Itoi’s Thoughts (Mar. 12, 2008)

April 17th, 2008 | Itoi, MOTHER 1

Even though I don’t do the daily Itoi blog updates anymore (I wish I could, I just don’t have the time), I still check his site everyday and save any of his posts that seems especially interesting or somewhat related to his game design stuff. I’ll post this stuff every once in a while.

Right now, here is part of his entry from March 12, 2008. In it, he talks about ideas and part of his experience first proposing MOTHER 1 to Miyamoto back in the 80s.

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March 12, 2008

“I have this incredible idea.” This is a line commonly said by interesting people who are just starting out. There was a time when even I, too, was like that and often thought such things. Even now, I may still have ideas that follow that line of thinking, but that isn’t where the issue lies.

Ideas are only heralded as “wonderful” after they’ve gone through the process of realization and completion. One can think, “Once realized, this will undoubtedly be wonderful!” But you can’t actually say that until it is realized. This is because “raw ideas” are filled to the brim with “reasons for not being realized”.

Yesterday, for the first time in a while, I spoke with a nice, young researcher about memories I’d already spoken about on many occasions. In particular, it was about when I first showed Mr. Miyamoto at Nintendo my written proposal for a video game. In my mind, I hoped Mr. Miyamoto, who I was meeting for the very first time, would read it and say, “Wow! This is great!” But instead, after reading it, he said in an almost natural manner, “Hmm, I see. We’d need to put this in game form first.” Now that I look back after all this time, his reply of, “We can tell for sure if this will be fun or not once it’s in game form,” seems like the only natural, logical answer possible.

No matter how wonderful a seed may be, it’s still nothing until it’s turned into a flower or fruit or what have you. You can’t say anything for sure until it’s at least started to show its bud. It could wither and die while it’s growing, after all.

Yet, even so, incredible ideas only begin with creative thinking.