[HN Gopher] People who made the original Super Mario Bros shippe...
___________________________________________________________________
People who made the original Super Mario Bros shipped Wonder 38
years later
Author : I-M-S
Score : 286 points
Date : 2023-10-26 09:45 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nintendo.com.au)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nintendo.com.au)
| boiler_up800 wrote:
| I'm trying to imagine myself crafting saas apps for 38 years.
| ulizzle wrote:
| Imagine running 'rm -rf node_modules' forever. Sounds like the
| 3rd circle of hell
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| If you expected to do this for 38 years, you would probably
| start building better tools. There was a time before Node,
| and there will be a time after it.
| endemic wrote:
| I'm a low level corporate drone -- you think I have any
| autonomy? 20MB React app? That's just the way things are!
| mohaine wrote:
| I think you dropped a zero there.
| thakoppno wrote:
| `npm ci` does that for me. it's fine.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| > Peter Gibbons: What if we're still doing this when we're
| fifty? Samir: It would be nice to have that kind of job
| security.
|
| From "Office Space" - welcome to the club.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I certainly wouldn't want to limit it to "SaaS apps," but I
| feel excited enough about the web to be making web sites for
| 38+ years.
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| If you don't enjoy your job at all then it's probably time to
| look for one that you do enjoy on some level.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I didn't really realize that Nintendo was that good at keeping
| talent. I guess it kinda makes sense, they seem to have a vastly
| different culture than game developers have here.
|
| It is also interesting to compare this to the stories that came
| out of breath of the wild of them specifically asking their newer
| developers for the crazy ideas and that leading to how great BoTW
| was. However given just how crazy Wonder is I have to imagine
| this was still the case here.
|
| Super Mario Bros Wonder really is an amazing game. I have
| struggled at times with putting it down and going to bed. This
| will likely be my first 100% Mario game. (Can we talk about the
| Singing Piranha Plants in the second level!)
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Not really that surprising when you have reports such as these:
|
| > https://www.bbc.com/news/business-25941070
|
| > https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/02/nintendo-is-
| raisin...
|
| It's important to notice that both of these initiatives
| happened when the company was facing downturns. It is easy to
| be a good employer when things are going great, not so much
| when things are not as rosy.
|
| Add that to the Japanese working culture where tenure is merit,
| and staying in the same company is valued by employers in
| general.
| velcrovan wrote:
| Whereas in the US: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti
| cle/abs/pii/S00221...
|
| (from HN a few days ago IIRC)
| kmlx wrote:
| > Add that to the Japanese working culture where tenure is
| merit, and staying in the same company is valued by employers
| in general.
|
| imo this is by far the biggest driver of "keeping talent".
| japanese society and businesses don't reward people that jump
| from job to job.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| This can have negative effects too. While I don't think
| "society" (who's that?) rewards people who job-hop.
| However, being willing to move to the employer who values
| you the most every couple of years is bound to increase
| your salary, because you're optimising your match to the
| market. I wonder how Japanese businesses avoid recognising
| this value, unless they just frown on people moving around.
| kmlx wrote:
| true, but japanese society values stability more than
| anything. as such, the value of increasing salary by job-
| hopping is dwarfed by the unpredictability it generates.
|
| but there are a lot of other negative effects. being
| stuck in a dead-end job is a common issue for example.
|
| of course, i am heavily generalising here, so grain of
| salt and all of that.
| my12parsecs wrote:
| Japan is basically socialism when it comes to values and
| the actions people take. Limited tolerance for big change
| or extreme competition, very static communities and low
| mobility. It used to work uptill the 80's, but in the age
| of innovation and change, it's backfiring.
| dragontamer wrote:
| That's not what socialism means.
|
| Socialism is state-controlled means of production, IIRC.
| a_cardboard_box wrote:
| Socialism is worker-controlled means of production.
| State-controlled means of production is socialism if the
| workers control the state (which is generally not the
| case for states that call themselves "socialist").
