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I'm curious about how that relationship works, from your perspective.
KY: It's funny. I said this on one of the previous interviews... People always talk about Nintendo as "Nintendo," this one big great entity. From a production standpoint, they've got tons of teams. And just like any other company out there that has multiple teams, they all actually can run very differently.
So the experience on this last project was very different than the previous three that I worked on, because the group, the creative and production group at Nintendo that we worked with, was different than the previous three. So it was markedly different. The standard things that you have to deal with are cultural differences, the way of working -- you know, the standard things. So it's just about getting in a good dance step with them.
And we had a really good dance step with the previous Nintendo groups when we worked on Strikers and Punch-Out!! And then [Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon], because it's a new one, it's a new "dance partner," pretty much. So you've gotta learn things. And you also learn stuff from your previous partner -- they teach you a few things, so it makes it a little bit easier. But yeah, you've got to learn a new dance step with this group as well.
Have you thought about working with anybody else?
JC: We have worked with a lot of other companies before, and we're super happy with our relationship with Nintendo. There's no reason to look anywhere else. They keep giving us better and better IP to work with, and as long as we do our job and make good games for them there's no reason for us to venture out.
Because we're still a small shop. We're under 70 people. We like that size. For us, we're like, why would you want to go and talk with these other guys? What's it doing for your business? The guys in the company are just really, really proud of the company and proud of the games they work on.
You've found some stability. I get the sense you have a satisfaction level at the studio, and that is not 100 percent common around the industry.
JC: No. When we first started the studio, at first it was that we just wanted to make fun, cool games. Publishers were always your boss as a third-party developer, but as much as we could control making fun, cool games, that's what we did
And the big thing for a lot of us, especially with guys getting older and having families, we thought we could build an environment where we could build games and not kill guys. Not slack off, but not throw the pool table in the studio and go "Here's some free food, and more pop! Stay here forever! Eat the magical fruit!" We realize that there's a whole life outside of making video games.
And for a lot of guys, when they come to work, they're fresh, they're immersed in it, they're excited by it. They want to come to work -- they're not dragged in. It's worked out really, really well. And it's the kind of place where people want to stay -- not all the time, but when they're there, they're happy.
Again, another Miyamoto-san quote, but he always asks us, "Is the team having fun? Are they having fun making the game?" It's really important that the team's enjoying themselves there, because they feel -- and I agree -- that if you're miserable it'll follow suit in your job. How are you supposed to make an engaging Nintendo game that's actually fun? We don't do the gimmicky stuff that you hear a lot about.
There is more to the article I just wanted to but the stuff that related to my Topic title.
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