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The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

dcdc123 4y ago
To be real honest, without doing any research, I already assumed working for NOA would be miserable.
- warning26 4y ago
  To add to this, working at literally any game company is presumably miserable.
oneoff786 4y ago
> Contractors increasingly see themselves as second-class citizens This made me laugh My dude, you’re not a citizen at all.
- guelo 4y ago
  What is your point? Sencond-class citizen seems like a valid analogy for two types of employees.
  - TAForObvReasons 4y ago
    There's arguably a difference between a contractor employed by Nintendo (receiving a 1099 from the company) and a contractor employed by an outsourcing firm that Nintendo uses (paid by the outsourcing firm). The former seems analogous to "second-class citizens" while the latter seems analogous to "foreign resident"
  - oneoff786 4y ago
    A contractor is not an employee.
  - somehnacct3757 4y ago
    Perhaps making a reference to the fact that employees (contract or otherwise) are more like subjects than citizens.
- kjs3 4y ago
  Yeah, weird...'contractor' as an employment category by definition means that a company doesn't deal with you as a regular employee. What exactly did these people think they signed up for?
  - kodah 4y ago
    Employers make it a point, often, to blur the lines. Contractors, by government definition, get to choose their own hours, their own tools, they must be compensated dynamically for their expenses. When I was a contractor I felt that I was an FTE with shittier benefits; I was told where to be and when to be there, my tools were dictated to me, and if I ever asked about purchasing something to do my job better I was assuredly told, "no". I think, "I feel like a second class citizen" adds up to, "I was duped into FTE with none of the benefits."
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      The healthiest thing to do, as a contractor, is to draw the line in both directions. Be very familiar with your contract and if an employer asks you to do something outside it, reply with a very clear "I'm sorry but that's not in the scope of my duties. If you need me to take that on we can renegotiate." It feels shitty if you're of the mindset that you want to solve problems and not play legal games, but Lord knows the employer isn't incentivized to not try and wring every ounce of work out of you they can get for below-market FTE prices.
      - wk_end 4y ago
        Not that you're wrong...but (speaking from second-hand experience: my ex was [0] a contractor at FB) this sort of thing is a fabulous way to lose your job. The company will do whatever it has to do to bring the hammer down on any nails that stick out, and they've got enough legal and financial resources to get away with it. [0] https://medium.com/@techworkersco_79433/who-fired-the-ras-organizing-the-worst-job-at-facebook-97c63cb40683 https://medium.com/@techworkersco_79433/who-fired-the-ras-or...
        4y ago
- jayd16 4y ago
  Just because you're a contractor it doesn't mean you don't deserve "even a basic professional respect."
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  In my experience freelancing, you tend to be treated as a business owning peer than a "citizen" employee. That's different than the types of contractors that work for body shops like Accenture. Those "contractors" are not treated like business owners or employees, but a lower tier of replaceable cheap and servile labor resources. They also get paid much, much less than your typical contractor. Think like $30 to $40 an hour, obviously with zero benefits, and they aren't afforded the freedoms most freelancing devs enjoy, like the abilities to choose when, where and how their work gets done.
mgraczyk 4y ago
I never understand articles like this. Am I supposed to feel bad for playtesters because they don't have access to a soccer field and D-pad shaped couches? Most people have jobs without those perks. Does the fact that you do work for a company "in tech" make it worse that you're not showered with benefits? The margins aren't high and the work they are doing can be done by almost anyone.
- mcphage 4y ago
  > The margins aren't high Nintendo’s margins are almost 30%.
- crooked-v 4y ago
  It's not about being "showered with benefits", it's about the basic workplace culture leaving employees so uncomfortable and paranoid that (as noted in the article) they literally reenact cartoon plots to auto-press a keyboard so they can go the bathroom without being hassled.
  - mgraczyk 4y ago
    I'm just saying the article talks a lot about benefits these people don't have, but almost nobody has such benefits. If the article only talked about conditions like what you're describing, it would be 1/8th as long and I wouldn't have complained.
    - fzeroracer 4y ago
      Can you explain to me which benefits exactly the article is describing that is over the line? With quotes from the article.
