 When the world first got a good look at Splatoon, longtime Nintendo fans were thrilled. Here, for the first time in years, was a brand new game idea, with all new, fresh and original characters that fitted perfectly with Nintendo's existing world. The Inklings, kids who were also squids, were full of vibrant, fun energy in a game that was brimming with personality and originality. For Nintendo, a games company that relies primarily on nostalgia and existing brand appeal, creating the world of Splatoon was no easy feat. It was only thanks to a talented team of creators, led by company veteran Hisashi Nogami, that this game ever became something worth paying attention to. This is the story of Splatoon, and how tofu, rabbits and extreme sports all combined to create one of the most culturally relevant new Nintendo games of the last decade. Hisashi Nogami joined Nintendo all the way back in 1994 as part of the inaugural class for a new education program called the Nintendo Detsu Game Seminar. After being put through his paces and taught the ins and outs of working for Nintendo, Hisashi was assigned to work on Super Mario World 2, Yoshi's Island. By this point, the team had decided on a cute, hand-drawn art style for the game, and Hisashi's first assignment was figuring out exactly what this should look like and how it could be implemented. Hisashi grabbed a box of marker pens, drew a vague mountain inspired by Mount Fuji, scanned it into the computer and spent the next two weeks trying to get it to look good within Super Nintendo hardware. When Hisashi's bosses saw his work, they instantly decided that he was along the right track and they agreed to push forward with this marker pen inspired look for the game. Then, something horrible happened. At least, it felt horrible to Hisashi at the time. With the Nintendo 64 in development, the team working on Yoshi's Island was dramatically restructured. A lot of the game's senior creative team were reassigned to work on the brand new console, leaving Hisashi, along with just two other game designers, in charge of the whole project. The trio did have programming help from another division within Nintendo, but all of the creative and artistic decisions within Yoshi's Island needed to be made, and Hisashi found himself trying out a lot of different roles within the project. He drew art, created level designs and backgrounds, and worked on enemies and boss fights. In a short space of time, Hisashi gained a lot of experience of doing pretty much all aspects of game design. When Yoshi's Island was released, the game quickly proved a hit, in large part due to the innovative art style that Hisashi had created. Over the next few years, Hisashi was given responsibility over a lot of other key Nintendo games, most notably the Animal Crossing series, which he worked on as a director. For his first role as a producer, Hisashi was given the responsibility of coming up with a completely new video game style. After a long period of relying on existing franchises, Nintendo had decided that they needed a brand new action game that didn't tie in with anything that already existed, and it was Hisashi's job to make this happen. He and his team pondered what to do, before coming up with the idea of characters both shooting and swimming through ink, in a contest to cover the most ground with their own colour. The first prototype for the game was relatively simple, with big rectangle blocks used in place of characters, as at this stage, Hisashi and his team were more interested in coming up with a working gameplay idea than in creating characters. These blocks weren't even given any colour, one team was black, while the other was white, in order to make them easy to tell apart. For this reason, Hisashi and his designers began referring to these characters as tofu. Even with this simple demo, it was clear that the core mechanic for the game was worth exploring further, and so, Hisashi and his team began coming up with ideas for characters that could be used in this world. The team briefly entertained the possibility of making Yoshi or Mario the centre of the action, before dismissing this entirely. The point of this game was to create something fresh and original, and that meant putting aside the traditional Mario roster of characters. After writing out a list of possible character ideas, which included squids, astronauts, and regular human beings, finally they settled on rabbits. Work commenced as the designers created a series of rabbit characters, giving them water pistols filled with ink and sending them out into battle. But something wasn't quite right. As Hisashi looked at what his team was building, he couldn't help but feel like there was a disconnect between the game's characters and its core mechanic. Why were rabbits swimming through seas of ink? This didn't make any sense. The team needed to reconsider what they were building. Looking over their original ideas again, the designers took another stab at squids. This seemed to fit perfectly. Squids shoot ink, and they swim, so the game's mode of play made much more sense. Hisashi and his team decided that they were going to do more than simply create a bunch of octopus characters. These squids were also kids. They could transform as hybrid characters that were both aquatic and familiar to human beings. And so, Hisashi and his fellow creators began working to build the world of Inkopolis and its bold, unique design aesthetic. In building up Splatoon, Hisashi's team adhered to the traditional Nintendo container method for creating an original game idea. First, they built the framework that underpinned the entire experience, making a game that was fun to play and which offered something unique and enjoyable. Then, they'd come up with the basic premise of the game and create the broad strokes of characters that would make the title feel distinct from anything else that Nintendo had made before. With their game structure, or container in place, it was time to fill it up with all the little pieces of world building that would make Splatoon feel like a fresh, original experience. The team wanted to give the game a sense of teenage rebellion and edgy, youthful energy. In doing so, they naturally turned to their own childhoods for inspiration. These now middle-aged developers therefore looked back on 90s urban culture to hip-hop and extreme sports to create something that reflected the time of their lives when they themselves were young and rebellious. Hisashi wanted the world of Splatoon, the buildings and environments to feel realistic and tangible. The Inklings weren't painting a fancy world like the Mushroom Kingdom. Instead, they were leaving their mark on an approximation of the real world, albeit one with a lot more squid puns. When the game was released, there wasn't a lot of content at first, with just a few different levels and a relatively small selection of weapons and abilities. This was a deliberate move to try to keep the game interesting for a long time. With an online multiplayer game, it would be no fun if, six months down the line, nobody was playing Splatoon anymore. Nintendo wanted to create a lasting player base, the kind of title that players would keep coming back to over months and years. By arbitrarily limiting the amount of content that was available, Hisashi hoped that players could be convinced to keep coming back regularly to enjoy new types of gameplay. All of this work paid off. Splatoon and its colourful inklings became a huge hit with Nintendo purists and newcomers alike. Not only did the innovative gameplay feel like a refreshing change from all the generic team shooters of recent years, but the characters in the world that Hisashi had put so much work into all really resonated with fans. Hisashi was particularly pleased with a huge event where the Squid Sisters, a fictional band within the game, handed a gig to an enthusiastic real-life audience thanks to the wonders of modern hologram technology. Hisashi had taken his youth, distilled its essence, and created his very own superstars. It was an exhilarating feeling. Splatoon's drip-feed of content kept players coming back week after week, making sure that the game was always fun to play. With the growing player base for the Nintendo Switch, it was clear that Splatoon was going to stay popular for a long time to come. The moral of the story is that sometimes it's important to think outside the box. Before Splatoon, Nintendo had been doing just fine reusing the same game characters and mechanics over and over. They were making good games, but they weren't innovating. Hisashi Nogami and his team of designers pushed to do something original and inventive. They chose not to take the easy way out by falling back on classic Nintendo tropes and instead did their best to create something that crackled with unique personality. When things didn't seem to be going the right way, they changed their plans, throwing away their work on rabbit characters when it was clear that they needed to try something different. Finally, by pushing themselves creatively, they were able to design new characters and a new game world that resonated with their audience. Whatever you're working on, try to bring this level of creativity to your personal projects. Look beyond the obvious, easy ideas and try your best to innovate and discover new solutions to old problems. Don't worry if things don't click into place first time, experiment, explore and allow yourself to make mistakes. As you keep working hard, you'll gain satisfaction from achieving your goals.