GDC Recap: Iwata San

The Death Spiral. The Ball of Death. The Third Yomi. Strike Force Panda. 4 concepts you couldn 't find anywhere else but GDC. So far the conference has been awesome as always. Days spent listening to people talk about their development experiences and nights spent catching up with old friends and making some new ones.

The day started with Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo, keynote address. Right before the talk began, a friend turned to me and sarcastically asked, "I wonder if he's going to gloat?" Sure enough, 10 minutes later Iwata was displaying sales data that illustrating Nintendo's absolute ownage over the platform industry (especially with the DS). But after listening to him for the rest of the talk, you can't deny that Nintendo remains the wise elder of the industry. They make games the right way and it shows critically and practically.

"The Death Spiral" was his analogy for the vicious cycle developers enter when they bow to external pressures to release a game before it's done. The game enters the marketplace before its ready, sells poorly, resulting in less revenue and more time pressure for the next project. This might not be anything revolutionary, but I think Iwata was pointing out the tremendous institutional strength of will it takes to toy with multiple game ideas at once but only release products when they're really done.

I came away from this talk feeling the same way I did when heard Miyamoto talk two years ago. Nintendo, as a company, is brilliant.