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Nintendo - Putting Play First

Name: Nintendo - Putting Play First
Description: 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.

Game Maker's Toolkit Explainers

Open on YouTube First HN thread

3 HN users recommended this explainer in 4 different months between 2017 and 2025.

2007–2026

2 strong recommendations 2 recommendations HackerTube score 5

HN recommends it as a concise video essay on why Nintendo games feel good and how the company iterates.

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.

Pull quote: “I highly recommend Mark Brown's video” (HN, 2018)

Also tagged: game design, nintendo, mario, iteration, video essay

What Hacker News said

4 labeled comments from the HN archive; up to 20 are kept per video, favoring different commenters. Each one links back to the original thread.

Strongly recommends dmitriid April 2018 under Nintendo's secretive creative process

Video essay on how Nintendo puts play first.

I highly recommend Mark Brown's video "Nintendo: Putting Play First, [this video] (and his other essays on Nintendo)

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Strongly recommends ecliptik January 2025 under Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

Nintendo picks a mechanic, makes it fun, then iterates.

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. [this video]

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Recommends forkLding August 2017 under An Embarrassing Tale: Why my server could only handle 10 players

Game Maker's Toolkit on game design and progression.

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: [this video] I think it would definitely help

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Recommends ecliptik May 2023 under Legend of Zelda game sells 10M copies in three days

Explains how Nintendo focuses on play first.

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. [this video]

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