See also: Nintendo of America (NOA) undertakes some hardware and software development, as well as localisation work, but it is primarily a marketing and customer service company. Parent company Nintendo of Japan (NCL) is no stranger to troubling issues that are sadly commonplace in software development, such as ‘crunch’, compulsory overtime in the final stages of a project.
Gabe Durham’s book on Majora’s Mask for the Boss Fight Books series recalls some notable examples:
Today, “crunch” in the video game industry is more commonly recognized as exploitation, leaving developers burned out and often undercompensated from overly demanding workweeks. In 2000, weary developers had to smuggle their complaints into the game itself. Leung pointed out that “the game is filled with little winks” about the developers’ busyness. The carpenters in Clock Town, for instance, who are building a tower for the Carnival of Time, “constantly wonder if they’ll ever finish the job on time, and their musings are actually thinly-veiled reflections revealing the programmers’ anxiety to finish developing the game according to schedule.”
