We Should Care More That Nintendo Doesn’t Say Who’s Developing Its Games

By 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Stacey Henley

Published Jun 25, 2024

Followed

Summary

We still don't know who's making Echoes of Wisdom or Brothership
Despite Nintendo's decades-long philosophy of creative encouragement, this new strategy goes against that
It robs devs of recognition and leaves fans feeling confused

There are plenty of business practices Nintendo does that major Western publishers should learn from. Thanks as much to Japanese labour laws as Nintendo's philosophy, mass layoffs like the sort that have plagued Western development over the past few years are exceedingly rare. Nintendo also places a higher priority on creativity and fresh ideas than cutting-edge graphics, meaning more artistic fulfilment for devs. And again, thanks to those labour laws, crunch is far less common (). But Nintendo could learn a thing or two from the West as well.

Why Won't Nintendo Say Who Is Developing Mario & Luigi: Brothership

Mario and Luigi fly toward the camera headed for parts unknown in Mario & Luigi Brothership.

When we say 'Nintendo is making a new 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Mario & Luigi', what we mean is 'we don't know who's making a new Mario & Luigi'. As was the case with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Princess Peach Showtime, we won't learn who the developer of Brothership actually is until we roll credits on it. Traditionally, AlphaDream made the Mario & Luigi games, but 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:that studio closed four years ago. It's replacement? No idea!

Nintendo has said that , but how many is ‘some’, how involved are they, and is this a new studio set up specifically as a successor to AlphaDream, or is it an established studio that just hired one or two devs from AlphaDream? It's a strange level of secrecy that goes beyond keeping your cards close to your chest and instead relies on misdirecting your fans. It's not lying, but refusing to reveal who makes your games feels a little dishonest. Maybe it's to keep the mystique that Nintendo is really one big team, not a selection of acquired studios like with Sony and Xbox.

It's to paint this image that Nintendo's HQ is one big room where someone is making Mario on one computer, and next to them someone is making Zelda, and next to them someone is making Pokemon. Maybe someone is even making Kid Icarus in there! It's a big room! It's a dream factory! Maybe they'll make your dreams come true next!

Nintendo's Developer Practices Sets A Dangerous Precedent

This practice doesn't exactly rob the team of credit, since the company and all of its staff will literally be in the credits, but it feels like a deliberate attempt to obscure the devs behind the game so that credit falls singularly to the great mighty Nintendo. As far as the general public is concerned, Nintendo is making Mario & Luigi, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Super Mario Party Jamboree, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Metroid Prime 4: Beyond. It doesn't matter that some of these devs are known, and some are still a secret. They're Nintendo games, baby. That's all they need to know.

But for the hardcore, and Nintendo owes a lot of its success to the die-hards of gaming, not knowing the studio only ushers in a small grey cloud over the bright and sunny Direct. The general public don't care either way that Grezzo is almost certainly developing Echoes of Wisdom, and I say 'almost' because that isn't confirmed either. It just looks so much like Link's Awakening that it surely must be Grezzo. If this was known for a fact, most people still wouldn't care and those who did would be excited. Nintendo doesn't have any studios that feel like albatrosses, so why hide it?

It's also curiously out of step with the rest of Nintendo's attitude to developers. Thanks to pushing creativity and more healthy development cycles, many of Nintendo's legends have stuck around and are still deified to this day. We don't know Grezzo is on Echoes of Wisdom, but Nintendo made sure we knew Eiji Aonuma, who has been with Nintendo since 1991 and Zelda since 1998, is producing. Nintendo puts a lot of stock in individual names and generally has done well at promoting from within to ensure people who know the culture are able to uphold it. But doing its best to hide who is actually making its games feels like a backwards step.

It's a step we let Nintendo get away with sometimes because, well, that's Nintendo for ya. It 168澳洲幸运5♛开奖网:announced the Switch 2 in an understated tweet that simultaneously announced the June Direct. The sequel to The Super Mario Bros. Movie and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the existenceܫ of the live-action Zelda movie were also both revealed via tweets. It sits on games for ages with little rhyme or reason; 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Fire Emblem Engage was ready months before it launched, only to arrive in the January dead zone. It does odd things, and hidin🐻g the devs of its game is just another kooky Nintendo quirk. But this seems a lot less harmless, and Nintendo needs to nip this trend in the bud and tell us who♊ is making Brothership, and the rest of its games.