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

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#81

Post by heavyset_go » Tue, May 03, 2022, 9:12 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…

It's this. Think Cognizant, Accenture, CyberCoders, etc. They aren't making $200+ an hour as contractors, they're being paid like $40 an hour without any benefits and are treated like garbage.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#82

Post by mpyne » Tue, May 03, 2022, 9:14 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,…

> Isn't the solution unions, akin to the heavily unionized movie / TV business?

So that might help, but some of NOA's current problem seems to be some mental baggage from their management about growing headcount after the struggles of the 3DS/Wii U era.

A normal company would have done layoffs. Nintendo doesn't do that, even without unions. But management who survived that era turned it into a culture of not taking on the seemingly existential risk of increasing permanent headcount in case there would be a future income crisis.

I'm not sure if unions would be more likely to help relieve that mental baggage, or help to force management to finally decide to work through it and figure out a way to manage for a stable workforce rather than this perm/temp duopoly that they have going on now.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#83

Post by mpyne » Tue, May 03, 2022, 9:15 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.

This two-tier system is literally how the U.S. federal government works as well in a great deal of functions.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#84

Post by munk-a » Tue, May 03, 2022, 9:16 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…

> 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.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#85

Post by EarlKing » Tue, May 03, 2022, 9:16 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.

That's exactly the word they're not looking for. They don't want to admit that they made poor life choices and paid for them. Once you hit the age of majority you're a functioning adult and you don't get to make excuses anymore. If you make a bad deal then you make a bad deal. The trick is to realize that "bad deals" can be transmuted into good deals with a little spiritual alchemy. In my case I traded roughly a year at Amazon and some Bohemian-style living to make a pile of cash that I'm now pouring into my own business. That option is not for everyone, of course, so in other cases that alchemy simply means trading your time at $SHITCOMPANY for a better job somewhere else. After all: If you have the name of a FAANG on your resume that opens up a lot of doors, right?

TL;DR People really need an education in career development, and clearly they're not getting it.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#86

Post by heavyset_go » Tue, May 03, 2022, 9:17 PM UTC

oneoff786 wrote: post #3

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

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.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#87

Post by kingrazor » Tue, May 03, 2022, 9:18 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…

They're taking advantage of the still sizeable population of people who enjoy offline, single-player games. Because they still do that quite well.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#88

Post by [deleted] » Tue, May 03, 2022, 9:18 PM UTC

mpyne wrote: post #78

frozenport wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#89

Post by fasdfasf » Tue, May 03, 2022, 9:20 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…

>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

have you considered that you might be the one divorced from reality and the average consumer does not care about this?

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#90

Post by EarlKing » Tue, May 03, 2022, 9:21 PM UTC

heavyset_go wrote: post #81

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…

It's this. Think Cognizant, Accenture, CyberCoders, etc. They aren't making $200+ an hour as contractors, they're being paid like $40 an hour without any benefits and are treated like garbage.

$40 and hour is still $40 and hour. Live like a Bohemian, pile up your cash for a year, two years, four years... and then bounce to something better. Learned helplessness and expecting a daddy to come along and fix everything for you is not productive.