Shigeru Miyamoto says generative AI won't make game creators obsolete, but warns it's easy to mistake busywork for good work.

This week Japan named Shigeru Miyamoto, the designer behind Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda, to its 2026 Order of Culture, the first time the honor has gone to someone in games (Inven Global, GamesRadar).

At a press conference at Nintendo's Kyoto headquarters marking the award, he was asked about generative AI, the kind of AI that makes images, text and code, and he compared it to the move from typewriters to word processors (VGC). He said designers were once judged on skills like hand lettering for posters, and that as computers took over those jobs, a designer's real sense for things like layout came to the front. "I believe generative AI represents a similar shift," he said, in VGC's translation.

He split making things into "creating" and the "labor" of filling in details, and warned that "one might find satisfaction in the labor itself and mistakenly believe that a high-quality piece of work has been created." He sees that as a plus overall, saying the more AI takes over those tasks, "the more it provides an opportunity to reflect on what's really important," and that "even if AI were to eventually handle everything, there will always be a role left for us to play."

Nintendo hasn't said publicly whether it uses generative AI in its own games.

What to weigh: if you use AI tools to build games or 3D scenes, his test is a useful one. A level that took little effort can still feel like an accomplishment, so judge the result on its own, not on how much work you did.