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The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

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Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#91

Post by teg4n_ »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #75
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…

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.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#92

Post by munk-a »

chaostheory wrote: post #61
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,…

It's gotten slightly better for developers, but the video game industry is horrible for most of the people in it. It's tends to be toxic with lower pay & benefits with much longer hours. I guess that's the price for doing something that you love. imo The only time it works "well" is with successful indie companies.

Developers sit in a place of privilege at video game companies (I say as a former developer at a video game company) but the experience still sucks - there are far too many star-eyed fresh college graduates willing to work for peanuts for anyone to make a decent living working sane hours.

Indie companies are the absolute worst - there are occasional success stories (like, say, No Man's Sky) but they always involve insane overtime and fiscal risk - Sean Murray sold his house to keep the company afloat. And No Man's Sky - even with all the controversy - is one of the biggest recent successes (with the last one to go as mainstream being Minecraft IMO). If you make those fiscal and health gambles and lose then you're SOL - there are thousands of games made by passionate people that could have been good that just never hit the right PR vein or happened to have a buggy v1.0 and got written off by the community.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#93

Post by teg4n_ »

EarlKing wrote: post #90
heavyset_go wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s not actually $40 an hour in my experience. It’s closer to $25 and even then the amount of stress and responsibility you have is absurd for being a lowly contractor.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#94

Post by someguy5344523 »

munk-a wrote: post #84
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 - M…

Since when is Mario Odyssey a failure? From wikipedia:

In the United States and Europe, it became Nintendo's fastest-selling Super Mario game ever, with 1.1 million copies sold in the US within five days.[120][121] According to the NPD Group, the game was the best-selling video game of October 2017,[122] and was listed by Amazon as the online retailer's highest-selling game of the year.[123]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Odyssey#Sales

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#95

Post by elefanten »

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…

This seems like overstated personal opinion. Market data, the consumer and the critic all disagree.

The Switch platform has been a stellar success and isn't stopping any time soon. As a business, Nintendo is thriving.

Nintendo franchises stay pretty fresh relative to other franchises. Is your issue with the concept of franchises in general? Every platform/ecosystem has them.

For Nintendo, the first party platform and franchises have always been the central focus. They remain a hit, decade after decade. So, it's not clear what your beef really is.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#96

Post by staticman2 »

datavirtue wrote: post #58
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,…

Enlightening as to possibly why their overall UX is worse than the IRS'.

This article is about Nintendo of America, which is just a marketing and localisation company. Unless the Switch has a different UX in Japan the UX has nothing to do with Nintendo of America.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#97

Post by elefanten »

someguy5344523 wrote: post #94
munk-a wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 - M…

Since when is Mario Odyssey a failure? From wikipedia: In the United States and Europe, it became Nintendo's fastest-selling Super Mario game ever, with 1.1 million copies sold in the US within five days.[120][121] According to the NPD Group, the game was the best-selling video game of October 2017,[122] and was listed by Amazon as the online retailer's highest-selling game of the year.[123] https://en.wikipedia.org/…

Yeah, Odyssey was a great success. Great sales. Great consumer and critic reviews.

I suspect it just got overshadowed by Zelda Breath of the Wild, which really stole the show for the Switch launch year.

Edit: Trying to think which Mario game was NOT considered a success? Maybe Mario Sunshine? That goes back to the Gamecube, and looking at it now... that ALSO had good reviews. I don't think there's been a dud in the mainline Mario franchise... ever?

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#98

Post by Jordrok »

someguy5344523 wrote: post #94
munk-a wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 - M…

Since when is Mario Odyssey a failure? From wikipedia: In the United States and Europe, it became Nintendo's fastest-selling Super Mario game ever, with 1.1 million copies sold in the US within five days.[120][121] According to the NPD Group, the game was the best-selling video game of October 2017,[122] and was listed by Amazon as the online retailer's highest-selling game of the year.[123] https://en.wikipedia.org/…

I was wondering the same thing. Maybe I haven't been paying close enough attention to sales numbers, but I can't really recall ever hearing anyone refer to Odyssey as anything other than a success.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#99

Post by EarlKing »

teg4n_ wrote: post #93
EarlKing wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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.

It’s not actually $40 an hour in my experience. It’s closer to $25 and even then the amount of stress and responsibility you have is absurd for being a lowly contractor.

Then don't work there, or do as I directed and leverage time there to get better work elsewhere. A company that is determined to treat people as "human resources" will not be deterred just because you complain. It will be deterred only by failure. So let them fail and in the meantime use their failure as a means to get a leg up yourself.

Re: The growing discontent behind Nintendo’s fun facade

#100

Post by munk-a »

EarlKing wrote: post #85
barry-cotter wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

On whose shoulders does the lack of a good education about labour rights lie on? The individual or the society that values bootstrap-pull-up-ness above all else?

People should be allowed to make mistakes in life, that's how we get innovation and economic growth - experiments are sometimes good and sometimes bad. In a lot of cases these new labour market entrants don't have any comprehension of what working actually means.

Allowing big powerful corporations to beat up young individuals doesn't benefit society, it entrenches power which tends to lead to corruption.

The example you're offering is working for a year at Amazon and tightening your belt a little - a large portion of Americans make just enough money so that they can fall deeper into debt each year while slowly. I, unlike you, worked for a bit at a video game company and also had to tighten my belt... and I managed to save maybe 13k while not drinking or partying or indulging in any luxuries.

Your experience was extremely lucky.

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