Don James, executive vice president of Nintendo of America, received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Dice Awards on Thursday night for his contributions to the games industry.
He joined Nintendo in 1981 as the fifth employee of Nintendo of America. He basically did everything that had to be done, and he said, “Every day was a new adventure” in our exclusive interview. And yet James, who spent 43 years at Nintendo and is now retiring, is hardly known in a public way. I never interviewed him until this week, and most gamers have no idea what James did in his career.
But the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) honored James as a game industry leader and cornerstone of Nintendo of America’s legacy. As executive vice president of operations, he oversaw numerous departments including consumer services, design, experiential marketing, real estate & facilities, manufacturing engineering, quality control, supply chain operations, purchasing, product testing, technical services, and technical translation. He was involved in every console/handheld launch from the Nintendo Entertainment System (1983) to the Nintendo Switch (2017).
In the video about James, Charles Martinet, Mario Ambassador and the voice of Mario, said he was hired by Don James to do the voice of Mario in Mario 64. Now it’s 168 games later, and Martinet retired in 2023.
“There was never a dull moment,” James said in his acceptance speech on Thursday evening. Yet he said the real magic was created by people who supported him.
“I won’t lie. Retirement is pretty great. But I will miss the challenges, and I will miss all of you,” he said.
“One thing we have always said at Nintendo is to our mission is to put smiles on people’s faces. It is the people in this industry who continually put one on mine,” James said. “The best part of this industry is that no one knows where we will go next. Keep playing. Keep creating. Keep surprising. And keep inspiring all the generations to come. Thank you so much for this great honor.”
He got a standing ovation.
During his tenure, James was instrumental in the creation of the video game industry’s current Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) rating system and the creation of the Interactive Digital Software Association (IDSA), currently known as the Entertainment Software Association (ESA). At the ESA, James served on the board. In the early 1990s, he was key to the creation of the world-renowned Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). And James was also an integral part of the AIAS — serving as a board member since 1991 — which oversees the Dice Summit.
James was also the key steward of Nintendo of America’s relationship with Starlight Children’s Foundation. Over 30 years, the foundation has delivered more than 8,400 gaming systems to children in hospitals. Adam Garone, CEO of the foundation, presented the award to James, who co-created one of the first programs for sick children in 1992. James’ program has touched millions of lives, Garone said.
He co-designed the Nintendo GameCube Starlight Fun Center in 2002 and led Nintendo of America’s support of Starlight to bring games and movies to seriously ill children in hospitals. He is also an active supporter of philanthropic organizations, including the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the Pratt Fine Arts Center.
Doug Lowenstein, former head of the IDSA, said in the intro video that James was a “booth design Michelangelo.” James said of all of his E3 booths, he was most proud of the booth he created for E3 2016. It was entirely based on one game, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and it made you feel like a character inside the game — not unlike the Super Nintendo World theme parks across the world.
“I am truly honored to receive this award from the Academy,” said James in a statement. “This industry is full of so many talented and creative people, and it’s been an absolute privilege getting to know and work with so many of them over the decades. My career has truly been a wild and fun ride, and I am proud of all the opportunities I was fortunate enough to receive.”
I asked him why he didn’t stick around for the Nintendo Switch 2 launch this year. He said, ” I felt that 43 years was enough. And also I developed a heart problem. I didn’t want to die at my desk.”
Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
GamesBeat: You have been there so long and we have never done an interview.
Don James: I was always under the radar. I preferred it that way.
GamesBeat: When did you come to Nintendo? What was your first task?
James: I graduated from college and went to work for Nintendo right away. The first thing we did, we were receiving Radar Scopes that were shipped back from New York and converting them into Donkey Kongs. This was in Tukwila, Washington.
GamesBeat: This was when it was Minoru Arakawa’s operation?
James: Right. When I started with the company there were five people in it. Arakawa was president.
GamesBeat: What did you think of it at the time? Did they have any kind of reputation?
James: No, nobody knew of Nintendo at all. My thinking was that they offered me a job. I was just out of college. Coin-op was still pretty popular. I thought, “It’s a job. I’ll take it. If it doesn’t work out I can do something else.”
GamesBeat: Did your love of gaming come from that, or were you already a gamer?
