
Even if it ultimately just turns into a product feature description as the developers explain
the Ultra Hand.
And, in fairness, yes, there are points during which the developers get to talk a little
about the actual development of the games, but things never go particularly deep.
Now, it’s not fair to contrast this with Iwata Asks interviews, because, frankly, Satoru
Iwata was a one-of-a-kind interviewer.
You don’t normally get company presidents doing developer interviews, much less presidents
who are themselves talented developers who often contributed crucial computer code to
some of the games being discussed.
But even so.
Iwata conducted interviews, I suspect, because he liked interviewing his staff.
When made president of HAL Laboratory, in order to turn around employee morale as the
company faced bankruptcy, he made it a point to talk personally with every single member
of staff each year to learn about their hopes and fears.
He was really good at listening to people, and it shows in the Iwata Asks interviews.
Take the Fire Emblem: Fates Iwata Asks interview as an example.
As soon as the introductions for interviewees are out of the way, instead of asking for
a brief description of the game as is common in the new Ask the Developer interviews, Iwata
turns specifically to Masahiro Higuchi, to ask him what it was like to be a producer
on a game for the first time.
How did his anxiety level change?
See, because, this interview isn’t about a game, it’s about the people behind the
game.
That, I think, is the fundamental difference.
After talking with Higuchi, Iwata asks everyone: “It seems like it would be an incredible
challenge to make three games at once, and I’ll be asking you about it later, but for
now, do you have any regrets?
Do you wish you hadn’t said you would do three?”
I can’t imagine a modern official Nintendo interview asking developers about their regrets.
It’s such a human question, and it shows the element that I find is lacking from the
Ask the Developer series.
But, then, the Ask the Developer series is not meant to actually be about developers
at all.
Here’s the official mission statement, as written on the Nintendo website:
“Delve into this interview series in which Nintendo developers convey in their own words
Nintendo’s thoughts about creating products and the specific points they are particular
about.”
Which…
what?!
What?!
Okay, okay, Nintendo developer…
convey… in their own words…
Nintendo’s thoughts.
So, this isn’t about what the developers think at all.
They’re just relaying the company’s official position, right?
And then, they also talk about, okay, the specific points they are particular about.
Uhhhhh so Nintendo developers tell you what Nintendo thinks, and also talk about… stuff
they have thoughts…. on?
Is the best way I can rephrase that.
I really, really hope that sentence was written by an AI.
I don’t want to have to imagine a poor copyrighter at Nintendo of America getting paid too little
money to come up with new ways to say absolutely nothing of value.
In contrast, I’d like to turn your attention to the Iwata Asks interview for The Legend
of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, which starts with an apologetic staff member telling the interviewees
that Iwata’s last meeting was running late and that he’ll be there shortly.
Then, Eiji Aonuma, Takashi Tezuka, and Toshihiko Nakago, three of Nintendo’s biggest deals,
just sit and chat for a few minutes.
The interview is a lot more candid, a lot less polished, and far more insightful about
what these developers are really like behind closed doors.
And it wasn’t just Satoru Iwata.
Back when Reggie Fils-Aime was the head of Nintendo of America, there were a lot more
efforts to reach out to fans on their terms, with famous YouTubers interviewing Reggie
about the Nintendo Switch when it launched, with Kit and Kysta providing a friendly public
face to the company that helped make it clear that people like you work at Nintendo, too.
And, when we look at Iwata and Reggie’s replacements, we see that Presidents Furukawa
and Bowser just…
don’t have the same public image.
They lack that charisma, it’s unfair to expect them to be interviewing developers
or coming up with memes when that’s just not their skillsets.
But under their watch, Nintendo definitely seems to be far less interested in meeting
fans halfway, especially because they can’t always control how fans will respond to any
given interview.
Because, aside from Ask the Developer, Nintendo interviews are something of a dying breed.
This is purely anecdotal on my end, but…
I get the sense that there are fewer Nintendo developer interviews lately.
Tears of the Kingdom got plenty – the devs were interviewd by The Verge and Wired and
Polygon and even Vanity Fair.
But what about the games that aren’t the biggest thing in the world?
There were as many interviews with the fictional band Deep Cut promoting Splatoon 3 as there
were interviews with the developers at the time of the game’s release (there have been
a few more since).
The Washington Post got an exclusive email interview for Kirby and the Forgotten Land,
but otherwise, there were almost no English language reviews conducted for the game, just
a few pieces in the Japanese press and a talk at GDC.
I mean, there may be more, but they’re not exactly easy to find.
For Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, there was nothing.
No developer interviews that I could find at the time, which made producing content
for this YouTube channel not easy.
This stands in contrast to a few years ago when Game Freak invited Game Informer into
their building and let them ask whatever they wanted.
What’s changed in that time?
Well, for one, Game Freak moved to a new office in the same building as Nintendo, leading
to a closer relationship between the two companies.
Also,Game Freak has experienced a lot of negative feedback from its most dedicated fans, particular
in the West.
A few interview quotes from Junichi Masuda and other high-profile developers at the company
led to significant amounts of negative press and orchestrated fan campaigns designed to
influence the development of future Pokemon games.
I can’t help but wonder whether disaster interviews from the past have led to radio
silence from Game Freak in the years since.
(No doubt I’ll get a hundred “this aged like milk” comments in 2026 when Game Freak
does another interview.
Even though that’s not how milk works, but I digress.)
It’s worth pointing out that a lack of developer interviews for Scarlet and Violet didn’t
exactly hurt sales.
I suspect another factor in the relative lack of interviews, though, is that Nintendo really
doesn’t need them anymore.
As we noted in our video on E3, Nintendo now has the industry clout and public profile
necessary to just broadcast out their own messages about games, and, with a lack of
other available news sources, all we can do is absorb exactly what we’re told.
Why do an interview with an external journalist when you can send out a press release and
have a far greater control of the narrative?
As it currently stands, Nintendo doesn’t need to go begging for press, so they don’t
need to do interviews for attention.
It’s worth noting that Nintendo was at its most experimental and open during the Wii
U and 3DS era, when they desperately needed people to talk about their games.
Now?
We all talk about them anyway.
Regardless of the reason, this is tremendously disappointing for me, as an amateur games
historian.
Not The Gaming Historian, mind you – The Gaming Historian is who I want to be when
I grow up.
Without official insight into the making of games, the stories about how these games came
about can’t exist.
We can’t know about the struggles and challenges that developers overcame when making our favourite
games.
We’re cheated out of a chance to see the real people who make these games.
All we get instead are bland interviews that only tell us exactly what Nintendo wants us
to know.
And as we all know, Nintendo ain’t exactly great at preserving game history.
Thanks for watching.