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Why is Nintendo hiding their head of indie relations? (Gamasutra)

Dan Adelman, the head of Nintendo's indie initiative, was not allowed to speak with us. This is the sort of corporate policy that perpetuates the stereotype that Nintendo doesn't work well with third parties, and is an emblem of Nintendo's reluctance to change and become more open as markets shift. As an indie developer, this is very troubling to me.
...
I've received word from a reliable source that Adelman is no longer allowed access to Twitter. You'll notice his last post was in October of last year. Apparently he wrote something along the lines of "I travel a lot, so I feel your pain," in response to someone saying they didn't like the region locking of the 3DS. This was viewed as unacceptable in Nintendo's eyes, so there you go. All they had was that Twitter account, to talk to indie devs. There are no blogs, no casual podcasts, only corporate-created messaging from Nintendo Direct. No more public voice for indie development from within Nintendo. That's it. It's gone.

Pretty interesting read. Much more at the link:

Full Article: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...lose_encounters_with_Nintendos_indie_exec.php (via GoNintendo)
 
Yup. You can make fun of Shahid all you like but you only realize why he's there when he is missing.

Both MS & Sony are moving in the right direction granted the only thing i hate about ID@Xbox is there stupid parity clause.

With the popularity of steam and PSN/XBLA opening up to indies, indies are in a paradise of support.

I sometimes wonder what planet Nintendo are on.
 

Berg

Member
"I've received word from a reliable source that Adelman is no longer allowed access to Twitter."

"No more public voice for indie development from within Nintendo. That's it. It's gone."

That escalated quickly.
 

QaaQer

Member
Apparently he wrote something along the lines of "I travel a lot, so I feel your pain," in response to someone saying they didn't like the region locking of the 3DS. This was viewed as unacceptable in Nintendo's eyes, so there you go.

Jeezuz.

I wonder what would happen if a Nintendo CBOAT ever appeared.
 

JoeM86

Member
Isn't this contrary to everything we've been hearing from indies regarding their relationship with Nintendo?

I very much doubt that Twitter was the only way to communicate with indies. Seriously. The idea of that is ridiculous & laughable. That's more like Twitter is the only way that the public sees someone communicating with indies and so now they claim there's no communication.

Also saw a complaint in the original article about Nintendo not funding indies? Does that not cause them to no longer be independent developers?
 
Except Nintendo have been going out of their way to embrace Indie and app gaming for a while, developing tools specifically for the ease of porting to Wii U:

http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/27/4155152/nintendo-app-web-devs-wii-u-javascript

I also highly doubt this guy's inexplicable silence is anything to do with his 'anti-Nintendo' stance, either.

That's hardly "going out of their way to embrace indie gaming"...

And good comunication is as important as good tools.

Isn't this contrary to everything we've been hearing from indies regarding their relationship with Nintendo?

You mean those 3 Nintendo-focused indie studios?
 

Kouriozan

Member

Mesoian

Member

Somnid

Member
I'm not sure this specifically is a problem but I do think that if they set up a Nintendo developer website with documentation, contact forms and a forum for Q and A they it would greatly help. Basically, if you want to control the message (which they do) then you need your own medium (which they don't have for this), otherwise you have to simply entrust it to third-party things like Twitter, Facebook and other websites.
 

Broken Joystick

At least you can talk. Who are you?
Read this earlier and found this disgusting.

Again, don't mistake this for me disliking Nintendo's indie guy. Dan Adelman is great. He's personable, knowledgeable, and he is in fact the sort of guy you could have a beer with and talk about anything. But Nintendo's draconian corporate tactics keep him completely under rein.

I've received word from a reliable source that Adelman is no longer allowed access to Twitter. You'll notice his last post was in October of last year. Apparently he wrote something along the lines of "I travel a lot, so I feel your pain," in response to someone saying they didn't like the region locking of the 3DS. This was viewed as unacceptable in Nintendo's eyes, so there you go. All they had was that Twitter account, to talk to indie devs. There are no blogs, no casual podcasts, only corporate-created messaging from Nintendo Direct. No more public voice for indie development from within Nintendo. That's it. It's gone.

Various other people I've talked to have corroborated with this report, Adelman was (well, is) a fantastic guy, plenty of indies would get into contact with him via Twitter and take it off from there. I could talk to him and it would be so nice to just have a face for that Nintendo-Indie relation, and now it's gone.
 