      - mgraczyk 4y ago
        "outdated equipment and software" "still possible to find bins of old VHS tapes" "the soccer pitch, which is also off-limits" "employees apologizing profusely if they left even 15 minutes early." "being fired if they missed three days of work" "Contractors are excluded from ... the company holiday party" "feel unwelcome ... staying too long in Cafe Mario" "the internal webpage we were encouraged to look at that showed ... benefits (like a sizable Christmas bonus)" "march with Nintendo of America in the annual Pride parade" ...
shadowgovt 4y ago
This is using Nintendo to talk about an industry-wide problem. In essence, tech companies use contracted labor to skirt around minimum standards for employment and the law lets them get away with it.
- artificialLimbs 4y ago
  "minimum standards for employment" What is that? Do you mean "law"?
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    I'm not entirely sure what you're asking, but tentatively I think the answer is yes. They avoid the legal standards for employment by abusing a 'contractor' legal status. A contractor is supposed to be an outside expert, not a sub-employee.
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      And there are very perverse incentives that put massive pressure on an individual contracted employee that is absent when they're an FTE. A sexually-harassed FTE may be concerned that fighting for their rights is going to black-ball them in their career, but they rarely need be concerned that it'll cost all their colleagues their jobs, because a company is rarely incentivized to cut a whole department if one employee sues but can decide working with a contracted company isn't worth it, and go with one of their competitors to fulfill the contract, if one of the contracted employees makes waves.
    - AmericanChopper 4y ago
      A contractor is supposed to be a person operating a business that provides services on a contract basis, a contractors business is no different from any other business that provides professional services. A contractor engages in this work knowing that they are exchanging all of their employment rights for better remuneration. This is how I personally manage to get paid anywhere between $200-$500/hour, and the only person abusing the system here is me taking advantage of companies inability to hire enough permanent staff.
smoldesu 4y ago
The past 20 years for Nintendo have been pretty interesting, to say the least. They started with the Gamecube, a console that sold weak numbers and faced stuff competition despite it's library of modern classics. They followed that up with the iPhone of game consoles, the Wii, and moved hundreds of millions of units like it was no big deal. Seeking to capitalize on that same success, they made the Wii U, which seemingly forgot all of the things that made the Wii great in the first place. Then they fixed it with the Switch, identifying the disappointment that people felt with the Wii U and streamlining the product to really dig in to consumer trends. It's a lot of ups and downs, and that's without even touching on their software and handheld history. It's got me wondering what's up at Nintendo. Their mainstay studios like HAL Laboratories and MercurySteam haven't changed all that much over the years, and their presentation quality and infatuation with design has yet to waver. Overall, I'm starting to think their hardware and management teams are the weakest links: their least successful and least appreciated ventures have been when they wandered outside of their walled garden to make a quick buck (Super Mario Run or Mario Kart Grand Prix, anyone?), second only to their questionable hardware designs over the previous 2 decades. I have nothing but respect for the way Nintendo's developers and engineers deliver a polished product for all kinds of consumers, but I struggle to imagine how they're going to continue to adapt to the market. Especially if they're continuing to merge their handheld and home console markets, I worry they could turn this Switch success into another Wii U moment. Time will tell, but Nintendo's got quite a tumultuous history with some exceptional highs and dumbfounding lows.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  Nintendo has a lot of cash and is more of a toy company than a console company. I tend to think they will be fine. Their weakest link is almost certainly their marketing team. The Wii U was really cool. Nintendo Land was insanely fun. The asymmetric local multiplayer was cool as shit. But nobody understood this. Most people didn’t know the Wii U was a different console.
  - lots2learn 4y ago
    Many many years later, my kids still get a ton of mileage out of the wii u. As one kids gets old enough to play, the others return to the games and get more out of the stellar multiplayer aspect. Nintendoland, Mario kart, Mario 3d world, new super Mario bros u, Wii party, Mario party - loads of fun.
