The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade • Hacker News Board

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#71

Post by datavirtue » Tue, May 03, 2022, 9:00 PM UTC

smoldesu wrote: post #9

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 seemin…

Their user experience for creating accounts and connecting profiles to consoles and making purchases is royal shite. Makes me want to visit the IRS website and try to log in.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#72

Post by Sohcahtoa82 » Tue, May 03, 2022, 9:03 PM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #60

pjerem wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You, as an experienced adult contractor, can say this. Now imagine being a naive post-teenager being offered to work in "the greatest video game company of all time" but under the sole little condition that you are hired as a contractor. It works with any big name that you would be personally proud to work for. And what is even more saddening is that the more the brand is loved (Nintendo is part of the childhood of b…

> Now imagine being a naive post-teenager Adult. The word you’re looking for is adult.

While on a literal "definition of adult" level, yes, this is correct, let's not pretend that a 22 year old that likely just finished a degree and wants to work for Nintendo making games has a significantly different mentality than a 16 year old that looks forward to earning a degree and then working for Nintendo making games.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#73

Post by heavyset_go » Tue, May 03, 2022, 9:03 PM UTC

phreack wrote: post #39

didip wrote: post #22

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.

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.

The distinction between contractors and employees is nationwide.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#74

Post by cwp » Tue, May 03, 2022, 9:03 PM UTC

blintz wrote: post #17

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,…

The solution is go find another job. Everbody, but everybody, is hiring.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#75

Post by tick_tock_tick » Tue, May 03, 2022, 9:06 PM UTC

teg4n_ wrote: post #40

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 tryi…

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.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#76

Post by mgraczyk » Tue, May 03, 2022, 9:07 PM UTC

fzeroracer wrote: post #36

mgraczyk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you explain to me which benefits exactly the article is describing that is over the line? With quotes from the article.

"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"

...

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#77

Post by mpyne » Tue, May 03, 2022, 9:08 PM UTC

abxytg wrote: post #66

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…

> 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.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#78

Post by mpyne » Tue, May 03, 2022, 9:10 PM UTC

frozenport wrote: post #63

munk-a wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

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 yea…

And yet, the Nintendo Switch is basically a combination of the 3DS and Wii U and it's been doing gangbusters.

Sometimes Nintendo products don't strike a chord. It happens to any company with history in video gaming, including Sony and Microsoft.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#79

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 03, 2022, 9:11 PM UTC

abxytg wrote: post #66

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…

[deleted]

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#80

Post by munk-a » Tue, May 03, 2022, 9:12 PM UTC

frozenport wrote: post #63

munk-a wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

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 yea…

Yea - generally two-tiered employment systems do that. The reason companies hire skilled labour is because the skill more than makes up for the cost. Modern America is in love with the idea that replaceable contractors are every bit as effective as full time employees. Once upon the time this was more than correct when contractors tended to be (mostly) highly skilled folks that would swoop in for critical problem solving, however, it being seen as a lucrative field and then a way to dodge taxes and benefits has watered it down significantly.

Contractors aren't, by definition, any better or worse than full time employees. But when the going gets rough and the gruel is thin the good contractors will all immediately jump ship because, well, they're contractors - that will reinforce the concentration of lower skilled employees at your company and hurt overall morale.

Lastly, treating your coworkers like dirt will get them to give you the bare minimum to avoid being laid off and, if they're contractors anyways, that might not be any real threat - they can move back into the video game job market with the biggest most legendary game studio ever on their resume.