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| Youre kidding yourself if you think the average worker in
| Japan has much say in the company, or how those companies
| direct the state
|
| they're conservative, in the sense they don't like
| change, but that ain't nothin to do w/ Karl M
| a_cardboard_box wrote:
| I don't think Japan is socialist.
| a1o wrote:
| There's nothing in their answer that indicates this, you
| are confusing with the other person.
| M95D wrote:
| No, that's communism, or at least what communist
| propaganda say it is. In communism the means of
| production are controlled by the state (saying they're
| controlled by the workers, but it's false).
|
| AFAIK, the means of production (large ones, not a one-
| man-tailor-shop) were never controlled by the workers,
| except maybe in the extremely short periods of anarchism.
| M95D wrote:
| No, that's communism.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Depends who you ask, but Marx used the two
| interchangeably. Lenin thought that Socialism was
| Communism stage 1.[0]
|
| But I think it's pretty normal to see Socialism as State-
| owned means of production. Trust your bureaucrats!
|
| [0] https://www.britannica.com/topic/communism/Marxian-
| communism
| dragontamer wrote:
| In any case, Japan and its history are very far away from
| Socialism / Communism. Meiji Era was pre-industrial
| Samurai. Meiji / Imperial Japan was Fascist but with the
| rise of independent companies like Mitsubishi (who had
| ties to the old Samurai families). Perhaps its best to
| use Japanese words: like Zaibatsu, to describe these
| concepts.
|
| I don't know if Capitalist is the best word for Japan,
| because those weird centuries-old Samurai families /
| companies are just an alien concept to Western-language.
| Yes, Zaibatsu is kinda-sorta like a Western Company or
| Corporation, but not really.
|
| If I were forced to put Japan on the Capitalist vs
| Communist axis, I'd say the proliferation of Zaibatsu
| clearly put them towards Capitalist slant (ie: private
| entities who control large sums of wealth). But its very
| different than Western societies or our concept of
| companies. The values system of a Zaibatsu / Japanese
| century-old company is very different from the values
| system of a traditional American mega-corp.
|
| ---------------
|
| Going back to this topic: Nintendo itself was founded in
| 1889, during this rise of the Meiji Era and Zaibatsu
| (though I don't think Nintendo ever grew to the size
| large enough to be considered a Zaibatsu... it grew up
| and existed in the era of such beasts).
|
| Due to the emphasis of longevity and company values,
| Japan has odd traditions. Such as the concept of adult-
| adoption, where some Fathers (often businessmen in charge
| of a 200, 300+ year old company) will adopt 20 to 30+
| year olds with the expectation that these adults will
| take over a family business.
|
| Does this make Japan more capitalist or socialist? Well,
| neither. Its just different and probably best to try to
| not bring Western axis (like Capitalism vs Socialism) to
| describe their society.
|
| Japanese society from Meiji era onward was undoubtably
| influenced by the British (Japan studied the history of
| the other "industrialized island", and used Britain as
| the basis for their new government / theories). And
| later, when USA took over and occupied after WW2, Japan
| further was influenced by USA. As such, I really do think
| they're more capitalist if we had to pick capitalism vs
| socialism.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| Japan's big deviation from what "capitalism" has meant
| since the 1980s, in the US and Britain, at least--which
| is to say, neoliberal economics--wasn't quite as weird to
| "westerners" at the time it was really at its height, I
| think, because we hadn't so entirely shifted our Overton
| window to put neoliberalism smack in the middle. But now,
| for sure, it doesn't look like what's usually promoted as
| healthy capitalism around here.
|
| Instead of "my half-understanding of Ricardo means I'm
| sure this will make us all better off" free trade and
| laissez-faire domestic economic policies, they pursued
| lopsided (export-focused) trade, plus heavy government
| intervention and public-private partnerships aimed at
| accelerating technological development and reducing
| domestic technical competition among the zaibatsu, in
| order to make them more competitive in foreign markets.
| Their "miracle" economy spanning decades involved a ton
| of government guidance and spending and seemingly-weird
| shit like deliberately keeping domestic prices higher
| than they otherwise could have been--with the guidance
| part maybe being the most surprising bit, to those who've
| internalized certain limited ideas about what can and
| (surely!) cannot work well in economic policy.
|
| It worked _incredibly_ well and was the first draft of
| what would become the blueprint for the "Asian Tiger"
| economic strategy.
|
| [EDIT] Big deviation in the postwar era and (kinda) up to
| today, I mean. Obviously it was doing some different
| stuff during and before WWII.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Japanese society is collectivism, not socialism. They
| have a long history and many traditions around keeping
| social harmony. This is has both good and bad effects.
|
| This gets confused for socialism because when action
| happens, everyone is on the same page and working to
| support the action. Before that point, there are lots of
| meeting and discussions to create harmony and make sure
| that everyone agrees with the action. Sometimes this is
| lead bottom up, workers will get an idea and circulate it
| to get everyone's buy in but without the upper
| management's approval, no one will try an idea for fear
| of causing offense. Which leads me in to how they are
| very authoritarianism, if the boss tells you a poster is
| blue not green, everyone will agree that it is blue. Only
| after the boss is gone will people stand around and
| question the edict.