henriquez 4y ago
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  If you want this to not be a strawman, you have to set it up so the other construction workers in your house are allowed to do that.
  - henriquez 4y ago
    No I don’t. I hire a contractor and they do the work and get out.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      You skipped the "if". In general you don't have to do that. That's obvious. But inside this theoretical scenario you made up, if you don't make a drastic change like that then your scenario is a dumb strawman argument that proves nothing. The contractors aren't asking for anything the other video game workers don't get. If you don't preserve that aspect, your metaphor is useless.
blintz 4y ago
I suppose this is run-of-the-mill for the video game industry, but man, it's sounds so hellish; people deserve not be humiliated like this at work. Isn't the solution unions, akin to the heavily unionized movie / TV business? Short of that, Nintendo deserves some bad PR for this at least; as long as people keep leaking their crappy workplace conditions to the press, the execs will have to keep reading these articles, and maybe be they'll be incentivized to make things slightly better.
- Melatonic 4y ago
  Definitely unions are becoming more and more popular again for a reason!
- frozenport 4y ago
  No. Underlying problem is that Nintendo has a non-viable business model combined with a culture that tolerates things like rigid work hours and low pay. They can't make life better for employees because their business model sucks. The correct thing is to simply not work for them.
  - munk-a 4y ago
    If Nintendo isn't viable then video games in general aren't viable - I know that a lot of modern Nintendo games don't really appeal to the HN crowd but classic IP like Mario & Link are some of the most recognizable properties out there... additionally Pokemon and Animal Crossing have dominated the casual game space. A union can force better working conditions and an appropriate price increase for their products can make that sustainable - if it's even really needed, tbh Nintendo isn't shy about pricing games pretty high when you take into account all the re-releases of titles they do.
    - frozenport 4y ago
      The article explains how Nintendo products kept flopping leading to a two tiered employment system designed to cut costs. "The Nintendo 3DS was released in 2011 and immediately stalled, burdened by the lack of a compelling launch line-up, the rise of smartphones, and a $249.99 price point. Nintendo was forced to move aggressively, slashing the system's price and rolling out special benefits for existing owners. A year later, Nintendo released the Wii U, which fared even worse."
didip 4y ago
Isn’t this the reality inside any large companies in America? Contractors will always live in a different world than full timers. It sucks, but that’s what it is.
- phreack 4y ago
  It is what it is but it's so awful it's actually illegal to make contractors work as employees in most of the world. I'd wager it's got to be illegal in at least some American states.
  - heavyset_go 4y ago
    The distinction between contractors and employees is nationwide.
  - mpyne 4y ago
    This two-tier system is literally how the U.S. federal government works as well in a great deal of functions.
- warning26 4y ago
  I've been reading about the "red badge of shame" at Google for at least the past 6 or 7 years. Seems like Nintendo isn't really an outlier in this case.
teg4n_ 4y ago
Some of the attitude expressed in this comment section show just how out of touch a lot of you are. These contractors are not contractors by choice. They are not even contractors in the sense you probably think like sending an invoice to Nintendo and having it paid. They work for shitty companies like Aerotek that provide very little benefits AND they can only work 10 out of the 12 months of the year due to laws trying to prevent exactly what Nintendo is doing which is using contractors as discount full time employees. The tax payer is subsidizing Nintendo because these people end up on unemployment for two months every year.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- wjamesg 4y ago
  I completely agree. Lots of out of touch in this discussion thread. “They are contractors, what do they expect!?”
- baisq 4y ago
  If anything, this demonstrates that unemployment benefits should be harshly cut.
- tick_tock_tick 4y ago
  They are contractors because they desperately want to work in the game industry but don't have valuable skills. Everyone knows the pay is bad, the work conditions suck, even the simplest of google searches gives you all that information and more but people keep signing up by the truckload. That's why people here have no sympathy. > The tax payer is subsidizing Nintendo because these people end up on unemployment for two months every year. Contract workers are not eligible for unemployment except under a very small number of circumstances and simply not renewing a contract is not one of them.
