Animal Crossing's Eguchi and Kyogoku discus dev team diversity, catering to all players
The following comes from a Wired interview with Katsuya Eguchi and Aya Kyogoku...
- In the first three weeks of Animal Crossing: New Leaf sales, by the end of November, the largest group was 19- to 24-year-old women
- during this time, 69 percent of the 3DS units Nintendo sold were to men
- among those who purchased Animal Crossing: New Leaf along with the 3DS, 56 percent were women
“You often hear today that because smartphones exist, there’s no need for dedicated gaming machines, but, this 19- to 24-year-old female demographic, they’re the smartphone people, right? It’s often said that female casual gamers don’t need dedicated hardware, and yet here they are reaffirming the value of these machines.” - Satoru Iwata
“Having worked on this team where there were almost equal numbers of men and women made me realize that [diversity] can open you up to hearing a greater variety of ideas and sharing a greater diversity of ideas. Only after having working on a project like this, with a team like this one, was I able to realize this. In my years at Nintendo, I have come to discover that when there are women in a variety of roles on the project, you get a wider [range] of ideas. It’s really facilitated communication across distances and across generations, and that was certainly one of the goals for us," - Kyogoku
“We wanted to make sure that the content allowed all the players to express their individuality, that it is was something men and women of all ages would enjoy. So in order to view the project from a variety of perspectives, we made sure the team was made up of people from various backgrounds and life experiences.
My experience has been that when you bring people in with a variety of interests beyond just games, that opens you up for the possibility of discovering new ways of playing and new experiences to provide to our users… possibilities for exploration beyond just ‘I want to make games.’
(We want the game to be accessible to players worldwide and allow them) to represent and express their individuality, so there are a variety of things we are planning on doing to facilitate that in the future.” - Eguchi
Link
- In the first three weeks of Animal Crossing: New Leaf sales, by the end of November, the largest group was 19- to 24-year-old women
- during this time, 69 percent of the 3DS units Nintendo sold were to men
- among those who purchased Animal Crossing: New Leaf along with the 3DS, 56 percent were women
“You often hear today that because smartphones exist, there’s no need for dedicated gaming machines, but, this 19- to 24-year-old female demographic, they’re the smartphone people, right? It’s often said that female casual gamers don’t need dedicated hardware, and yet here they are reaffirming the value of these machines.” - Satoru Iwata
“Having worked on this team where there were almost equal numbers of men and women made me realize that [diversity] can open you up to hearing a greater variety of ideas and sharing a greater diversity of ideas. Only after having working on a project like this, with a team like this one, was I able to realize this. In my years at Nintendo, I have come to discover that when there are women in a variety of roles on the project, you get a wider [range] of ideas. It’s really facilitated communication across distances and across generations, and that was certainly one of the goals for us," - Kyogoku
“We wanted to make sure that the content allowed all the players to express their individuality, that it is was something men and women of all ages would enjoy. So in order to view the project from a variety of perspectives, we made sure the team was made up of people from various backgrounds and life experiences.
My experience has been that when you bring people in with a variety of interests beyond just games, that opens you up for the possibility of discovering new ways of playing and new experiences to provide to our users… possibilities for exploration beyond just ‘I want to make games.’
(We want the game to be accessible to players worldwide and allow them) to represent and express their individuality, so there are a variety of things we are planning on doing to facilitate that in the future.” - Eguchi
Link
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