Y2Kev

TLG Fan Caretaker Est. 2009
I'm not really sure what Nintendo's larger outreach efforts have to do with them "hiding" the head of indie relations, if they really are. Kind of odd response, no?
 

Blizzard

Banned
Has anyone tried emailing Dan Adelman, using the email address listed on his Twitter? I and the other GAF people in the indie developer program have had quite positive experiences as far as I am aware. I haven't seen any cutoff of communication there.

I'm not trying to defend taking someone off Twitter, even though I realize multiple companies may do this if someone disagrees with policy -- but did developers actually use Twitter as opposed to email/forums/IRC/phone calls to communicate with Nintendo?

Various other people I've talked to have corroborated with this report, Adelman was (well, is) a fantastic guy, plenty of indies would get into contact with him via Twitter and take it off from there. I could talk to him and it would be so nice to just have a face for that Nintendo-Indie relation, and now it's gone.
Oh, I guess I didn't realize how many people would use Twitter as a starting point. I guess I'm old-fashioned. =P
 

sd28821

Member
"I've received word from a reliable source that Adelman is no longer allowed access to Twitter."

"No more public voice for indie development from within Nintendo. That's it. It's gone."

That escalated quickly.

what were you expecting its anti Nintendo and thats all that matters
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
What most people replying to the article read: "Nintendo sucks at indies" *goes to post how wrong the shitty article is Nintendo rules indies love Nintendo check out how many copies Gunman Clive sold.*

What the article actually says: "Nintendo's primary person responsible for outreach to Indies is limited by the company in the methods he's allowed to use for outreach because the company's culture is hostile to public communication. Although Nintendo still has other ways to reach out to indies, because they have a lack of public presence, some developers are no doubt slipping through the cracks."
 

Blizzard

Banned
I'm not sure this specifically is a problem but I do think that if they set up a Nintendo developer website with documentation, contact forms and a forum for Q and A they it would greatly help. Basically, if you want to control the message (which they do) then you need your own medium (which they don't have for this), otherwise you have to simply entrust it to third-party things like Twitter, Facebook and other websites.


In addition to warioworld (which I'm not a member of), the normal Nintendo indie developer program has documentation, contact info if I recall correctly, email support, a forum, and one of them has hung out on IRC sometimes.
 

Jackano

Member
I'm not sure this specifically is a problem but I do think that if they set up a Nintendo developer website with documentation, contact forms and a forum for Q and A they it would greatly help. Basically, if you want to control the message (which they do) then you need your own medium (which they don't have for this), otherwise you have to simply entrust it to third-party things like Twitter, Facebook and other websites.


https://wiiu-developers.nintendo.com
 

Blizzard

Banned
What most people replying to the article read: "Nintendo sucks at indies" *goes to post how wrong the shitty article is Nintendo rules indies love Nintendo check out how many copies Gunman Clive sold.*

What the article actually says: "Nintendo's primary person responsible for outreach to Indies is limited by the company in the methods he's allowed to use for outreach because the company's culture is hostile to public communication. Although Nintendo still has other ways to reach out to indies, because they have a lack of public presence, some developers are no doubt slipping through the cracks."
Where is the bolded quote from? Or are you paraphrasing?

The literal quote from the article is "I've received word from a reliable source that Adelman is no longer allowed access to Twitter. You'll notice his last post was in October of last year. Apparently he wrote something along the lines of "I travel a lot, so I feel your pain," in response to someone saying they didn't like the region locking of the 3DS. This was viewed as unacceptable in Nintendo's eyes, so there you go. All they had was that Twitter account, to talk to indie devs. There are no blogs, no casual podcasts, only corporate-created messaging from Nintendo Direct. No more public voice for indie development from within Nintendo. That's it. It's gone."

And that is more strongly worded than your paraphrasing in my opinion, unless there is a source for your quote that I have simply missed, in which case I apologize.
 

Scum

Junior Member
If only Iwata will put a stop to dragging everything back to NCL. I mean, NoA seems bloody pointless nowadays.

What most people replying to the article read: "Nintendo sucks at indies" *goes to post how wrong the shitty article is Nintendo rules indies love Nintendo check out how many copies Gunman Clive sold.*

What the article actually says: "Nintendo's primary person responsible for outreach to Indies is limited by the company in the methods he's allowed to use for outreach because the company's culture is hostile to public communication. Although Nintendo still has other ways to reach out to indies, because they have a lack of public presence, some developers are no doubt slipping through the cracks."

