Conversations between Satoru Iwata and Shigesato Itoi

[Rhonin the wizard]

8. The King and the Slave

Itoi Bringing the subject back to Mr.Miyamoto, his premise when creating something seems to be "Don't think your consumers are willing to understand your points", and I feel this is very close to how I think. I often say that "dis-communication is the premise of communication." The consumers are not your family, they're more like people passing by on the streets. But I want what I create to be understood by everyone, just like Mr.Miyamoto wants his games to be enjoyable from the start.

Iwata Uh-huh.

Itoi I think creation starts from a despairing cry from within, "Will no one love me?"

Iwata That's the same for us. The consumers are not "not that much interested" in our games, they're "completely not interested" in the beginning. We need to bring them to a state where they pick up our product and smile, where they come to love it. That's the battle we're fighting, and we want to win it.

Itoi "Will no one love me?" may sound low self esteemed, but that's the only place where you can really start.

Iwata It makes me remember the story you told us before, when you came to HAL Laboratory. The story of "the King and the Slave".

Itoi The story that it's the King who needs to be educated, right?

Iwata Yes.

Itoi (to the staffs) This is a good one.

All (laugh)

Iwata Seriously, it's a good story. It's about the relation between the creator and the customer. The king isn't the creator. He's the customer. The king is free to say anything about what is given to him, that it's boring, or that he doesn't understand it, or even decline the offer. He has the privilege of being super selfish. The slave has to think how to satisfy the king, how to make him happy. Mr.Itoi's point was to understand that the job of the slave is intellectual and interesting.

Itoi The same can be said about relationships, the one who makes the approach, and the other.

Iwata The initiative lies in the other.

Itoi Exactly. The one who takes action can never take the initiative. For example, when you ask someone to perform a task for you, you have to think about whether you'll take it if it was offered to you. When you work for someone, it usually involves hard work. People work hard because you think it's worth it, and that's the only way people will put in their full energy into it. So you always have to think, "will I accept this job if it was offered to me?" You need that point of view. If the creator's not aware of that point of view, he starts to misconceive that he is the king. If the consumers don't act as king, the creator is deprived of the opportunity to improve. When the creators don't improve, the customers will get easily bored of what they get. And that's the end of it. It seems that this malignant cycle seems to be increasing. The consumers get bored very easily.

Iwata The speed of things getting out of date has become extremely fast.

Itoi If you just keep on responding to the customer's requests, you're not going to come up with something with quality. What Nintendo has been doing since they came out with DS is to keep bringing something new to the kings, who were tired of games that were a mere extension of traditional and conventional ones. Plus, Nintendo made it so that the kings understood it. It's just amazing, what you did.

Iwata Thank you.

Itoi Everyone thinks Wii is such a success, but Nintendo hasn't become overproud of it. Actually, I don't think I ever heard you say "Wii is a success."

Iwata Not yet.

Itoi Not yet, I see.

Iwata It's a good start. It's been a good start, but it's only the beginning.

Itoi (laughing) Is that so.

Iwata We want to have the customers continue playing. We want to continue coming up with new proposals to them, and have them keep playing. Only then can we say that we've accomplished our goals.

Itoi That's a great point of view, very objective too.

Iwata We've been preparing to make things happen.

Itoi I'm sure you have new plans coming up.

Iwata We need to see if our new approaches will grab the customer's hearts, if they will keep on playing our games. The answer's not out yet, but I believe we're getting there.