On the first day of E3 2013, a succinct and surprising email from one of our Nintendo contacts arrived in our inbox while we were eating dinner across from the Los Angeles Convention Center. The man didn’t waste any time. “Do you want to interview Eiji Aonuma?” was practically all that the message said.
Naturally, we responded yes.
The next night, we stopped by the Symphony of the Goddesses concert to enjoy the new Second Quest arrangements, and to interview the Symphony’s conductor, Eimear Noone. We told everyone that we’d be sitting down with Aonuma the next day. To our surprise, we found out that he had actually been at the concert, but left early.
“Do you want to interview Eiji Aonuma?”
Eimear told us that we would love sitting down with Mr. Aonuma. So we decided to give Mr. Aonuma the interview he deserved. We spent hours ensuring that each question we wanted to ask would be something Mr. Aonuma wasn’t expecting. No prying for information we knew we wouldn’t get. Just a great half-hour with some great questions.
The thirty minutes we spent with Mr. Aonuma paint the picture of a man just as self-conscious about his work as anyone; a genuine creator with an intense desire to balance freedom with making people happy. In the interview below, Mr. Aonuma touches on what he’s proud of most while acknowledging what makes him most vulnerable, providing a deep look inside the brain of the man who creates one of gaming’s largest franchises.
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