Go away, you. Stop spoiling the fun.
 

LAA

Member
Nintendo are just weird.
They're starting to seem increasingly like dinosaurs in a futuristic world. I think Nintendo really need some new blood higher up, just their attitude to this stuff is simply baffling to us.
Surely they've seen how being open is treating Sony and Microsoft to some extent. They're either so ignorant/arrogant they don't care either way, or they're even slower than I thought.

There really needs to be a a major shift in how Nintendo acts, which has been long overdue I add. It would be incredibly interesting to get an insight of how they think currently.
 
Nintendo are just weird.
They're starting to seem increasingly like dinosaurs in a futuristic world. I think Nintendo really need some new blood higher up, just their attitude to this stuff is simply baffling to us.
Surely they've seen how being open is treating Sony and Microsoft to some extent. They're either so ignorant/arrogant they don't care either way, or they're even slower than I thought.

There really needs to be a a major shift in how Nintendo acts, which has been long overdue I add. It would be incredibly interesting to get an insight of how they think currently.

They have been, for years now.
 

Gummb

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about Rayman Legends Wii U.
It reads as if Gamasutra is angry that Adelman could not respond and decided to do a speculative piece made easy because of the general negative aura surrounding Nintendo at the moment.

Pretty shameful journalism if you ask me. But whatever...

"Let's talk first about the climate Nintendo is in right now." ........ I thought we were talking about something specific to do with Adelman not being able to comment. Seriously, wtf.
 

Icarus

Member
Nintendo really needs a community manager. Like a real good one.

Actually, it's not a lack of talented people. It's Japan's fear of interacting with consumers or letting people potentially speak on "behalf of the company". There's no trust of employees or any understanding that perfectly crafted marketing messages from an official soapbox just isn't authentic or effective to an informed/passionate consumer.

To be fair, this is not a trait unique to Nintendo amongst traditional Japanese companies.
 

Scum

Junior Member
Nintendo are just weird.
They're starting to seem increasingly like dinosaurs in a futuristic world. I think Nintendo really need some new blood higher up, just their attitude to this stuff is simply baffling to us.
Surely they've seen how being open is treating Sony and Microsoft to some extent. They're either so ignorant/arrogant they don't care either way, or they're even slower than I thought.

There really needs to be a a major shift in how Nintendo acts, which has been long overdue I add. It would be incredibly interesting to get an insight of how they think currently.

That major shift for Nintendo for me would be doing the one thing Sega couldn't be arsed to do - think and act on a global scale. NoA and NoE should have been (and should now be) on the same "level" as NCL, by now.
Their Western branches should be better than this!
 

Pociask

Member
What most people replying to the article read: "Nintendo sucks at indies" *goes to post how wrong the shitty article is Nintendo rules indies love Nintendo check out how many copies Gunman Clive sold.*

What the article actually says: "Nintendo's primary person responsible for outreach to Indies is limited by the company in the methods he's allowed to use for outreach because the company's culture is hostile to public communication. Although Nintendo still has other ways to reach out to indies, because they have a lack of public presence, some developers are no doubt slipping through the cracks."

Public communication is much too risky for the company that skipped out on hosting an E3 event in favor of producing a web video, and has historically kept video game journalists distant (and has more recently embraced Nintendo Direct to completely replace them).

Is something really lost? Are there indie devs who can only access Twitter, but not an email client? I doubt it. But Nintendo is definitely losing public exposure - that might drive both more devs and more customers to their platform. Ah well.
 

Takuhi

Member
From the article:
On a basic messaging level, consider the fact that every indie publishing to Wii U from Unity can do so without cost. The license fee is waived. That's great! But how did we find out about it? Nintendo never announced it properly. It was soft-announced through indie developer Brian Provinciano, who simply wanted people to know. Nintendo couldn't even announce its own best selling point for indies. That its secretive policies go so deep is a big problem.

Wow.
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
Where is the bolded quote from? Or are you paraphrasing?

Obviously paraphrasing given that the point of my post was to assess that the thread was not correctly interpreting the article.

