Former Nintendo Risk Employee Retro Studios with Models – ntower

The Video game development Very complicated. The process begins a few months before the first line of code is written. In the beginning there is an idea, from which, over time, first Prototype Arises. Every company has a different approach. In a podcast, The Former Retro Studios employee Jack Matthews In this regard, Nintendo’s view.

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Contracts are often structured that way [Publisher aus dem Westen] – If you want to create a prototype – often have to sign a long-term contract for the whole game […]Before starting the prototype.

It destroys what you are already doing with the prototype because you still have to figure out how much it will cost for this thing you don’t know much about.

According to Matthews, Nintendo and other Japanese companies approach the issue differently. Because most of their titles are designed within internal groups, they are willing to take risks and prototypes are often seen as “sunk prices” until the finished product generates revenue.

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[Nintendo] Know that this is the only way to go. It’s about the relationship between risk and reward, where you put risk and where you see reward.

According to a former Retro Studios employee, transactions in Japan are often informal and “handshake”, while Western publishers often do not trust the developers and fear that they will take the prototype and go to the next publisher to create the finished product. There.

Have you already worked on a product and created a prototype?