  - teg4n_ 4y ago
    Well I know people who do exactly what I said so I think you don’t understand the situation as well as you think you do. It has nothing to do with contract renewal it is a forced 2 month break between contracts. Also, they are not 1099 contractors they work directly under companies such as Aerotek or whoever and get a regular W-2. Those companies then contract them to Nintendo.
lostgame 4y ago
I’m reminded of the saddening story behind (potentially) SEGA’s greatest failure that essentially killed them in the console business - the development hell that was Sonic X-Treme. X-Treme artist and developer, Chris Senn and Chris Coffin, became so ill during the development process, living under desks at SEGA Technical Institute and treated more like robots than humans. Doctors said Coffin would be ‘dead in 6 weeks’ if he continued development, X-Treme was cancelled - and SEGA’s flagship mid 90’s Saturn console never got a mainline exclusive Sonic title. The hell game developers often go through actually caused me to stray from my initial teenage ambitions of being a game dev. I’m so, so glad I chose mobile instead.
abxytg 4y ago
You can see this in their offerings. They are consistently 10+ years behind the times in terms of multiplayer and online. That they are still so popular is a credit to how divorced from reality multi national corporate mega giants can be and still succeed. Their games and online offerings, for the most part, frankly suck compared to their competitors. They are alive purely on the strength of the 5% of good games they put out by rehashing the same 3 franchises over and over and over and over.
- mpyne 4y ago
  > That they are still so popular is a credit to how divorced from reality multi national corporate mega giants can be and still succeed. Well, that and the size of the market itself. > Their games and online offerings, for the most part, frankly suck compared to their competitors. Their online offerings, sure, I guess. But their games are good, even on their consoles that don't sell well. Nintendo made a lot of money by doing nothing more difficult than porting really good games on Wii U onto the Switch. They make money on remakes of decades-old games with minor graphical and quality of life tweaks because the games are good. Not everything likes all of their games, and that's fine, but many do.
  - abxytg 4y ago
    Most of the mario and zelda ports yes.
- munk-a 4y ago
  > They are consistently 10+ years behind the times in terms of multiplayer and online. Nintendo has never and probably will never try and seriously compete in the multiplayer arena - they've got some casual multiplayer stuff but they're not trying to out compete Call of Duty, Halo or Starcraft. I do agree that they do milk those main properties for all their worth, but they're pretty careful about releasing bombs - Mario Odyssey was a pretty notable and dramatic fail for them but, again, the fact that their games suck to you doesn't matter. I'm a big fan of EU4 and as such Nintendo doesn't want my business - they cater to young and casual audiences building easy to access for the family games rather than historical simulators or Dark Souls.
JeremysIron 4y ago
We were a Nintendo family when I was a kid (back when that was a meaningful distinction and cross-platform games were very rare) and I continued buying Nintendo systems and games up until the Gamecube era. But at some point I came to a realization and haven't bought anything of theirs since. Nintendo doesn't take good care of their customers. There's the confusing half-step hardware upgrades which can potentially leave you with hardware that doesn't technically play the latest games, or has compatibility problems. There's the bizarre hoops you have to jump through to play games with friends online. But the biggest thing that stops me from buying any new Nintendo platform is that it's going to expire in a way that no modern system should anymore. I have Steam and Microsoft accounts that have records of my purchases from 10 or 15 years ago, and all I have to do is log in and I can download and play them on any new system I get. I don't know how it works on Sony's systems, but I imagine that it's similar. My account is credited with the game, and I can play it when I want to. When I hear about how people have to keep continually buying classic Nintendo games on their own built-in download service, or lose access to all of their games when they buy a different console unit of the exact same console, or give up on playing with their friends because they can't just tell the service "Account X is my friend," I'm just gobsmacked. This article makes the case that this attitude of contempt extends to their own employees as well. I think they'd do quite well to eat some humble pie, but I'm not expecting much.