The literal quote from the article is "I've received word from a reliable source that Adelman is no longer allowed access to Twitter. You'll notice his last post was in October of last year. Apparently he wrote something along the lines of "I travel a lot, so I feel your pain," in response to someone saying they didn't like the region locking of the 3DS. This was viewed as unacceptable in Nintendo's eyes, so there you go. All they had was that Twitter account, to talk to indie devs. There are no blogs, no casual podcasts, only corporate-created messaging from Nintendo Direct. No more public voice for indie development from within Nintendo. That's it. It's gone."

Public voice, which is what I referred to, and what everyone in the thread was missing. No one is saying Nintendo can't talk to Indies, they're saying that their public presence on an ongoing basis no longer exists. Any communication they're doing is behind the scenes or at ad hoc events.
 

JoeM86

Member
Public communication is much too risky for the company that skipped out on hosting an E3 event in favor of producing a web video, and has historically kept video game journalists distant (and has more recently embraced Nintendo Direct to completely replace them).

Is something really lost? Are there indie devs who can only access Twitter, but not an email client? I doubt it. But Nintendo is definitely losing public exposure - that might drive both more devs and more customers to their platform. Ah well.

To be fair, that's because many of the journalists were posting mistranslations of what Iwata said in many interviews/investor meetings, as well as completely ignoring some Nintendo reveals, so what choice did they have. This is the reasoning Iwata gave for the focus on the Direct in an Investor meeting, if memory serves.
 
What most people replying to the article read: "Nintendo sucks at indies" *goes to post how wrong the shitty article is Nintendo rules indies love Nintendo check out how many copies Gunman Clive sold.*

What the article actually says: "Nintendo's primary person responsible for outreach to Indies is limited by the company in the methods he's allowed to use for outreach because the company's culture is hostile to public communication. Although Nintendo still has other ways to reach out to indies, because they have a lack of public presence, some developers are no doubt slipping through the cracks."

shh, no logic, only persecution complexes
 

LAA

Member
They have been, for years now.

Yeah yeah very true.
Just more noticably so recently. I guess its simply because Nintendo are doing bad now and their flaws are finally costing them and (hopefully) force them to change in the end, while before, with the Wii for example, they didn't feel the need to change, since they sold the most that gen.

That major shift for Nintendo for me would be doing the one thing Sega couldn't be arsed to do - think and act on a global scale. NoA and NoE should have been (and should now be) on the same "level" as NCL, by now.
Their Western branches should be better than this!

Yeah, they do need to do that and its long overdue honestly global level though. Some points based of this are like... SMT4 for EUR, really feel for those fans. TVii another example, an app thats been useless on European Wii U Gamepads since launch. An older example was SSBB for europe... At this point I really want into importing, never did it before, but I wanted SSBB so bad and the delays were just....infuriating, I eventually imported it and got this region swap disc so I could play it, this is a great reason for consoles to never be region locked again and I hope its now behind us with MS/Sony both behind it.
The weird thing is they're not even "up-to-date" as far as Japanese culture is. Like they're all using mobile phones, they're all on the internet. Why do I still get the impression from them that they feel the internet is some new, complex thing? Its been around for a while now you know......

The main problem with Nintendo for me is just they're very closed off, and I feel they're simply arrogant/ignorant. I remember on a thread here that devs asking Nintendo for help had to translate the questions to japanese to ask the team (Which took days), and were told to not use terms like PSN/XBLA because they don't understand what they mean. How can they afford to not even know their competitors? Espicially in an age where their competitors are beating them presently, and Nintendo haven't really been on the positive side of news for a while now...
 

Mesoian

Member
To be fair, that's because many of the journalists were posting mistranslations of what Iwata said in many interviews/investor meetings, as well as completely ignoring some Nintendo reveals, so what choice did they have. This is the reasoning Iwata gave for the focus on the Direct in an Investor meeting, if memory serves.

That's why they have reggie though.
 

entremet

Member
Nintendo media policies have always been weird.

Back in the late 80s, they backballed EGM because EGM imported Famicom titles and previewed them in their magazine, essentially scooping Nintendo Power, which sought to control the information of the Japanese scene.
 

Neff

Member
That's hardly "going out of their way to embrace indie gaming"...

Well, whatever it is, it's working. Wii U and 3DS have -and are getting- extensive Indie content, including many exclusives, and several Indie developers have spoken out about how the eShop is an ideal climate for them.

