Working for Nintendo Isn’t What You Think
A former Nintendo employee claims that working at the company isn’t as fun as you might think. Giles Goddard was employed by the giant gaming company in the 90s and worked on games like Star Fox with Shigeru Miyamoto. He describes his experience like working in a factory, and claims that very long hours were a common occurrance.
“It’s such a clinical, rigid way of working,” Goddard said. “It amazes me they get so much creativity out of that place, with Zelda and Mario. You go there and it’s white, it’s clinical cubicles and bells ringing for lunch and for going home. How they get any creativity out of that place is beyond me, but they do it.”
Goddard did say that there was some room for some fun and experimentation, though.
“You couldn’t dick around in the way you work, you could dick around with the things you did, making demos,” he said. “You couldn’t dick around with your timecard, being late and not working overtime. You can dick around with the things you’re actually doing, and they encouraged that playfulness.”
As for the present. Goddard suggests that the company has become more money-minded, which worries him, as he believes it’s a problem with the entire industry.
Despite Goddard’s experiences, it doesn’t come close to the reports of working for Konami, which sounds more akin to being a prisoner.
But surprisingly, Hideo Kojima has said positive things about the company, even after their publicized falling-out. Most of the positivity seems to stem from the opportunities he got to capitalize on.
“You couldn’t say ‘well my specialty is….’ I remember having to study and work very hard, only sleeping three hours each day,” he said. “If I didn’t have that experience I wouldn’t have been able to continue until where I’m at today. I had both information on the micro bits as well as a macro viewpoint of the whole project.”