To be real honest, without doing any research, I already assumed working for NOA would be miserable.

warning26 4y ago
To add to this, working at literally any game company is presumably miserable.

> Contractors increasingly see themselves as second-class citizens This made me laugh My dude, you’re not a citizen at all.

guelo 4y ago
What is your point? Sencond-class citizen seems like a valid analogy for two types of employees.
- TAForObvReasons 4y ago
  There's arguably a difference between a contractor employed by Nintendo (receiving a 1099 from the company) and a contractor employed by an outsourcing firm that Nintendo uses (paid by the outsourcing firm). The former seems analogous to "second-class citizens" while the latter seems analogous to "foreign resident"
- oneoff786 4y ago
  A contractor is not an employee.
- somehnacct3757 4y ago
  Perhaps making a reference to the fact that employees (contract or otherwise) are more like subjects than citizens.
kjs3 4y ago
Yeah, weird...'contractor' as an employment category by definition means that a company doesn't deal with you as a regular employee. What exactly did these people think they signed up for?
- kodah 4y ago
  Employers make it a point, often, to blur the lines. Contractors, by government definition, get to choose their own hours, their own tools, they must be compensated dynamically for their expenses. When I was a contractor I felt that I was an FTE with shittier benefits; I was told where to be and when to be there, my tools were dictated to me, and if I ever asked about purchasing something to do my job better I was assuredly told, "no". I think, "I feel like a second class citizen" adds up to, "I was duped into FTE with none of the benefits."
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    The healthiest thing to do, as a contractor, is to draw the line in both directions. Be very familiar with your contract and if an employer asks you to do something outside it, reply with a very clear "I'm sorry but that's not in the scope of my duties. If you need me to take that on we can renegotiate." It feels shitty if you're of the mindset that you want to solve problems and not play legal games, but Lord knows the employer isn't incentivized to not try and wring every ounce of work out of you they can get for below-market FTE prices.
    - wk_end 4y ago
      Not that you're wrong...but (speaking from second-hand experience: my ex was [0] a contractor at FB) this sort of thing is a fabulous way to lose your job. The company will do whatever it has to do to bring the hammer down on any nails that stick out, and they've got enough legal and financial resources to get away with it. [0] https://medium.com/@techworkersco_79433/who-fired-the-ras-organizing-the-worst-job-at-facebook-97c63cb40683 https://medium.com/@techworkersco_79433/who-fired-the-ras-or...
      - 4y ago
jayd16 4y ago
Just because you're a contractor it doesn't mean you don't deserve "even a basic professional respect."
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
heavyset_go 4y ago
In my experience freelancing, you tend to be treated as a business owning peer than a "citizen" employee. That's different than the types of contractors that work for body shops like Accenture. Those "contractors" are not treated like business owners or employees, but a lower tier of replaceable cheap and servile labor resources. They also get paid much, much less than your typical contractor. Think like $30 to $40 an hour, obviously with zero benefits, and they aren't afforded the freedoms most freelancing devs enjoy, like the abilities to choose when, where and how their work gets done.

mgraczyk 4y ago

I never understand articles like this. Am I supposed to feel bad for playtesters because they don't have access to a soccer field and D-pad shaped couches? Most people have jobs without those perks. Does the fact that you do work for a company "in tech" make it worse that you're not showered with benefits? The margins aren't high and the work they are doing can be done by almost anyone.