...this is from a year ago. 6 months before whatever happened with Adelman happened.

Like I said, I don't that's related or relevant. Nintendo are weird and isolated, yes, but they're not silencing this guy, and if they are, it's nothing to do with their 3rd party narrow-mindedness.
 

Gummb

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about Rayman Legends Wii U.

"And it would have, if Nintendo's corporate policy hadn't gotten in the way. Dan Adelman, the head of Nintendo's indie initiative, was not allowed to speak with us. This is the sort of corporate policy that perpetuates the stereotype that Nintendo doesn't work well with third parties, and is an emblem of Nintendo's reluctance to change and become more open as markets shift. As an indie developer, this is very troubling to me."

..."I don't blame Adelman. I know him, and I know this is the kind of thing he would like to do. It wasn't his decision. It's Nintendo's policy not to privilege the individual. It's Nintendo's policy to keep messaging corporate, not personal. These policies originate all the way up in the Japanese office, as staff members continually tell me, but this approach is not the way of things today, and it shows how far behind Nintendo is in terms of its relationship with third party developers, and how it operates as a company: keeping everyone in check, rather than letting innovation and new ideas lead, as its executives keep saying they want to. It shows how far the company still has to go to prove to indies that we should be putting our games on its platform."

The article is taking a specific experience and using it to represent Nintendo as a whole based on very very little. It's pretty bad journalism. But I don't really care because I'd like Nintendo to be more open to its fans and communicate better. However, so much Nintendo negativity is fabricated. It's a company that makes good games and offers certain features in its devices. Nintendo isn't "behind the times," it actually exists in the modern world. Nintendo doesn't "brick wall" its employees, it has corporate policies that they think are best, and probably based on several twitter horror stories that happen all the time in the gaming industry. Who knows?

Anyway, yes, I would like Adelman to be able to talk to whomever he wants. I will express that. But this article is a pretty funny reaction to that.
 
While the article does raise some very valid points (like Nintendo's stupid policy with not letting their people communicate in publicity), I do feel it does kind of ignore some things. Sörine put it well on the other thread:

sörine;109482124 said:
I always liked and respected Sheffield (as I would anyone who loves the PC Engine as much as he does) but this article comes off as very badly researched and really reads like he's holding Nintendo to a different standard than Sony or MS. I mean he holds up things like the PS Blog, E3 presentations or last gen indie moneyhats and buyouts like Minecraft or thatgamecompany's titles as shining examples of indie outreach but downplays Nintendo Direct as simple corporate messaging. Nevermind that Nintendo also features indies routinely at tradeshow presentations, gives them youtube showcases and handpicks their projects for publishing and localization. This doesn't even get into the dev support end of it which Nintendo has been matching or exceeding competitors in with stuff like loaner kits, free Unity Pro, Web Framework and so on.

He also singles out 2D Boy and Renegade Kid as unique counter examples of some implied general failure on Nintendo's part with both developer spotlighting and eShop sales but even just a cursory browsing of developer interviews, company press or the eShop itself will prove otherwise with examples like Frozenbyte, Black Forest Games, Nicalis, Yacht Club, Collecting Smiles, Wayforward, Shin'en, Gaijin Games, Vblank, Dako Dako, Genius Sonority, Spicysoft, Jupiter, Neogaf's own beril and many more highlighting success and support on the platforms. Two examples of off record failures doesn't exactly make a compelling case to counter that.

I think the worst part is that in so obviously stacking the deck against Nintendo in the article it overshadows the very real and worrying problems Sheffield bring up in this area; limiting Dan Adelman's public access to the community, weak hardware sales, bad store design/discoverability and a perhaps not enough effort into general PR messaging (although I'd argue the latter is company wide and not so much indie/eShop specific). Those are really the things that should've been pushed rather than easily disprovable claims that Nintendo isn't doing some things they actually are or that a range of developers aren't seeing the success they actually are.

From the article:


Wow.
I'm pretty sure they did announce it and Gamasutra had an article about it. If I remember correctly, it was at least in an interview with Dan Adelman earlier (like late 2013 I think), but I might be remembering wrong.
Of course, they most certainly haven't spoken out loud about it nearly enough still, but it's not like it wasn't known before Brian Provinciano tweeted about it.
edit: late 2012 I meant of course, and yeah someone linked the article later on the thread.
 
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