|
| If you look at how Toyota reacted to electric vehicles,
| someone did not like the idea or their pet project was
| fuel cells and that is the direction they took for a long
| time, rather than hedge their bets and split focus that
| is what they were committed to and now they are late to
| the EV party where they had a large head start with the
| Prius.
| M95D wrote:
| > being stuck in a dead-end job is a common issue for
| example.
|
| A job would look like a dead-end only if you hate it.
| eloisant wrote:
| Western employers don't deliberately reward people who
| job-hop, but their actions actually encourage employees
| to job-hop.
|
| - Not investing in people enough (e.g. training)
|
| - Prefer outside candidates to internal promotions
|
| - Not willing to give significant raises, but willing to
| hire new people at a higher salary
|
| All those actions end up rewarding job-hoppers, even if
| it's probably not the intended goals behind this
| employers' behaviour.
| neilv wrote:
| > _Western employers don 't deliberately reward people
| who job-hop,_
|
| Don't techbro employers _also_ deliberately reward people
| to job-hop _to_ them, from where the person is currently,
| by knowingly providing a big pay bump over the person 's
| current place?
| blincoln wrote:
| > Western employers don't deliberately reward people who
| job-hop
|
| I don't know of any employers who would admit to
| deliberately rewarding job-hopping outside the
| company[1], but I suspect that's out of concern for
| potential negative consequences of admitting to the
| practice, not because they don't do it intentionally.
|
| Hiring skilled job-hoppers often makes a lot of sense.
| They bring in knowledge and experience of things that
| worked (or didn't) in other organizations. It can be a
| great way to avoid getting stuck in local maximums, and
| avoid repeating mistakes others have already made.
|
| [1] At least one previous employer deliberately rewarded
| job-hopping between roles internally, because it gave
| people a much wider base of knowledge and promoted
| empathy between people in different parts of the company.
| digging wrote:
| > Hiring skilled job-hoppers often makes a lot of sense.
| They bring in knowledge and experience of things that
| worked (or didn't) in other organizations. It can be a
| great way to avoid getting stuck in local maximums, and
| avoid repeating mistakes others have already made.
|
| Understandable. A counter would be that you can't expect
| to retain someone who's really good if this is your
| habit, but the counter to that would be that you can make
| it up if you're really cultivating a culture of hiring
| high quality job-hoppers.
|
| It's the difference between taking one extended-release
| medication or taking a new pill every hour for the same
| effect. With the ER, if you get a dud, you're in trouble
| all day. With short-lived medication, duds can be a big
| problem in the short term but overall you can still be
| getting better.
| wisemang wrote:
| It can make sense, but serial job hoppers may also keep
| bouncing to the next thing before learning what the
| medium to longer term implications are of certain
| technologies or design decisions. For example operational
| issues and maintenance.
|
| I've seen teams get screwed over by someone parachuting
| in to deliver v1 with shiny new tech and getting a pat on
| the back ($$) for a job well done. Fast forward 6-12
| months and you realize the new tech debt is as bad or
| worse as the old tech debt.
|
| That said, stagnation and sticking with Blub can also
| bring its own set of issues.
| soperj wrote:
| > They bring in knowledge and experience of things that
| worked (or didn't) in other organizations.
|
| They also bring in a lot of change for change sake
| because they don't know the current systems.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Naturally, unless your employer is the employer that most
| highly values your skills in the world, another employer
| will pay more for you. Changing job is a way of finding
| that employer who values your skills the most.
|
| That's just what will happen in companies that value
| skills more. If other companies value loyalty more, then
| their employee profile will look different.
| swatcoder wrote:
| That involves a really unrealistically narrow and
| abstract idea of "skill", where they're just some
| characteristic of an individual that manifest independent
| of the environment. In practice, people perform
| differently in different environments, and a high-
| performer with deep collegial relationships at HyperBiz
| might have pretty unimpressive impact as a newbie at
| HoopaCorp. This is even true among engineers, if not
| especially true among them.
|
| Most of us do better work around good, familiar
| colleagues (once we find them) than at the place with the
| biggest TCO budget, and many of us prefer to work
| somewhere that invites our best work more than one that
| let us buy the fancier trim line on our already-luxury
| car.
|
| The cultural distinction isn't "valuing skill" vs
| "valuing loyalty" - it's a worldview of radical
| individualism vs interdependent pragmatism.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > That involves a really unrealistically narrow and
| abstract idea of "skill", where they're just some
| characteristic of an individual that manifest independent
| of the environment.
