Leaving Nintendo: An employee’s parting thoughts

NattyBumppo over at Somethingawful.com has just announced that he’ll be leaving Nintendo of America (NOA), after a one and one-half year stint in the Big N’s hallways.

But aside from sad goodbyes, this programmer’s decided to look on the bright side of his stay, and is currently sharing some of the more interesting snippets he remembers in a thread titled “Inside the Mushroom Kingdom: Stories from Nintendo.”

Mushroom-eating speculation aside, he offers many Nintendo fans among us a glimpse of NOA’s office culture, and the sort things that can rub them the wrong way.

Here’s a sample of one of our favorite bits:

You’d know this if you’ve ever been to Redmond, but Nintendo is completely and utterly surrounded by Microsoft. There are Microsoft buildings less than a quarter mile to the north, south, east, and west of the company’s HQ. There’s just one single, vacant lot to the north of NOA that Nintendo owns and Microsoft’s constantly trying to buy, but Nintendo won’t budge. I’m convinced it’s a secret NOA command outpost.

Other highlights:

• Pretty much everybody at NOA thinks that “Ninty” is a stupid nickname.
• Nintendo pays attention to gaming news websites and forums. They actually care about what their customers think.
• Big gaming companies like Nintendo employ a lot of people – and there are actually a lot of people who don’t play games. They’re not gamers – they just happen to work for a gaming company. This changed with the Wii. Non-gamers swamped the company store with orders.

Congratulations to the Wii. And congratulations to you, NattyBumppo. Parting is such sweet sorrow.

NattyBumppo over at Somethingawful.com has just announced that he’ll be leaving Nintendo of America (NOA), after a one and one-half year stint in the Big N’s hallways.

But aside from sad goodbyes, this programmer’s decided to look on the bright side of his stay, and is currently sharing some of the more interesting snippets he remembers in a thread titled “Inside the Mushroom Kingdom: Stories from Nintendo.”

Mushroom-eating speculation aside, he offers many Nintendo fans among us a glimpse of NOA’s office culture, and the sort things that can rub them the wrong way.

Here’s a sample of one of our favorite bits:

You’d know this if you’ve ever been to Redmond, but Nintendo is completely and utterly surrounded by Microsoft. There are Microsoft buildings less than a quarter mile to the north, south, east, and west of the company’s HQ. There’s just one single, vacant lot to the north of NOA that Nintendo owns and Microsoft’s constantly trying to buy, but Nintendo won’t budge. I’m convinced it’s a secret NOA command outpost.

Other highlights:

• Pretty much everybody at NOA thinks that “Ninty” is a stupid nickname.
• Nintendo pays attention to gaming news websites and forums. They actually care about what their customers think.
• Big gaming companies like Nintendo employ a lot of people – and there are actually a lot of people who don’t play games. They’re not gamers – they just happen to work for a gaming company. This changed with the Wii. Non-gamers swamped the company store with orders.

Congratulations to the Wii. And congratulations to you, NattyBumppo. Parting is such sweet sorrow.