Nintendo - Putting Play First
Game Maker's Toolkit3 HN recommenders · 2017–2025
997K views · explainer · evergreen · Uploaded 2016-11-11
Game Maker's Toolkit examines Nintendo's design approach of starting from a core play mechanic, making it fun, and building around it. Examples include Mario's jump and Luigi's Mansion's vacuum.
HN recommends it as a concise video essay on why Nintendo games feel good and how the company iterates.
15:38Juice it or lose it - a talk by Martin Jonasson & Petri Purho
grapefrukt
44:10Jan Willem Nijman - Vlambeer - "The art of screenshake" at INDIGO Classes 2013
Dutch Game Garden
1:02:42Preventing the Collapse of Civilization / Jonathan Blow (Thekla, Inc)
DevGAMM
59:47Failing to Fail: The Spiderweb Software Way
GDC Festival of Gaming
31:00Exploring the Tech and Design of Noita
GDC Festival of Gaming
1:17:43'Diablo': A Classic Game Postmortem
GDC Festival of Gaming
48:27Jonathan Blow: Game design: the medium is the message
CreativeMornings HQ
21:19Manufactured Discontent and Fortnite
Folding Ideas
4 comments from Hacker News
Quick suggestions on usability, maybe start off the game with players on a slower speed so they get used to moving around first and then gradually speed up by accomplishing actions that you want them to do in a training sort of manner so that players start learning and don't get confused. Side note: I subscribe to Mark Brown's Game Maker's Toolkit on Game Design and Game progression, here is an example: [VIDEO] I think it would definitely help
I highly recommend Mark Brown's video "Nintendo: Putting Play First, [VIDEO] (and his other essays on Nintendo)
There's a Game Maker's Toolkit video [1] that does a good job explaining how Nintendo focuses on play first. "That's how we make games at Nintendo, though: we get the fundamentals solid first, then do as much with that core concept as our time and ambition will allow" - Shigeru Miyamoto 1. [VIDEO]
One of my favorite video essay's on this is "Nintendo - Putting Play First" by Game Makers Toolkit [1]. It goes into when making a game, Nintendo first determines the mechanic they want to focus on; jumping, throwing a hat, shooting paint, etc and finding out how to make it fun, then building and iterating on the idea. It's how they can keep putting out essentially the same games but are completely different. 1. [VIDEO]