James: Oh, I was already a gamer. I played video games all through college. Asteroids, Pac-Man. Robotron was my favorite. You had to hang out at the arcades if you were a college student.
GamesBeat: Did you have a home machine at some point?
James: No, the first machine I got at home was the NES.
GamesBeat: What did you learn from being at Nintendo that early?
James: I can tell you that I was learning constantly. We changed so fast. I was the type of individual where every opportunity that came up, I volunteered for it. If I didn’t really know how to do it, I’d learn how to do it quickly. The opportunities that were offered because I got in so early were many and far-reaching. They went on for years and years. That’s why it was so fun to work there.
GamesBeat: Were you actually fixing the machines?
James: No, I didn’t do that. The technical guys did that. I ran production, and then moved on to being in charge of purchasing, being in charge of shipping. Literally everything that management didn’t want to do.
GamesBeat: There are such important things that have to get done, and they fall under the business guys, but it gets delegated far down.
James: Kind of? There wasn’t too far to delegate down. It was basically Arakawa and then me. But there were a lot of policies, a lot of procedures that had to be developed as the company expanded and grew. Again, I just volunteered to do all that stuff.
GamesBeat: How fast did it grow in those first few years?
James: We started with five. When we were in production with Donkey Kong we hired an additional 25 to 30. That then moved to about 60 people. Then we moved the whole company from Tukwila to Redmond and built our own building. We were using companies that would supply us with labor. They weren’t working directly for us. They were working for the other company. But that way we could flex up and down.
At one point we had about 100 people building Vs. DualSystems, which might not be something you know. We only built it for about three weeks. Then we stopped, because the coin-op market was crashing. It was two screens side by side. You could play tennis against each other in a coin-op setting.
GamesBeat: Was that the Nintendo campus that was at some point surrounded by Microsoft?
James: Yeah, we were completely surrounded. It started with one building, and then went to two and then three, which is where it’s at right now.
GamesBeat: I thought it was a funny coincidence when I went in to talk to the Xbox team, and then at lunch time saw Perrin Kaplan eating lunch in Microsoft’s cafeteria. What stands out for you, then? You had a long career. What are some of your most fond memories?
James: Overall, the best memory I have is the people. The fact that Nintendo was never stagnant. It was constantly changing. That was very exciting, because you had to constantly learn. That kept it interesting. Every day was a new adventure. But my fondest memory is really just the people that we worked with. It was a great company. Hiroshi Yamauchi was an interesting guy.
GamesBeat: At what point did you get to meet him?
James: I met him the first time at the CES show, when we introduced Game and Watch. Yoko, Mr. Arakawa’s wife, who was Mr. Yamauchi’s daughter, came up and asked me to turn the lights off in the office so he could take a nap. I was in charge of the booth. He only came to the U.S. twice. Otherwise, the only time you interacted with him was when you went to Japan.
It’s interesting. I learned something from every single person I ever reported to, and a whole bunch of people who reported to me taught me things too. What Yamauchi taught me was that–he was a good decision-maker. Most of the decisions he made were the right decision. When he made them, everybody ran in that direction, whatever way he pointed. I learned to be very decisive by watching him.
GamesBeat: When did you start to make bigger decisions in your role?
James: It depends on how you frame it. When you work in a company of five you tend to make all the big decisions about the company and how it functions. I just grew, and continued to do that. From day one, all the way through my career, I was making important decisions.
GamesBeat: Can you give some examples? A lot of people at this point might be thinking, “Who was Don James?” You weren’t in the press very much.
James: I tended to always be in the shadows. I worked in mysterious ways. Mainly because I don’t like being in the spotlight. I was more than happy to let guys like Charlie Scibetta do that. But probably E3 and the creation of the Interactive Digital Software Association, which is now the ESA. I had a huge role in that. I had a huge role in the ESRB. I had a huge role in every trade show booth that Nintendo ever did. I designed all of them. I used to say that you kind of bet your job when you do that, because if it’s a failure–luckily, I never had a failure.
When we introduced the NES into New York, that was major. They said, “Don, would you like to go out there and lead the team? We need you to do the point of purchase displays and Macy’s windows and all that stuff.” I have a design background. I said, “Sure.” That was a pretty big decision. If I’d screwed that up, this whole industry would probably feel different right now.