|
| No it doesn't. This is about companies needing to hire a
| skill and valuing it more than your current employer
| values it. Companies don't hire people who are already
| performing well in their environment, because they're a
| new hire.
|
| > Most of us do better work
|
| I'm not talking about this. I'm saying, say, a web
| developer working for a scaleup with a global customer
| base is going to be worth paying more for than a web
| developer working for a company with a customer base of
| up to 1000 businesses.
|
| > many of us prefer to work somewhere that invites our
| best work
|
| This also irrelevant - I'm not saying what people should
| choose; I'm saying that moving for a raise is you finding
| somewhere that values your skills more right now.
|
| > it's a worldview of radical individualism vs
| interdependent pragmatism
|
| This is just silly biased phrasing. It's not about
| individualism at all. It's about hiring. Unless you think
| hiring individuals is radical individualism, and only
| complete teams should be hired, like the NFL.
| klyrs wrote:
| > Naturally, unless your employer is the employer that
| most highly values your skills in the world, another
| employer will pay more for you. Changing job is a way of
| finding that employer who values your skills the most.
|
| This sounds like the Peter principle.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Depends, in Portugal outside IT that usually means one
| isn't good enough keeping their job in first place, or is
| only working across low paying jobs.
|
| Not really a good sell to have CVs with long list of
| employers.
| bowenjin wrote:
| The problem with raises and promotions is that it's slow,
| requires a lot more work from the manager, and doesn't
| increase the manager's number of reports. Thus hiring
| externally is a lot easier and more beneficial to the
| manager. Especially for those managers who are serial job
| hoppers themselves.
|
| Another factor is the recruiting teams are assessed on
| conversion, how many passed phone screens, on sites, and
| offer accepts etc, but not on the performance of those
| employees after they join. So recruiters just spam anyone
| they think will have a remote chance of passing some
| stage of the interview process.
|
| There have to be consequences to hiring a bad hire for
| the recruiting team and they have to be severe enough to
| make recruiting risk averse.
|
| But this will never be the case if the organization is in
| growth mode where everything manager is trying to get as
| much headcount and hiring as fast as possible.
| tap-snap-or-nap wrote:
| Would it be inaccurate to imply that the many western
| employers are prefer to maintain by the position and
| power over their employees rather than empowering them to
| compete against abundance of competitors in their
| respective countries and on the world stage?
| rightbyte wrote:
| > I wonder how Japanese businesses avoid recognising this
| value
|
| Current employees are experts at the code base and
| processes. They have way higher value for the company
| than other equally good in general non-employees, who
| would have to spend alot of payed time to get into
| things.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| Not just code base, but that's a big part.
|
| But also processes -- a big one if you're in a large org
| -- subject matter, even simple stuff like getting a
| laptop setup and getting AD groups set up correctly for
| all roles and accesses can take a long time. I've been at
| multiple multinationals/F500s and it often took 3 months
| just to get me into things (part of that also being we
| don't give sudo/admin to the newly hired).
|
| I've known PMs from aviation work that aren't deeply
| technical but know TONS about how to drive projects in
| that sector, who to contact, what's a priority, and
| that's not something you can easily put into a udemy
| course the way you can SAP or NodeJS.
| BearOso wrote:
| This is often true. But some times the older programmers
| can't adapt to the new technology and we get technical
| disasters like the newer Pokemon games.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > can't adapt to
|
| This is probably more appropriately said as "don't know".
| To give a past example, Final Fantasy 7 was pretty famous
| for having bad character models but it didn't take long
| for the same team to figure out how to make better ones.
| FF8 had much more real-looking models. Not many games
| today look significantly better than FF15 on standard
| console hardware.
|
| Probably the "disaster" in the Pokemon game context is
| that Nintendo didn't feel the need to keep up rather than
| that they couldn't keep up. I get the feeling that the
| generation 10 games are going to be a strong counter
| statement to such comments. Likely in no small part
| _because_ the people working on it are the same people
| who released the games which critics like to call a
| disaster.
| emmp wrote:
| Nintendo does not develop the Pokemon games for what it
| is worth. The quality of Game Freak's output is notably
| lower than Nintendo first party releases in general from
| a technical perspective. Even the original Pokemon games
| are some of the most famously buggy games of any
| prominence, so it is nothing new.
| Jensson wrote:
| That was a team making gameboy games switching to making
| home console games, it will take a bit for them to adapt.
