#46 - Hakoniwa
Hello Readers!
This week I wanted to share a really interesting Youtube Video that got released this last week. Here is a link to the video here: Hakoniwa Video. It’s in relation to the game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. Shigeru Miyamoto is the creator of Mario, Zelda, and is the heart of the gaming company known as Nintendo. He is legendary in terms of Game Designers. I joke with my students when I talk about game design, and call him a Game Design God. Although it is true! While Shigeru was working at Nintendo, he established the foundation for gaming and a lot of different genres of games that we know today. He also managed some of the first systems for gaming and his projects are iconic and legendary. Not only that, but he was the Producer for the best game of all time which is:
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
I didn’t know it at the time, me just being a small 7 year old child, but this game was completely revolutionary. Growing up and being exposed to it at a friend’s house, I feel really lucky to have been able to experience this game. Ocarina is iconic, because it represents the essence of what a complete 3D game is supposed to look and feel like. It’s the perfect blending of revolutionary mechanics and systems, music, story, characters, action, and fighting.
Take cooking for example. I think most of us have expectations for what most meals are supposed to taste like. If Ocarina was a dish, it would have been a completely different dish that also tasted like a 5 star meal. Not only that, but each of the ingredients used in the meal would have been balanced perfectly and selected from the finest sources. Ocarina is the same concept. It did so many, many revolutionary things. And it’s true the saying that, “if a game says they haven’t borrowed something from Ocarina, then they’re lying.”
Anyways, what does this have to do with Miyamoto? Well Shigeru and his Zelda team have been making Zelda games for a very long time. And as the documentary states, Shigeru has been involved in interviews for a very long time. Interviews are sort of a gateway into the mysterious and hushed practices at Nintendo that never get divulged. Not only that, but there is some kind of genius designing that is happening in Shigeru’s head that no one has ever been able to capture. Well it turns out that throughout time, the metaphor or mental model that Shigeru has been using to describe the Zelda Series is the word:
Hakoniwa
Translated from Japanese. This means boxed garden or miniature garden. And Shigeru explains that this is the type of toys he would have played with back in the 60’s/70’s when there wasn’t so many video games around. So what does this mean? Well one can think of it as a design principle. The box surrounding the garden is the border or barrier for a player. We can call those the rules. Then the inside of the miniature Garden is where players or gardeners have creative expression. They can make whatever they want in the garden, and according to Hakoniwa Design principles, expressing oneself with the minimal elements is considered one of the goals. This term has evolved and now we come to think of it as Sandboxing. Sandboxing is a great tool for play and also Cybersecurity. Due to the fact, that it allows infinite play in a safe environment where a player can experiment and be creative in an entire world or environment.
This design viewpoint is super interesting because the community as a whole around Zelda is super divided. One side likes the linear dungeon experience of past games and the other likes the open world aspects of the new games. Particularly Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. After watching this documentary it is clear now that the Zelda team has been chasing more of an Open World Sandbox formula and this is what makes Breath of the Wild, a pivotal game in all of game design achievement. If Ocarina laid the foundation for rules or the box surrounding the garden, then Breath of the Wild showed what was possible in the boxed garden. It’s an amazing game and has transformed people’s lives and how they think about what is possible in gaming. Truly to the Hakoniwa principles. One can go anywhere and do anything in this world. Want to climb a tree: you can do it. See that mountain over there? You can climb it. Want to start running off into the distance and go discover random materials and creatures? You bet you can. It’s a complete and utter flip on the design philosophy of gaming.
Now how does this relate to learning or even to my blog at all? Well since the new Echoes of Wisdom game has come out and I have ordered it online, I was really enthusiastic about this topic and wanted to talk about it. You see in the context of learning, there is a level of creativity that must be embedded for learners to actually learn. You can think of subjects being like little Roblox or Minecraft worlds where thinkers have to get in there and start making their own creative relationships themselves. The Sandbox or Hakoniwa Philosophy supports this.
So next time you are in your classroom or trying to learn something. Think about the duality of order (rules) versus freedom (creativity). And think to yourself how you would balance each of these elements in the context of your learning activity or session. Anyways, that is all I have to say, I have to get back to work writing!
Have a great week and for those Zelda lovers out there, enjoy Echoes
of Wisdom!!!!!
-Calvin
