[blintz]

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]

Definitely unions are becoming more and more popular again for a reason!

[mpyne]

> 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.

[chaostheory]

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.

[munk-a]

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.

[blintz]

This is why I think the parallel to the movie industry is so useful: there, you also have actors/production staff/etc willing to work for essentially nothing, and an industry that, without the unions, would be more than happy to exploit them. It's not perfect, but the unions in Hollywood definitely prevent the studios from completely abusing the "doing something that you love" impulse.

[Reichhardt]

The market is fundamentally unfair: Indie developers are forced to pay 30% commissions, whilst mega-studios get sweetheart deals of 10%.

These sweetheart deals are practically impossible for Indies (including ex-AAA workers) to compete against and replicate, and its leading to industry stagnation.

As long as the standard rate at Apple, Google, Valve, Microsoft, Sony remains 30%, I would not advise anyone to work in the games industry. At least Nintendo gives customers 5% cashback on Switch, leaving an effective commission rate of 25% (a major reason why that platform has been so successful and an oasis of success for Indie devs).

The first thing a GameDev Union should fight for is fair commission on these platforms, independent of entity size.

[Sebguer]

In many cases, successful indie companies aren't much better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDPzZkx0cPs

[cwp]

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

[blintz]

You're right in some sense, I mean, software engineering is a skill that lots of companies outside of the video game industry will pay quite well for.

Still, it seems like there is a large oversupply of people who really want to work specifically on video games, and I think they deserve better working conditions than this, right? In an ideal world, there wouldn't be this Faustian bargain of "You can work on what you love, or you can be treated well at work."

[brnt]

trouble is, over here in Europe, nobody is paying.

[datavirtue]

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

[warning26]

Some of their older platforms had some pretty questionable UX decisions, but with the Switch I feel like they finally nailed it. It's simple and effective.

Even RetroArch copied the Switch UI, which indicates that at least the enthusiast community feels similarly.

[staticman2]

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.

[astrange]

Nintendo's UIs are annoyingly slow but they're better than the average Japanese website, which is a lot worse than the IRS. They seem to enjoy online stores where the checkout process is 10 clicks instead of one.

[frozenport]

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.

[t8sr]

Oh look, an internet expert. Since you’re so confident, what makes the business model not viable, exactly? Is a complicated kind of non-viability that’s somehow plastered over by the company’s wild profitability?

[munk-a]

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]

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."

[munk-a]

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.

[mpyne]

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.

[thecolorblue]

My 5 year old and I play Zelda together and both enjoy it. I think their business will do fine.