mcphage 4y ago
> The margins aren't high Nintendo’s margins are almost 30%.
crooked-v 4y ago
It's not about being "showered with benefits", it's about the basic workplace culture leaving employees so uncomfortable and paranoid that (as noted in the article) they literally reenact cartoon plots to auto-press a keyboard so they can go the bathroom without being hassled.
- mgraczyk 4y ago
  I'm just saying the article talks a lot about benefits these people don't have, but almost nobody has such benefits. If the article only talked about conditions like what you're describing, it would be 1/8th as long and I wouldn't have complained.
  - fzeroracer 4y ago
    Can you explain to me which benefits exactly the article is describing that is over the line? With quotes from the article.
    - mgraczyk 4y ago
      "outdated equipment and software" "still possible to find bins of old VHS tapes" "the soccer pitch, which is also off-limits" "employees apologizing profusely if they left even 15 minutes early." "being fired if they missed three days of work" "Contractors are excluded from ... the company holiday party" "feel unwelcome ... staying too long in Cafe Mario" "the internal webpage we were encouraged to look at that showed ... benefits (like a sizable Christmas bonus)" "march with Nintendo of America in the annual Pride parade" ...

shadowgovt 4y ago

This is using Nintendo to talk about an industry-wide problem. In essence, tech companies use contracted labor to skirt around minimum standards for employment and the law lets them get away with it.

artificialLimbs 4y ago
"minimum standards for employment" What is that? Do you mean "law"?
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  I'm not entirely sure what you're asking, but tentatively I think the answer is yes. They avoid the legal standards for employment by abusing a 'contractor' legal status. A contractor is supposed to be an outside expert, not a sub-employee.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    And there are very perverse incentives that put massive pressure on an individual contracted employee that is absent when they're an FTE. A sexually-harassed FTE may be concerned that fighting for their rights is going to black-ball them in their career, but they rarely need be concerned that it'll cost all their colleagues their jobs, because a company is rarely incentivized to cut a whole department if one employee sues but can decide working with a contracted company isn't worth it, and go with one of their competitors to fulfill the contract, if one of the contracted employees makes waves.
  - AmericanChopper 4y ago
    A contractor is supposed to be a person operating a business that provides services on a contract basis, a contractors business is no different from any other business that provides professional services. A contractor engages in this work knowing that they are exchanging all of their employment rights for better remuneration. This is how I personally manage to get paid anywhere between $200-$500/hour, and the only person abusing the system here is me taking advantage of companies inability to hire enough permanent staff.

smoldesu 4y ago

The past 20 years for Nintendo have been pretty interesting, to say the least. They started with the Gamecube, a console that sold weak numbers and faced stuff competition despite it's library of modern classics. They followed that up with the iPhone of game consoles, the Wii, and moved hundreds of millions of units like it was no big deal. Seeking to capitalize on that same success, they made the Wii U, which seemingly forgot all of the things that made the Wii great in the first place. Then they fixed it with the Switch, identifying the disappointment that people felt with the Wii U and streamlining the product to really dig in to consumer trends. It's a lot of ups and downs, and that's without even touching on their software and handheld history. It's got me wondering what's up at Nintendo. Their mainstay studios like HAL Laboratories and MercurySteam haven't changed all that much over the years, and their presentation quality and infatuation with design has yet to waver. Overall, I'm starting to think their hardware and management teams are the weakest links: their least successful and least appreciated ventures have been when they wandered outside of their walled garden to make a quick buck (Super Mario Run or Mario Kart Grand Prix, anyone?), second only to their questionable hardware designs over the previous 2 decades. I have nothing but respect for the way Nintendo's developers and engineers deliver a polished product for all kinds of consumers, but I struggle to imagine how they're going to continue to adapt to the market. Especially if they're continuing to merge their handheld and home console markets, I worry they could turn this Switch success into another Wii U moment. Time will tell, but Nintendo's got quite a tumultuous history with some exceptional highs and dumbfounding lows.

oneoff786 4y ago
Nintendo has a lot of cash and is more of a toy company than a console company. I tend to think they will be fine. Their weakest link is almost certainly their marketing team. The Wii U was really cool. Nintendo Land was insanely fun. The asymmetric local multiplayer was cool as shit. But nobody understood this. Most people didn’t know the Wii U was a different console.
- lots2learn 4y ago
  Many many years later, my kids still get a ton of mileage out of the wii u. As one kids gets old enough to play, the others return to the games and get more out of the stellar multiplayer aspect. Nintendoland, Mario kart, Mario 3d world, new super Mario bros u, Wii party, Mario party - loads of fun.