| But letting them adapt and learn new skills is probably
| better for the economy than firing them like we would do
| in the west.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I don't know about "can't adapt". As I get older my
| willingness to put up with programming fads has gone to
| zero though. I guess that is some form of can't adapt.
| Then again I have only worked for 8 years.
| tap-snap-or-nap wrote:
| We fall back on the tried, tested and more reliable
| methods and fads seem to become glaringly obvious. This
| can easily be assumed as inadaptability. Maybe I am just
| old now.
| digging wrote:
| > "society" (who's that?)
|
| It's just the average of individual persons in relevant
| positions of power.
|
| That is, if 80% of direct managers use indirect pressure
| to get employees to work more than they're contractually
| expected to, "society" expects people to be overworked.
| (totally random example, not sure if it applies to
| Nintendo)
|
| (we could discuss deeper causes, there's no saying where
| those managers learned their behavior, but that's not
| what we're measuring)
| slothtrop wrote:
| Once upon a time, things weren't so different here. Maybe
| there wasn't an explicit value judgement but you could
| expect to work 30 years in the same establishment.
| bitwize wrote:
| I think that Japanese attitudes towards work have somewhat
| shifted, especially as young Japanese eyes look a bit
| enviously to Western tech companies, with their inflated pay
| and fun culture. Really, the protracted recession they've had
| for a few decades has sown the idea that nothing is really
| guaranteed anymore like it was from postwar to about the 90s.
|
| Nevertheless, given that the five developers in question
| started work in the 70s or 80s, when the Japanese work ethic
| of "bust your ass for a company all your life and they'll
| take care of you" was very much a thing, it doesn't surprise
| me that they've all stuck with Nintendo, which itself seems
| in it for the long haul like a traditional Japanese company.
| The company has been very good about knowledge transfer from
| older generations to younger, in ways some developers (e.g.
| Sega) haven't. Mario and Zelda, for instance, are not being
| spearheaded by Miyamoto anymore. He pops in on conference
| calls to offer guidance, but the developers who worked under
| him have now taken the helm of these franchises, driving them
| in new directions while preserving their essence... and
| Miyamoto is free to pursue passion projects like movies and
| theme parks (thus actually becoming "gaming's Walt Disney").
| Aeolun wrote:
| Nintendo has a pretty massive war chest though. Increasing
| salaries by 10% is not likely to significantly impact their
| expenses/income.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| I don't know of many companies that increase salaries or
| have executives take pay cuts while sparing employees
| during downturns, irrespective of how large their war
| chests.
|
| Much to the opposite, I am more used at seeing companies
| layoff employees while posting record profits.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| The falling Yen prompted many Japanese employers to give
| raises across the board. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/new
| s/2023/03/15/business/econom...
| unicornmama wrote:
| Whereas US business execs make mass layoffs while cashing out
| hundreds of millions in equity. But at least they take "full
| responsibility"!
| prmoustache wrote:
| How much is corporate culture vs particular local culture?
| cdelsolar wrote:
| The singing piranha plants made me immediately fall in love
| with this wonderful game. My toddler now tries to play along
| too, can't wait till he's a little older so we can do two
| player mode.
| nerdjon wrote:
| That being the second level really set the tone for it.
|
| My boyfriend was watching me play and "forced" me to replay
| it a few more times after that happened. We were both just
| shocked.
| roger_ wrote:
| Loved the singing piranha plants, but have to give credit to
| Rayman Legends who did something similar 12 years ago.
| Jensson wrote:
| A music theme level isn't the same thing as a level where
| the monsters are singing and clapping. The piranha plants
| have lip synced singing and clapping which makes most of
| the music. When a new plant enters the scene you can here
| the new voice starting, kill it and that voice dies.
|
| For example, in rayman legends they have music and then
| spawn monsters with the instruments of the music, but those
| monsters has nothing to do with the music since the music
| is a static track, killing them or them spawning doesn't
| change anything.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I think it was game makers toolkit that did an episode on Mario
| Odyssey. If I remember correctly it was a new (for the series)
| director and the theme of the game was "different and
| surprising", so for example, every desert theme in Mario had
| been themed around Egypt but this time it was themed around
| Mexico (and cold!)
|
| My hot take is odyssey was a success and the idea of "different
| and surprising" as a guide for a new 2D platform we is what
| gave Nintendo Mario Wonder.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| > It is also interesting to compare this to the stories that
| came out of breath of the wild of them specifically asking
| their newer developers for the crazy ideas and that leading to
| how great BoTW was. However given just how crazy Wonder is I
| have to imagine this was still the case here.