I did the Zelda immersive booth. That was a funny one. I went to Japan, and I’d never seen the game. I knew it existed, but I’d never actually seen it. I got pulled into a meeting and they told me we would have one game that would show at E3. “We’ll show you the video of the game now.” That was the first time I saw it. Afterward, Mr. Iwata asked me, “How are you going to do it? How are you going to show this game?” It took me a while to come up with the concept of that immersion. It was a lot of work, too. Luckily, working with NCL, they were very supportive.
GamesBeat: The IDSA and the ESRB, those were interesting days. The industry was always criticized. It was viewed as still a toy industry.
James: We used to go to Toy Fair, before we were going to CES.
GamesBeat: How hard was it to get the industry to somehow agree that everyone was stronger together?
James: A lot of that had to do with the creation of the rating system. The IDSA was created to support the ESRB. Everyone bought into that. It happened naturally. We didn’t have to go out and convince the other companies to join, and there weren’t many companies at that point anyway. We were all behind the same goal, which was to provide that rating system.
GamesBeat: Was E3 an expression of that same–to show the world what the game industry was really about?
James: Right. And also to take the profits from that show and put them back into the IDSA and the ESRB.
GamesBeat: That wouldn’t have worked if you didn’t have this feedback cycle. Money comes into the show, you make bigger shows, you get a bigger message out.
James: Well, a bigger show didn’t necessarily mean bigger profits.
GamesBeat: As we learned later. DICE seems to fulfill a very different mission than a show like E3. What was the thinking there?
James: I was around for the creation of this organization, the Academy, as well. I was one of the founders. Again, if you’re running an organization you need to have some form of income to support the organization. One of the ex-presidents of the Academy, he came up with the concept of DICE. It turned into a fairly unique event, because it was limited to a small group of developers only. It wasn’t like E3. It’s still like that today. But DICE serves an important function. It brings the development community together. But it also generates funds to support the Academy.
GamesBeat: I think the first E3 I went to was when Larry Probst was there as a speaker on a panel with Nintendo and Microsoft. I interviewed Larry afterward. He says, “You know those guys all hate each other?” It was funny how everyone could come together and be on the same panel and do these things in such a collegial way across industry organizations, and yet they were the fiercest of competitors.
James: It was kind of like living through the competition between Nintendo and Sega in the day. I remember–I don’t know the exact words, but I remember that Sega had all their employees wearing shirts saying “Crush Nintendo” or something to that effect.
GamesBeat: Do you look back on that as something like the good old days?
James: I don’t think there was ever any real hate. There was a lot of banter. But a lot of it was in jest. Now you get a quite interesting mix of individuals in the industry that come to something like this. It’s not as broad as the group of people you would get for an E3 show, just because the volume of people at E3 was way bigger. But there’s a camaraderie being in the industry now that’s pretty pronounced. You can see it. All you have to do is walk out there and see how many people are talking. They see someone and run over and say, “Hey, how are you doing?” It’s evolved, I think.
GamesBeat: Do you have a view on the state of the industry now? Where it is, where you’d like it to be?
James: Well, now that I’m retired I can answer that quite honestly. No. I’ve stopped worrying about where the industry is going. I’ll pass that torch on to other folks.
GamesBeat: I was talking to Ted Price yesterday and Shuhei Yoshida today. Ted in particular said that he was happy to create opportunities for people coming behind him. But he’s vacating his role, and now they have to step up.
James: That’s what I did, for about five years. I gave away pieces of my organization to other people. I made room for other people to get promoted into positions. I advised them and mentored them while I was there. That was a plan. It wasn’t just by accident. There was a plan for me to gracefully exit the company.
GamesBeat: Did you ever feel like Nintendo–was it understood well, or do you think the company was misunderstood in some ways by people outside Nintendo? The media, consumers, developers.
James: Well, it changed. When we first started, every time you had a conversation on the phone, you had to spell “Nintendo.” Nobody knew who we were. That eventually changed, slowly but surely, to the point where now everyone knows what Nintendo is and what we do. It happened over a long period of time. But I would say that we’re probably one of the most well-known companies in the world now. By the way, I want you to take note. I said “we” because no one ever really leaves Nintendo. That’s the strange thing. The loyalty we have for the company, we just never really leave.
