http://kotaku.com/5940672/pissed-off-employees-bash-pretty-much-every-major-video-game-company
Sounds like Nintendo in Japan will not let NOA be aggressive
This is an interesting story. Although one has to take a grain of salt that developers complaining about the company might be in the wrong. “Wah! Why won’t they give me billions of dollars for my game idea? THEY HATE CREATIVITY!” If developers were businessmen, they probably wouldn’t be leveraged by these big companies by making games in the first place.
About Activision:
it always felt like the execs just want to be in hollywood. they make frequent, huge expenditures to play with hollywood instead of investing it back into the company (new IPs?) or its employees.
Did you know that Blizzard does a TON of business with Hollywood now? The infamous Blizzard cinematics are no longer made in-house. All voice acting (and perhaps all sound) are now done by unionized Hollywood actors. It is not the merging of Activision and Blizzard that hurt Blizzard so much as the merging of Activision and Hollywood.
About Blizzard:
Regarding career development, I asked the lead game designer for WoW about what it would take for me to move from being a tools programmer to a game developer. My problem was I had no experience, and all job requirements say you need at least 2 shipped titles. Guess what his answer was!? He told me “to be quite honest, you’ll probably have to leave Blizzard, get some experience else-where, then come back to work here”. You’ve gotta be freakin’ kidding me if you consider that career growth, and advancement opportunities.
This sounds accurate. Blizzard loves hiring developers from other companies especially RTS games. The people behind Diablo 3 and WoW (as well as Starcraft 2) all put out RTS games not made by Blizzard (Company of Heroes, Age of Empires, and Red Alert 2).
– A lot of “old-timer” employees that has been with the company for a long time that do not do much work but yet, because of Blizzard’s emphasize [sic] on seniority and loyalty, their jobs are very secure. They happen to be the most political as well.
Nintendo also has this problem as well. Seniority is obsolete in this new era. Nintendo never fires anyone… except Gunpei Yokoi who apparently did more for the company than anyone else.
Nintendo of America-
No layoffs means no change. Many of the management are there for 20+ year, and proud of it.
Nintendo never fires anyone. They should.
Many of them joined Nintendo fresh out of college, or in some cases, high school. They do not know how the world outside Nintendo works. They do not know managers in the other successful companies are highly educated and competitive.
Ain’t this the truth? My gut feeling is that NOA has ‘sheltered’ people in it who strongly resemble the ‘sheltered’ hardcore gamers. Since Nintendo is a Japanese company, NOA attracts people who are fans of Japanese culture. Many these people aren’t right in the head. What I mean by this is that they seem like huge fans of anime, cutesy Japanese stuff, think rhythm games are fun, think Cave Story is the game of century, and seem to have an almost toddler approach toward gaming. They probably think the Gamecube is the greatest console ever made as well and think the 3DS is ‘fabulous’. My gut instinct on this is being motivated by the sugary style NOA keeps operating in with its choices of marketing and all. NOA in the past used to be more down to Earth.
The review in ONLY top down. No manager gets comments from subordinates. No use to complain to manager above, as they all protect themselves, knowing the limitation of their competencies. They really need 360 degree review process.
This sounds like the Japanese. While this is NOA and not NCL, this is why people like Sakamoto and Aonuma are so well protected despite the disasters they bring.
Clayton Christensen remarked that managers tend to blame someone lower than themselves. For a company that once heralded disruption, Nintendo needs to keep the focus on the top managers. Blaming the underlings doesn’t solve anything.
Cons – Extremely hierarchical. Decisions are made in Japan and NOA employees are expected to execute. Initiative is not encouraged.
Yep. The only thing NOA is to ‘initiate’ is sales.
Another one of my gut feelings is that surveys like the one NOA or NOE did about NSMB is not because they want to know what we think. They already know. They can read the reviews, our forum posts, this blog, etc. But they make it to show NCL.
Sony Computer Entertainment in America:
Senior management that is not only incompetent, but insane. They seem to pick their sr mgt based on: nepotism, BS skills, or whoever can manage to wait it out there…..15+ years. Imagine that!
hahahah
Valve:
Pros – good quality of life, and being surrounded by creative people. there are many reasons to work at valve. the standards are pretty high, but they push you and really make you strive for the newest, best thing. there is no formal management structure, and responsibility is given on a competence level or if one asks for it. there is lots of room to try new things, so you feel like you are learning all the time. i have been at valve for many years and found it to be extremely rewarding, both in a business sense and personal one.
Cons – very competitive internally (high standards).
Advice to Senior Management – more insight into what’s happening at the company, future plans.
Note the lack of mention of anything to do with games. It’d be very fun to work at a game company that doesn’t make any games (and polishing off other people’s mods is not game making).
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