|
| It's a double-edged sword, because Nintendo is also a top-down
| organization and much of their infamous "behind the curve"
| issues when it comes to online functionality has been
| attributed to the top brass not being familiar with it/not
| thinking it's important.
|
| BOTW was kinda the exception that proves the rule. But maybe
| with its wild success they are finally starting to change.
| xnx wrote:
| The "Bowser's Fury" portion of "Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's
| Fury" is also a delight.
| tootie wrote:
| Also, the Bowser's Fury ride at Universal Studios. Idk if the
| same team worked on the design of that ride, but it's really
| incredible. The most immersive AR experience I've ever seen.
| molticrystal wrote:
| >Can we talk about the Singing Piranha Plants in the second
| level!
|
| I told a relative the following when I tried the game day one,
| I am just glad Mario is not a pilot.
|
| Those jokes that Mario is tripping on mushrooms are made real
| in Super Mario Bros. Wonder. That is the easiest way to
| describe the game. You collect a "Flower" and pipes come to
| life, enemy plants start singing quartets to you. Otherwise the
| game reminds me a lot of SMB3+Super Mario World.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Also helping is Japanese culture of working at the same company
| as sort of a badge of honour and also seniority seem like a
| huge thing
| swah wrote:
| That makes me happy to read, as I bought a Switch (probably the
| last person to do so) to play "a little bit"...
| gambiting wrote:
| >>I guess it kinda makes sense, they seem to have a vastly
| different culture than game developers have here.
|
| I mean the place where I work still employs several people who
| worked on the original Driver game - couple of them already
| crossed the 30-year tenure threshold too. So I don't know where
| "here" is for you, but it's definitely not exclusive to
| Nintendo or Japan. 38 years is impressive though.
| goodboyjojo wrote:
| always loved mario.glad everyone is enjoying the new wonder game
| persnickety wrote:
| > Back in the NES days, video games were small enough to be
| developed by absolutely tiny teams.
|
| _Ahem_ Stardew Valley. Wordle. Almost anything on itch.io. Heck,
| NES is still getting new games:
|
| https://limitedrungames.com/collections/witch-n-wiiz
|
| I think a better point of comparison is how much time it takes to
| create a game that receives acclaim now versus then.
| Arainach wrote:
| Time is generally represented in person-hours, which correlate
| well to team size necessary to get a product out the door. Most
| individuals or tiny teams can't afford to spend multiple years
| working on something alone.
| PsylentKnight wrote:
| Yet a lot of very popular games have been made by individuals
| or very small teams. Stardew Valley, Minecraft, Terraria,
| Hollow Knight, Braid, Vampire Survivors, Slay the Spire,
| Papers Please. I think you're right that the majority of
| games are made by larger teams, but there certainly seems to
| be something to the focus in vision enabled by smaller teams.
| trealira wrote:
| There's also Cave Story, which came out in 2004. I find it
| really impressive that the creator made the art, music,
| music editor, sound effect editor, music format, game
| engine, and stage editor, with only C++ and the Win32
| interface, all while keeping a full time job (although he
| deliberately picked a low-key job at a printer company so
| he could work on Cave Story in his free time more). And
| halfway through, he got married and had kids, which slowed
| development.
| opyate wrote:
| > got married and had kids, which slowed development
|
| Story of my life!
| digging wrote:
| I think they're arguing that those tend to take their
| creators more time. I recall that a couple decades ago
| small teams could publish games in very short time frames,
| but I could be wrong.
| wincy wrote:
| Stardew Valley was a guy living in his parents house for
| four and a half years working full time.
|
| Googling says ConcernedApe spent about 10 hours a day, for
| 4.5 years, and let's say he took a day off here and there,
| you're looking at 10,000-15,000 man hours to deliver
| Stardew Valley.
|
| So that'd be around $500,000-1,000,000 (likely higher) if
| you had a team working on it, paying them all $100,000 a
| year, to get that many hours out of them.
|
| Making things on a team definitely makes things a lot more
| expensive!
| muglug wrote:
| Original interview quoted in the tweet this article regurgitates:
| https://www.nintendo.com.au/news-and-articles/ask-the-develo...
| dang wrote:
| Thanks--good catch! We changed to that from
| https://www.gamesradar.com/5-people-made-the-original-
| super-....
| jjice wrote:
| That's _wonder_-ful to see. I love the idea of being a "lifer"
| but I just can't see it happening for me. I like working on a
| variety of different things, but I think a lot of modern software
| won't have to make drastic changes the same way these devs did,
| moving from platform to platform and starting from scratch each
| time. Also, there's just too much financial reward in switching
| companies early in one's career (here in the US, at least).
