conor: i cannot stress how relieving it is to see the president of a major creative tech company like nintendo voice concerns about generative ai and say they’re not interested www.tweaktown.com/news/99109/n...

i cannot stress how relieving it is to see the president of a major creative tech company like nintendo voice concerns about generative ai and say they’re not interested www.tweaktown.com/news/99109/n...

Nintendo won't use generative AI in its first-party gameswww.tweaktown.com Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa has revealed that the company currently has no plans to use generative AI in its games due to IP rights concerns.

wild times when a CEO saying "I'm choosing not to destroy my company" is justifiably headline news

Live long enough and someone will bring up the time the Nintendo CEO took a paycut to prevent layoffs

Nintendo has outlived two versions of capitalism. You don't become CEO of Nintendo unless you intend to do it a third time.

That, and as most gamers know, Nintendo is VERY stingy about copyright. I know it is more to do with Japanese copyright laws as Konami is also anal about it, but still.

Nintendo was possibly founded by yakuza, and even they don't fuck with Japanese copyright law. That's brutal.

GOOD criminals absolutely know where the hard lines are and NOT to cross them.

hate them as you like, but it's undeniable that nintendo are an artist-first company. this is one of the few exceptions where their aggravating arrogance is a huge blesssing.

Nintendo's biggest problems also come from the fact that they are so artist focused. Like, a lot of artists are bitterly protective over their content and that's led them to some draconian legal wrangling, stubbornness on pricing, etc.. But I say all that knowing I prefer that over the alternative

And sorry if that came off as argumentative. I was trying to say that I agree, even if it comes with some downsides.

not at all! 💖 i think when i say "artist-focused", i'm more or less saying "they aren't treating the artists in their development teams like disposable garbage" (which is a low bar in this day and age, but still!) same can't be said for how they and NOA treat their passionate fanbase, tragically.

Definitely. My perspective comes from being a full time author for over a decade now. And I've always been a bit bothered by how many other authors are rabidly against our own fanbase because of their obsession against piracy, etc.. Creatives can be brutal in 'protecting' their work!

Japanese companies (Government and society as well) tend to be overtly protective of IPs to the point they put very strong geographical restrictions. I often can't watch content on Amazon jp that I paid for because I'm not based in Japan (well, without VPN anyway).

copyright and its consequences etc etc

I don't understand why they can't let paying customers stream from outside Japan...unless there's some underlying prejudice that outsiders always steal their content? Like the local gym in Tokyo used to say that 60% of their thefts were by foreigners (without actual evidence)...

yeah, ngl, a good part of it feels like it's rooted in the xenophobia that is still rife in japan.

they are absolutely right that people buy Nintendo games because they are made by Nintendo. not ???BlackBox???

It's a bit sad that they're only doing it for the sake of IP maximalism, though

It’s a dry, business-focused answer but it’s a valid one. It’s good they acknowledge the reliance on pre-existing work, while their peers pretend it’s a sentient magic robot that creates art from scratch

Perhaps. But, it is a step in the right direction, especially for such a massive company.

Once again a tech company with zero ethics goes "ummm AI bad?" and is massively applauded and all those petty lawsuits are forgotten. Like yeah they don't really need generative AI when their employees willingly crunch until they drop dead but who cares? Least it's not AI.

what lawsuits? also nintendo of japan is known to have very little crunch and treat and pay their employees very well.

Nintendo of Japan’s high employee retention rate means a bunch of old men at the top who won’t move. Means no women in management, new ppl join and wait for old ppl to retire. Means culture stagnates and old anti worker practices like unreported overtime continue www.msn.com/en-us/money/...

MSNwww.msn.com

its very unfortunate that nintendo of japan was for a long time unfriendly to its female employees. it seems like the company has pivoted and is moving in a better direction here. but the criticism here is the company is decent and managers don't want to leave or retire? how is that a bad thing?

High retention in a Japanese company is not necessarily a good thing. National turnover is like 10%, my last company was <3%. Means no one can be promoted until the old guard retires at 65. There are other downsides to low turnover if you research international business & hr

kotaku.com/nintendo-ame...

