Whether or not we want to admit it, the video game industry is a business. If it was easy to make games, everyone would do it, and we’d have tens of thousands of unique titles across the board every single year instead of iterations from various franchises, remasters, remake, clones, and indie games of a “certain nature.” You know what we’re talking about. The point is it’s not easy to work in the video game industry, and with the world as it is, even the wages of a game developer might not be enough to afford living costs. That’s why Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa ensured that his employees were taken care of with a recent pay increase.
During a recent shareholders meeting, the lead man for the Big N admitted that in his mind, one of the most important ways for the company to stay competitive in the gaming field is to treat the employees well and respect them beyond simply making the games. After all, he knows that without them, they wouldn’t have a product to sell:
“Currently, we are experiencing unprecedented levels of global inflation, and in Japan, we understand that people are facing increasing financial pressure in their daily lives. For this reason, to deal with long-term and continuing changes in the environment, Nintendo increased the base salary for all employees in Japan by 10%, separate from the annual wage increase.”
He said that while there were some comments about the “lesser dividends they’d get” due to this move, many people praised it because of the company taking care of their own versus valuing profit alone.
Shuntaro Furukawa also noted that Nintendo isn’t the only company increasing pay to help the workers.
If you look beyond that, though, you’ll notice that Nintendo is trying to prove that it’s “there for its employees” in these trying times. Something that not every video game company can say with 100% honesty.
For example, look at what’s gone down in Activision Blizzard, where employees rose up against terrible behavior, and the company leaders dismissed them, tried to deflect the damage, and are now looking to get significant paydays if a certain deal goes through.
Or how about Bioware? The company was once the cream of the crop, but then, through pressure by EA, which is just as guilty of various worker-related crimes, forced their teams to grind for months on end just to put out a game that bombed at launch.
So hearing that a company is more focused on the employees being happy and thriving versus just “getting the next game out” is refreshing.