|
| I'd be interested to hear from some folks that have been with
| their employers for quite a while here in HN and what makes them
| really want to stick around.
| claudiulodro wrote:
| I think at Nintendo they've probably worked on like 20 games
| over the years, which probably helps keep things fresh and
| interesting. If they were in the Super Mario codebase for 40
| years, just adding features like 2FA and CSV Export using an
| "Agile" workflow, that would make it rougher for sure.
| MikeTheRocker wrote:
| This made me laugh out loud
| cableshaft wrote:
| Also completely swapping out the technology multiple times
| over as many years, so you're re-implementing 2FA or other
| features multiple times, without anything particularly new or
| different about it, just different tech.
| xnx wrote:
| Nintendo doesn't get enough credit for making games that are
| actually enjoyable to play. Most modern AAA games look great, but
| feel like a distraction (at best), and more often just like a
| chore.
| hcks wrote:
| Yes, when I think small not at all overrated game studio
| producing very original gameplays I really think Nintendo
| cloudking wrote:
| Not only that, but enjoyable for all ages. They pay extra
| attention to details, and think about the experience from
| different age groups. For example on Super Mario Bros on
| Switch, when playing multiplayer you can tap both L+R to put
| your character in a safe bubble that floats and follows the
| rest of the players. This allows younger players to flee to
| safety in really difficult parts of levels, while older players
| can help them navigate to the next area before popping their
| bubble and bringing them back into the game. Such a small
| detail, but makes a massive difference when you're playing with
| the game with younger kids.
| xnx wrote:
| Exactly! Lots of shouting "bubble! bubble!" when playing that
| game with my friends of different video game skill levels.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| It's great. 3D world had a helpful out for the young 'uns in
| the White Tanooki suit that appeared when you died enough
| times. =)
| Fuzzwah wrote:
| I've played so much Super Mario Bros on the Wii with my young
| kids and the bubble mechanic is excellent. We've just started
| playing SMB Wonder on Switch and one of the changes is that
| it's no longer a bubble but sort of like a shooting star and
| you no longer need to manually trigger it.
|
| The new Nabbit character is also something that was added in
| the Wii-U game. This character isn't harmed by enemies, so
| can just run around only worried about environmental dangers.
| To balance this out, Nabbit can't pick up any power ups. It's
| a neat idea that returns again in Wonder, but now with more
| characters to select from you're not forced to have one of 4
| players using it.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| This used to be the reputation of Nintendo.
|
| I think it was more true in the late 90s/early 2000s. Now that
| enough time has past, it seems like the GameCube was the last
| genuine quality system and genuine quality games.
|
| After that it was just gimmicks and marketing campaigns. You
| can see this from both hardware and software sides. With TotK's
| flop, people were able to see BotW wasnt that great, and its
| getting people to take a more objective look at Nintendo
| 'Quality'.
|
| I wonder if Nintendo will continue to keep loyal people
| repeating the line about 'good Nintendo games', but with Indie
| devs making games that are more enjoyable than Nintendo, how
| much longer can Nintendo keep giving people bare minimum?
| (Honestly my bet is forever, they will turn into a gambling
| company sucking the money from their IP devotes before Nintendo
| dies)
| wodenokoto wrote:
| 18 million units sold in two months. What a flop.
| endemic wrote:
| > With TotK's flop, people were able to see BotW wasnt that
| great
|
| Uhhh, what?
| https://www.metacritic.com/browse/game/all/all/current-year/
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| While I don't agree with that poster, Tears seems hugely
| popular, many 3D Zelda games have gotten stellar reviews
| then people over time start to dislike it.
|
| Compare the Skyward Sword reviews with the remake. The
| original saw massive praise while the remake got a lot of
| flak for not fixing enough of the issues with the original.
| No idea if that's started happening to Breath of the Wild,
| but I wouldn't be surprised.
| kadoban wrote:
| There's objectively little to complain about in TotK,
| there's no realistic reason for it to age poorly. It's a
| perfected version of botw, which itself was a great game,
| and then they added a lot of new functionality and
| gimmicks to make things fresh.
|
| Skyward, even at the time you could tell that some parts
| were not going to age well or weren't even really good.
| Skyward gestured towards a lot of stuff that was
| perfected in botw/totk, but was clearly limited by
| hardware and time.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| You say that, but the reviews for Skyward also said
| things like "Every moment is a joy" and "All of the
| gameplay innovations, emotionally involving moments,
| beautiful little details, and purely blissful experiences
| in this game have me completely and utterly spoiled."
