Jeff Ryan, author of Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America, was good enough to sit down for a Q&A with Actionable Books. We discuss everything from Nintendo’s refusal to grant interviews and the current publishing landscape, to his upcoming book on another American icon.
First of all, congratulations on the publication and success of Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America. Have you heard from anyone at Nintendo about their thoughts on the book?
Nintendo has a longstanding policy to not grant interviews to book authors. I’ve talked to folks in Nintendo’s PR department and at the NYC Nintendo Store, and they “got” the book. But they still won’t return any emails or phone calls. They’re a particular company that way.
What are the key business lessons that other companies can take away from Nintendo?
First off, it always helps if you make $180 million in your first year. I’m being only partly facetious, since that cash cushion let Nintendo take big risks without having to sell or adulterate the ideal to financiers.Nintendo follows its own mission statement, which is to be not an electronics company but an amusement company. That’s why there’s no Nintendo phone, for instance, and why it took them a long time to allow Netflix to stream movies on the Wii. They don’t want to make the set-top box that runs your life: they just want you to buy and play their games. It definitely cuts into some easy short-term profits, but it keeps their long-term integrity intact.
Nintendo’s philosophy is worth quoting: “lateral thinking of withered technology.” It suffers a bit from translation, but it’s driven the Big N for decades. Nintendo doesn’t use costly parts, so it can draw a profit from its hardware right away, which bucks the industry loss-leader thinking. What it sells are new ideas: a kids game that lets curious pets fight (Pokemon), a sword-and-shield adventure (Zelda), or a pet-training simulator (Nintendogs). The technology to make these all was always there, just as with any other popular art.
How did your opinion of Nintendo evolve through researching and writing this book?
I didn’t know how meanly they’d treated their third-party developers until I started to read up on the matter. You’d never guess how ruthlessly they treated their business partners based on their beloved public persona. On the other hand, I didn’t realize how often they chose to ignore the current flash-in-the-pan tech trends in favor of innovating new ideas. They’d really rather flop with a worthy new idea than have a success with a me-too product. For instance, Nintendo has never made a standard first-person shooter, even though those have been moneymakers for decades now.
What are your thoughts on Nintendo since the book’s publication?
Nintendo is facing its toughest challenge as a video game company right now. They moved away from core gamers and successfully marketed to a new stripe of customer: moms, families, seniors, the sort of people who play board games. But that casual game market is now being controlled by smartphones. If you have a smartphone, you’re carrying a mobile gaming system, just like a Nintendo DS. And truly casual gamers would rather pay $1 for Angry Birds than close to $200 for a separate system and a game. Nintendo’s challenge is to keep coming up with innovative ideas that will draw in enough new people to drop a lot of money on their hardware and software.
What do you think the future of the video game industry is?
Three letters: DLC. That stands for downloadable content. Ten years ago, a game purchase ended at the cash register. Now most games offer a series of additional purchase points, upgrades, extra levels and characters. Many online games are removing their monthly fee, because the increased mass of players who can be tempted with DLC outweighs the $15 subscriber fees. Facebook probably has more gameplayers on it than any of the three consoles right now, which makes Facebook the #1 game console in the world, believe it or not.Here’s where Nintendo has once again zagged where everyone zigged: it still doesn’t offer DLC. But its president has hinted that the new Mario title might start offering extra levels for an additional purchase. This could be very profitable for Nintendo, if it could swallow its pride enough to pull the trigger on it.
Super Mario was your first book. How was the book writing process different than you initially thought? What problems did you incur along the way?
Honestly, I thought Nintendo would cooperate once they heard I was going to press with a book on them. And again once the book came out, and they saw it wasn’t a hit-piece, I thought they’d at least return an email. But more than that, I’m still scratching my head that what I wrote in a Word document ended up becoming a book.
The publishing industry is in a constant state of flux, especially with the growing popularity of Kindle and other eReaders. What are your thoughts on where it’s at now and its future?
I read digital books, but I read public-domain oldies in a text file from Project Gutenberg. This makes me a Bear Grylls type, at least in my own head. I’d love it if the rise of e-readers make people reacquaint themselves with their library, a dirty little secret where all the books and music and films you ever wanted are there, free, so long as you give it back when you’re done.
Finally, any plans for another book in the future?
If you’ve been to Orlando, Florida or Anaheim, California, you might have an idea what fictional character I’m writing about next.
Check out Jeff Ryan online at http://www.supermariobook.com/