GamesBeat: Do you think what’s widely known about Nintendo is the way it really is? Does it operate on feedback from the industry, or would you say it’s more internal, more secretive?
James: I think it’s all of the above. We’re a humble company. We don’t go out and seek recognition very often. We’re a very smart company. We try to make the best decisions. Sometimes it takes a while to make those decisions, but they’re usually right.
GamesBeat: When Nintendo stumbled–there were some public stumbles there. The company bounced back. Can you describe some of that? Some of the consoles were successful and some faltered.
James: Any company can have stumbles. We’re not immune to that. The thing that always impressed me was that we were able to recover. If you look at a lot of the product cycles in the consumer industry, you’ll see it’s cyclical. It’ll go up real high, drop back down, and up real high again depending on the product. I remember when Zune came out. They picked brown as the launch color. They could have picked any color, but they picked that color because, according to the color guide gods, it was the color for that year. It didn’t do very well. I don’t know if that was because of the way the product worked or the color or anything else, but they stumbled on that, just like we stumbled on Wii U.
GamesBeat: We’re in an upward swing with the Switch now. Switch 2 is coming along. What made you decide not to stick around for the Switch 2, to let other people take over?
James: It’s twofold. I felt that 43 years was enough. And also I developed a heart problem. I didn’t want to die at my desk. I decided to have enough time to spend with my wife and my kids and enjoy what I’d earned over the years. It’s been fun, but I can do without the stress.
GamesBeat: These console launches take a lot out of you, I’m sure.
James: Yeah, it’s all hands on deck. Usually it’s time compressed. There’s a lot of stuff to do toward the very end, right before launch. Everyone is scurrying around, taking care of their particular piece of the pie. It’s definitely stressful.
GamesBeat: Remembering some of those times, what also makes you smile? Launching the Switch, or launching earlier consoles.
James: I have a million stories about every single hardware launch. Probably the funniest one was the Wii, because of the motion-based controller. At the very last minute, Japan’s engineers came over and said, “Here. Put these wrist straps on the controllers.” None of us knew why. But as you probably remember, the newscasters showed pictures of people throwing Wiimotes through their TV. We did that, and we continued to evolve the wrist strap to make it better as we went along. None of us had thought of that. At the very last minute, they discovered that could be a problem. We were all shaking our heads. “Why are we doing this?” Then it became very clear after the product launched.
I did a product called the Nintendo Fan Network, which allowed you to take a DS into the baseball stadium. You could order food to your seat and see the scores of other games and all that stuff. Unfortunately it was too late in the product cycle. Smartphones came along two years after we introduced that. Phones took over that role. I wish we’d created it about four years earlier.
GamesBeat: In hindsight, do you think anything could have saved E3? Or did it just run its course?
James: I think it ran its course. The two years that we had in Santa Monica, in the hotel–I remember when we shut that down. That was right after Wii, that trade show. That didn’t work very well, and so we brought E3 back. But eventually the industry evolved past the cost to go to an E3. A lot of companies just didn’t want to spend the money to be there. It withered. It wasn’t a crash. It just drifted away.
GamesBeat: Was there a favorite show for you, and a favorite DICE as well? The most memorable event?
James: As far as E3 goes, I think my favorite one was the Zelda booth. Just because it was so much fun to work on that. Maybe the second-favorite was when we introduced Episode I Racer. I built a full-size podracer. Spielberg came into the booth. I have this great picture of him, me, and Miyamoto. Those two were fun for me because I got to go play in some cool shops and build some really cool stuff.
GamesBeat: I think back to a lot of moments with Mr. Iwata. There was one show where Kaz Hirai got up at his press conference and said, “The console wars are over.” I went over to interview Mr. Iwata and he said, “That was so arrogant.”
James: I have to tell you, I worked for–let’s see. One, two, three, four, five different presidents or CEOs. They were all unique. I loved working with every one of them, because they were all able to teach me something completely different than the last person I’d worked for. Again, it’s one of the reasons I stayed with the company so long. The management of the company was great to work with. They were all really smart people. The love of my life was working at Nintendo and working in this industry. It was just so much fun.
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