| https://www.metacritic.com/game/the-legend-of-zelda-
| skyward-...
|
| Maybe Tears is actually good enough to survive the test
| of time. From the outside, I can easily imagine people in
| ten years saying "then I needed to craft a slightly
| different car for the billionth time."
| kadoban wrote:
| There's always poor quality reviews.
|
| I'm just talking about from my own personal experience of
| playing Skyward and TotK both pretty soon after each came
| out, it was easy to tell which would age better.
|
| > From the outside, I can easily imagine people in ten
| years saying "then I needed to craft a slightly different
| car for the billionth time."
|
| Doesn't sound realistic, I mean there's a whole mechanic
| in the game to avoid that problem. I get that that's just
| an example, but it seems indicative of what I mean, you
| really have to work to find much to complain about beyond
| nitpicks. The devs clearly understood their game and
| worked hard to fix many of what otherwise would have been
| issues.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| _With TotK 's flop, people were able to see BotW wasnt that
| great_
|
| What a strange, trivially falsifiable take.
| kemenaran wrote:
| Kazuaki Morita was a programmer on Mario Bros., Zelda NES, Zelda
| SNES, Zelda Game Boy, Zelda 64, where he did the bosses and
| fishing game; among many others.
|
| He was often assigned the most challenging programming tasks. His
| coding style is so specific that it even shows in disassembled or
| decompiled code ("Ha, this file is classic Morita").
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| Can you elaborate on Morita's coding style?
| hospitalJail wrote:
| That is a resume.
|
| I wonder how he feels about modern Nintendo. I feel like I'm
| second hand embarrassed for them.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| ... why? Nintendo's arguably at its peak in a long time
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| Don't be.
|
| I feel Nintendo is doing fine. "Their" biggest letdowns are
| the modern pokemon games, but those are somewhat outsourced.
| hcks wrote:
| I mean they've been shipping the same game every year for all
| this time too
| seanhunter wrote:
| Not sure what you're getting at here. The amount of innovation
| in these Mario games is astonishing. It's not like "Madden" or
| "Fifa" or goodness knows annual franchises like "Assassin's
| creed".
|
| In "wonder" for example every single level has some sort of
| crazy unique mechanic that is distinctive to that level.
| Videogame dunkey has a good summary of wonder showcasing these
| innovations specifically
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXhfuicuUa0
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _So it 's been almost 11 years since the release of the
| previous title, New Super Mario Bros. U._
|
| _Mouri: Yes. While Super Mario Maker (7), Super Mario Maker 2,
| and New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe were released after the
| launch of the previous title, this is the first new 2D Mario
| game in almost 11 years._
|
| I don't think "same game every year" is a fair characterization
| of what Nintendo is doing. They do the "yearly release" less
| than almost any major game company.
| hx8 wrote:
| This is getting downvoted, but I openly wonder how many ports
| and emulations releases Super Mario Brothers has received.
| Fuzzwah wrote:
| Down the bottom of the wikipedia page there's a good list;
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros.
|
| 2D Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels 1,
| 2, 3 Land World Land 2: 6 Golden Coins
| World 2: Yoshi's Island New Wii New Super Mario
| Bros. 2 New Super Luigi U Maker Run
| Maker 2 Wonder
|
| 3D Super Mario 64 Sunshine Galaxy
| Galaxy 2 3D Land 3D World Bowser's Fury
| Odyssey
|
| Spin-offs Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3
| Super Princess Peach Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
| Super Mario Bros. 35 Princess Peach: Showtime!
|
| Remakes and compilations Super Mario All-
| Stars Advance 4 64 DS 3D All-Stars
| Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros.
| hx8 wrote:
| I was specifically talking about things like the gameboy
| advanced release of Super Mario Bros, the 3DS release, the
| Wii Virtual Console release of Super Mario Bros, and
| Nintendo Online release of Super Mario Bros, the NES
| Classic Edition, the Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros.
|
| Where literally the exact same game as the 1985 classic is
| resold.
| christophilus wrote:
| I think the original Mario brothers, then the 3rd one, then
| Yoshi's Island, then 64, then Odyssey, then Wonder-- that list
| (and probably some of the ones I left out) couldn't in any sane
| way be considered a list of "same" games.
| phatfish wrote:
| Nintendo is one of the few places where you can see ideas being
| iterated and improved from game to game. The quality may go
| down now and then, but they learn from mistakes and try to make
| the next game better and unique. The Switch generation
| especially has nailed all their big names.
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