The classic perception of Shigeru Miyamoto is that of a friendly, cheerful man-child, who is representative of the “nice” face of Nintendo. He is a man who creates games just for spreading the joy of playing them and who is just so friendly that it is hard to imagine him ever truly being angry.
Of course, like all people, this is not the reality of the matter. While he certainly has an undeniable love for games, this can translate into his being a very harsh taskmaster with the developers working under him. This is especially true when things are not going to his liking.
See an example beneath the cut.
In a recent interview with members of the team that worked on Wii Sports Resort, they recounted a story about Miyamoto’s initial reaction to one of its mini-game:
Yamashita: I worked on a cycling race about which Miyamoto-san said: “This is incredibly dull!”
Iwata: He doesn’t pull any punches, does he? (laughs)
Yamashita:
He said: “What’s fun about this?” I had no choice but to respond by saying “Ah, okay. I see…” but actually it was really harsh.
Iwata: Calling something “incredibly dull” is indeed harsh. There’s nothing positive you can take away from that.
Ouch.
Granted, it is probably better for someone to tell you “this game is dull” while you are working on it then to see that be said in reviews after its release.
They go on to talk about a progress report meeting in which Miyamoto was so nervous, it unintentionally demonstrated just how sensitive the Wii MotionPlus was. These incidents point less to Miyamoto being a closet jerk and more just being very uncomfortably (and rudely) blunt about things that displease him.
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