henriquez 4y ago

Dylan16807 4y ago
If you want this to not be a strawman, you have to set it up so the other construction workers in your house are allowed to do that.
- henriquez 4y ago
  No I don’t. I hire a contractor and they do the work and get out.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    You skipped the "if". In general you don't have to do that. That's obvious. But inside this theoretical scenario you made up, if you don't make a drastic change like that then your scenario is a dumb strawman argument that proves nothing. The contractors aren't asking for anything the other video game workers don't get. If you don't preserve that aspect, your metaphor is useless.

blintz 4y ago

I suppose this is run-of-the-mill for the video game industry, but man, it's sounds so hellish; people deserve not be humiliated like this at work. Isn't the solution unions, akin to the heavily unionized movie / TV business? Short of that, Nintendo deserves some bad PR for this at least; as long as people keep leaking their crappy workplace conditions to the press, the execs will have to keep reading these articles, and maybe be they'll be incentivized to make things slightly better.

Melatonic 4y ago
Definitely unions are becoming more and more popular again for a reason!
frozenport 4y ago
No. Underlying problem is that Nintendo has a non-viable business model combined with a culture that tolerates things like rigid work hours and low pay. They can't make life better for employees because their business model sucks. The correct thing is to simply not work for them.
- munk-a 4y ago
  If Nintendo isn't viable then video games in general aren't viable - I know that a lot of modern Nintendo games don't really appeal to the HN crowd but classic IP like Mario & Link are some of the most recognizable properties out there... additionally Pokemon and Animal Crossing have dominated the casual game space. A union can force better working conditions and an appropriate price increase for their products can make that sustainable - if it's even really needed, tbh Nintendo isn't shy about pricing games pretty high when you take into account all the re-releases of titles they do.
  - frozenport 4y ago
    The article explains how Nintendo products kept flopping leading to a two tiered employment system designed to cut costs. "The Nintendo 3DS was released in 2011 and immediately stalled, burdened by the lack of a compelling launch line-up, the rise of smartphones, and a $249.99 price point. Nintendo was forced to move aggressively, slashing the system's price and rolling out special benefits for existing owners. A year later, Nintendo released the Wii U, which fared even worse."

didip 4y ago

Isn’t this the reality inside any large companies in America? Contractors will always live in a different world than full timers. It sucks, but that’s what it is.

phreack 4y ago
It is what it is but it's so awful it's actually illegal to make contractors work as employees in most of the world. I'd wager it's got to be illegal in at least some American states.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  The distinction between contractors and employees is nationwide.
- mpyne 4y ago
  This two-tier system is literally how the U.S. federal government works as well in a great deal of functions.
warning26 4y ago
I've been reading about the "red badge of shame" at Google for at least the past 6 or 7 years. Seems like Nintendo isn't really an outlier in this case.

teg4n_ 4y ago

Some of the attitude expressed in this comment section show just how out of touch a lot of you are. These contractors are not contractors by choice. They are not even contractors in the sense you probably think like sending an invoice to Nintendo and having it paid. They work for shitty companies like Aerotek that provide very little benefits AND they can only work 10 out of the 12 months of the year due to laws trying to prevent exactly what Nintendo is doing which is using contractors as discount full time employees. The tax payer is subsidizing Nintendo because these people end up on unemployment for two months every year.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
wjamesg 4y ago
I completely agree. Lots of out of touch in this discussion thread. “They are contractors, what do they expect!?”
baisq 4y ago
If anything, this demonstrates that unemployment benefits should be harshly cut.
tick_tock_tick 4y ago
They are contractors because they desperately want to work in the game industry but don't have valuable skills. Everyone knows the pay is bad, the work conditions suck, even the simplest of google searches gives you all that information and more but people keep signing up by the truckload. That's why people here have no sympathy. > The tax payer is subsidizing Nintendo because these people end up on unemployment for two months every year. Contract workers are not eligible for unemployment except under a very small number of circumstances and simply not renewing a contract is not one of them.
- teg4n_ 4y ago
  Well I know people who do exactly what I said so I think you don’t understand the situation as well as you think you do. It has nothing to do with contract renewal it is a forced 2 month break between contracts. Also, they are not 1099 contractors they work directly under companies such as Aerotek or whoever and get a regular W-2. Those companies then contract them to Nintendo.

