Zelda Producer: Miyamoto's 'Upending The Tea Table' Is 'Quite Necessary' for DevelopmentNintendo's legendary designer Shigeru Miyamoto has talked numerous times about a process that he refers to as "upending the tea table" in which he essentially turns a development project on its head, forcing the team to radically change certain ideas or features in a game that they probably weren't expecting to alter or throw out. IndustryGamers sat down with Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma back at E3 to discuss his feelings towards this process and what it's like to work with Miyamoto-san when he comes to a development team to shake things up.
Interestingly, Aonuma doesn't get annoyed with the process, even if it means that Zelda features or ideas he liked have to be thrown away.
"Well, back at GDC, when that conversation was presented, I think it painted a picture of Mr. Miyamoto’s role inside the company as coming in and being a really disruptive force in the development process, but I view it a very different way and I think a lot of people do. It’s that his time to come in and flip things on their head is part of the development timeline. It’s an event that happens. It’s almost a ritual in that sense," Aonuma-san explained to us.
He continued, "And it’s a necessary process, because I find that when he offers that feedback, a lot of the time, he points out things that I, myself, was having trouble with and maybe felt that I couldn’t solve or didn’t have a good time for or felt like we didn’t have the time for and he comes in and really gives focus to everything. So I’d really like to reinforce that fact that I don’t view the process that people refer to as 'upending the tea table' as something unpleasant. It’s actually quite necessary and useful."
We'll be bringing you the full interview with Mr. Aonuma soon.
