Random: Nintendo Is A “Wonderful” Place To Work If You’re A Genius, According To Former Employee

If you’ve ever dreamed of working at Nintendo in Japan and happen to be an “average person”, you might want to reconsider.

Former Nintendo employee and 45-year-old video game artist Miura Koichi recently shared some insight about the company on social media – describing his time there as “hell” because he was just an “average” employee. This post ended up going viral and received 25 million views.

He further explained how Nintendo was like a “haven for geniuses” and superhumans, and while he truly thinks the company and its employees are “wonderful”, it’s apparently not where you want to be if you can’t match this level of enthusiasm. This allowed Koichi to realise he wasn’t actually suited to the role and so he decided to pursue other goals.

任天堂はものすごい会社でしたでも気安く人に勧める気にはなりませんそこは超人と天才の巣窟だったからです凡人の私には地獄でしたおかげで自分には向いていないと気づいたし別の方向を目指そうと決心ができましたそれが任天堂で働いて得た最大の成果ですですから目指して達成して諦めたことに…— Buncho | Koichi Miura 👑 おっぱいの王におれはなるっ!!! (@BunchoCG) November 7, 2023

Koichi is now a freelance CG designer and has previously worked at companies like Bandai Namco and Square Enix. He also went into detail about the salary he received at each company throughout his career, revealing how he jumped from around $46,000 at Square Enix to $70,000 when he joined Nintendo.

Koichi is no longer seeking permanent employment so he doesn’t feel he has anything to lose from revealing this information and hopes to improve transparency about working conditions in Japan. He also stressed how he didn’t want to deter anyone from joining Nintendo, he just wanted to share his own experience and hurdles.

Although this might not be the most glowing account, Nintendo does seem to have a lot of appeal – with a report in September revealing it had an employee retention rate of 98.8% in Japan, which is well above the nationwide average of 70%.