lostgame 4y ago

I’m reminded of the saddening story behind (potentially) SEGA’s greatest failure that essentially killed them in the console business - the development hell that was Sonic X-Treme. X-Treme artist and developer, Chris Senn and Chris Coffin, became so ill during the development process, living under desks at SEGA Technical Institute and treated more like robots than humans. Doctors said Coffin would be ‘dead in 6 weeks’ if he continued development, X-Treme was cancelled - and SEGA’s flagship mid 90’s Saturn console never got a mainline exclusive Sonic title. The hell game developers often go through actually caused me to stray from my initial teenage ambitions of being a game dev. I’m so, so glad I chose mobile instead.

abxytg 4y ago

You can see this in their offerings. They are consistently 10+ years behind the times in terms of multiplayer and online. That they are still so popular is a credit to how divorced from reality multi national corporate mega giants can be and still succeed. Their games and online offerings, for the most part, frankly suck compared to their competitors. They are alive purely on the strength of the 5% of good games they put out by rehashing the same 3 franchises over and over and over and over.

mpyne 4y ago
> That they are still so popular is a credit to how divorced from reality multi national corporate mega giants can be and still succeed. Well, that and the size of the market itself. > Their games and online offerings, for the most part, frankly suck compared to their competitors. Their online offerings, sure, I guess. But their games are good, even on their consoles that don't sell well. Nintendo made a lot of money by doing nothing more difficult than porting really good games on Wii U onto the Switch. They make money on remakes of decades-old games with minor graphical and quality of life tweaks because the games are good. Not everything likes all of their games, and that's fine, but many do.
- abxytg 4y ago
  Most of the mario and zelda ports yes.
munk-a 4y ago
> They are consistently 10+ years behind the times in terms of multiplayer and online. Nintendo has never and probably will never try and seriously compete in the multiplayer arena - they've got some casual multiplayer stuff but they're not trying to out compete Call of Duty, Halo or Starcraft. I do agree that they do milk those main properties for all their worth, but they're pretty careful about releasing bombs - Mario Odyssey was a pretty notable and dramatic fail for them but, again, the fact that their games suck to you doesn't matter. I'm a big fan of EU4 and as such Nintendo doesn't want my business - they cater to young and casual audiences building easy to access for the family games rather than historical simulators or Dark Souls.

JeremysIron 4y ago

We were a Nintendo family when I was a kid (back when that was a meaningful distinction and cross-platform games were very rare) and I continued buying Nintendo systems and games up until the Gamecube era. But at some point I came to a realization and haven't bought anything of theirs since. Nintendo doesn't take good care of their customers. There's the confusing half-step hardware upgrades which can potentially leave you with hardware that doesn't technically play the latest games, or has compatibility problems. There's the bizarre hoops you have to jump through to play games with friends online. But the biggest thing that stops me from buying any new Nintendo platform is that it's going to expire in a way that no modern system should anymore. I have Steam and Microsoft accounts that have records of my purchases from 10 or 15 years ago, and all I have to do is log in and I can download and play them on any new system I get. I don't know how it works on Sony's systems, but I imagine that it's similar. My account is credited with the game, and I can play it when I want to. When I hear about how people have to keep continually buying classic Nintendo games on their own built-in download service, or lose access to all of their games when they buy a different console unit of the exact same console, or give up on playing with their friends because they can't just tell the service "Account X is my friend," I'm just gobsmacked. This article makes the case that this attitude of contempt extends to their own employees as well. I think they'd do quite well to eat some humble pie, but I'm not expecting much.