Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata proved it was better to be loved than feared

Even before his death in 2015 at the age of 55, gamers were mythologizing former Nintendo chief executive officer Satoru Iwata. He was the CEO that took a pay cut rather than lay off employees during the lean days of the Wii U. And while working as a programmer at Hal Laboratories, he coded a solution to fit Pokémon on a Game Boy cartridge.

These are stories that gamers tell each other, but they’re also the kinds of stories that are still coming out of Nintendo about the late gaming luminary thanks to the new English-language translation of Ask Iwata. That book is a collection of Iwata’s insights on leadership and design. It’s available starting today, April 13.