The Nintendo of America Contractors Who Feel Like Second Class Workerskotaku.com 'Associates' at the famed Japanese publisher complain about bad pay and an inability to voice dissent

you googled "nintendo crunch" and just copypasted the first article without even reading the headline

No, I shared an article I’ve read before from a reputable games journalism site. “Nintendo of America relies on an army of contract workers…without providing any health insurance, few opportunities to be promoted to full-time, and little recognition, both publicly and internally.”

www.thegamer.com/a-snapshot-o...

Here's a snapshot of Nintendo’s convoluted legal historywww.thegamer.com From lawsuits agaainst ROM sites to canning entire events, here's a brief overview of the company's litigious tendencies.

www.theverge.com/2022/10/13/2...

Nintendo settles labor dispute with former employeewww.theverge.com This is one of two NLRB complaints against the company.

as a response to this, you should watch this video by moon channel: youtu.be/i13hrynnGNY in it he takes up devils advocate for the litigous heavy nintendo. he wrote a couple follow up videos too, one of which completely dismantles the braindead "sega good nintendo bad" take: youtu.be/IwTXCwqurNQ 1/2

Why is Nintendo so Overprotective of its Intellectual Property?youtu.be Nintendo is famous for the extraordinary harshness with which it protects its Intellectual Property. But why exactly IS the Big N so harsh? Is Nintendo behav...

nintendo as a games company is very unique. their revenue is based almost entirely off of their ip and unlike most other companies in the industry, they never had the option to be lenient with it. fan games, streaming, uploading ripped music, all of it is copyright infringement. 2/

They also did say that they hope to deliver experience that are unique to them and not brought about by said technology though, so it’s probably a little column A little column B situation. This was a very PR answer, but honestly I’m okay with that at this point.

Nintendo is flawed. They have certainly done less to support fan works and tourneys. Their online experience is lacking and you could make the case their hardware is as aged as their philosophies. But they make good games, large and small titles with solid gameplay, also, invest in their workers.

You think too highly of the corporation. It's just that Nintendo won't be able to sue you later for using the content they generated.

Awesome, now they need to let us have ROMs of games from the Game Cube on back.

That is unfortunately a way more complicated issue that comes with way more legal issues because of how IP works, especially when you cross borders. You can still find them if you know where to look.

Well yeah, I just want Nintendo's blessing to let us have them.

Yeah, Nintendo was also at one point not interested in: - DLC - Microtransactions - Paid online - Mobile games - Finishing products post-release. What they are saying is they don't have interest atm

They allowed stereoscopic 3D, motion control and augmented reality, things that bring new experience to the games. They denied crypto, NFTs and GenAI, things that has nothing to do with gaming. They're a game company, maybe the only real one left

Nintendo is such a weird company. They're so progressive and cool about a lot of things but downright draconic about others.

Rare Nintendo w

Will they die the hero or live long enough to be a villain.

Nintendo has been a villain since day 1

Which, coming from Nintendo, is surprising. I mean, they are often one of the firsts to jump on new tech. Usually imitating Ubisoft. So, good for them. Hopefully other studios and tech industry leaders will recognise this is their best course of action. We'll see. My confidence isn't very high.

Firsts to jump on.... are we talking about the same Nintendo here?

Yeah, I know what you mean. Sometimes Nintendo does the worst thing to their fanbase and other times does the absolute best moves. It's just hard to follow them and their decisions.

Totally agree. Nintendo has some whack business practices, but they are also so much better than the competition in a lot of ways.

What's really scary to me is the way this is worded. Procedural games are generative AI (or at least what we called generative AI pre-pandemic) and are, for the most part, well loved; yet there is no ambiguity in this headline as to what they're referring to. I hate this timeline so much

I mean, I guess procedural games are AI in the same way that as ChatGPT and MidJourney are AI - that is, Not Actually Artificial Intelligence. But the point of modern "AI" LLMs etc. is to use a generalised approach to producing its random gibberish, while a good procedural algorithm did neither.

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