Technology Stuff from Hey there, and welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. And if thingn't sound a little odd today, it's because I'm actually recording in my home studio, my home studio which is got a window facing out towards train tracks. It's not an ideal situation, but it's what I have to work with. And today we're going to look at the third part of the Nintendo Story, the update to the two part series that my former co host Chris Palette and I did way back in two thousand eleven. So back then, at that point that we you had not yet been released and had been announced but not released. So we've got a lot to catch up on. And I'm going to pick up in two thousand eleven and carry on up through present day. Also, I want to get this out of the way first thing. There will be a point in this podcast at the end of the episode in which I talk about stuff relating to gamer Gate. Now, I want to say this. I can't be any more clear than this, harassment tactics have no place in society, period, end of discussion. Now, I believe wholeheartedly that you are free to criticize the video game industry and video game journalism. That is perfectly fine. It is something that you should do if you truly believe in it, if you can do it in a way that isn't an attack on people. If you think that video game journalism is broken, or that the people who oppose gamer Gate that they are wrong, that's also fine. That's something we can actually have a conversation about. Isn't fine is using bullying tactics, threats, insults, dox sing, and other methods to terrify or silence someone. That is not fine, period. And if you think I'm wrong, unsubscribe to this podcast. I do not want you listening to my show, Okay. I don't want people who think it's fine to make another human beings life miserable to be listening to tech stuff. So if if that's something that you think is cool or funny, unsubscribed, I don't want you listening to the show. Now. I say all that right now, because when I get to the part in this episode that deals with gamer Gate, I might not be in the right frame of mind to get this point across in a civil reasonable way. I have no tolerance for people who disregard another human beings, feelings, and well being. No one deserves to face that sort of of abuse. And if you don't think it's a big deal, you are absolutely one percent wrong. Being constantly hounded and attacked is a huge deal. It's not cool. Alright, So we got my podcast or warning out of the way, and keep in mind again, you can disagree with what people say. I don't have a problem with that. I definitely do not have a problem if you feel that the points that gamer gate enthusiasts make are correct. I don't agree with it, but I don't have a problem with you believing that and arguing that. The problem I have is when you attack people. That's the problem I have. Although let's be fair, I also think that if you are really dead set against women being in the video game industry, you are a misogynist. That's just that's the definition of misogyny really, or a definition of mysogyny. It's just it's something you've got to own. I think it's bad and I think it's wrong. But if that's who you're gonna be own it because you can't get around the fact that you are saying one thing, but you don't want to be labeled that thing. All right, let's actually talk about Nintendo. Now. We'll get back to gamer Gate towards the end of the episode. So when we left off, it was Nintendo in two thousand eleven, Nintendo's annual report for two thousand eleven, which actually comes out in two thousand twelve. So Nintendo their financial year. Their fiscal year begins in April and ends March thirty one, So the fiscal year is not the same as the calendar year. So when you talk about the annual report of two thousand eleven, that actually comes out after March thirty one, two thousand and twelve. Well, in the annual report, the company announced it had sold eighty six point zero one million units of the Week console worldwide, an incredible number of sales, and in fact, that number would continue to grow over time. The top selling game for the Wei was We Sports with seventy six point seventy six million copies, but let's be fair, that game was sold with the Wii in most regions. In other words, this was the game you would get when you purchased your Wii, so automatically those sales should have been pretty high. Seeing is how there are eighty six million Wi units sold. Mario Karti was the top selling Nintendo title that had an iconic character attached at that time. That one had sold twenty seven million copies, so significantly viewer. It actually shows you that one of the appeeling aspects of the WEI was that it had this casual gamer appeal, and casual gamers don't necessarily care about iconic characters the way quote unquote hardcore gamers do, and that's reflected when you see the most popular iconic character title was Mario kart We and it had sold twenty seven million copies. That tells you something. At any rate, we fit and we Fit plus sold about forty million units in total, so almost you know, not quite but but definitely more than Mario Karte, but not twice as much. Um, still pretty impressive. And by two thousand eleven, the Nintendo D S series had sold a total of one hundred forty six point forty two million units. Now, to be fair, that's across the entire family of DS devices you probably are aware of. The three DS didn't do nearly as well. So what was the top selling DS game at that point? Super Mario World with twenty six point eight eight million units sold, So again, it was a very popular family of handheld games, but that didn't necessarily mean that any one title was going to have this insanely uh popular run. In twenty six point eight eight million, that's a lot. That's a lot of of Super Mario World games, but not not anywhere close to to what you would think based upon the number of units out there. Now, Nintendo had cut the sales price of the three D s by the end of two thousand eleven, and actually some people think that that was While it was probably a necessary move, it didn't do the company very many favors because it kind of contributed to some rough financial uh data. Moving into actual two thousand twelve, keeping in mind that report really came out spring of twelve, but in January two thousand twelve, I actually had the opportunity to play with the Wii U before it was publicly unveiled, although it had been taught about at that point already, but I got a chance to actually get my hands on it and play it at c S. Now. Nintendo wasn't exhibiting at c S. They had a suite in a nearby hotel, and they invited certain members of the press to come in and play with it, and somehow they got my name. I have no idea how they got my name. I am thankful they got my name because I had the chance to play the We You before it came out, and I thought it was a really clever device. I didn't think it was one that I was going to buy, and the reason for that is I thought the most value from this device would be playing a game in a room with other people there, so that you're having a group experience playing a game. And I don't have people over at my house very frequently, so it was wasn't really a big appeal to me. I saw the appeal of it. It's the sort of thing that if I were at a friend's house at a party and they had a We You and they wanted to play one of these games, I would totally want to jump on board. And I really enjoyed the fact that if you had the game pad the controller that has the tablet like interface included in it, you had a different experience than if you were one of the other players using the traditional we controls, and you could do lots of cool stuff, like you could do a game of pac Man where the person holding the game pad is controlling pac Man, and the people with the other controllers are controlling the ghosts. And you have two different views. You might have a top down view for one group and you might have a three dimensional point of view view for the other person. It was a really cool way to present video games in a new format, a new user interface. So I was I was thinking, well, this is interesting. I don't know if it's enough different enough from the Wei to convince people who have a WE to upgrade to a Wei you because otherwise it looked a lot the Week console, and so I wasn't sure that it was enough to convince people to buy a new console, or if it would just convince people who are just getting into the market to buy a EU instead of a Week. In February two twelve, Nintendo would purchase a company called mobi Clip. Now, if you've played a lot of Game Boy Advance games or d S games, you've probably seen the mobi clip logo pop up. Prior to two thousand twelve, mobi Clip was a company that specialized in video compression codex uh so essentially they were finding ways to compress videos so that you can use it in um in in limited devices devices that don't have massive amounts of memory or graphics processing. So this acquired company became a new division at Nintendo called the Nintendo European Research and Development Division. Mobi Clip had done some work for the know for lots of these handheld gaming systems, and a job posting actually made it clear that Nintendo was thinking of using mobi clip not just to continue working in the handheld realm, but also to develop technologies that would be used in consoles, presumably living room consoles, not handheld consoles. So that was kind of interesting. It was it was a hint that there was another Nintendo console in the works. Uh So, how did Nintendo do overall in two thousand eleven? Not great. The company experienced an earning loss of five hundred thirty two million dollars, and it had a thirty six point two percent drop in net sales revenue. This was the first time Nintendo had ever suffered an annual earnings loss. Quarter by quarter was different, sometimes a quarter might be up or down, but overall, Nintendo had always come out on the positive side at the end of the year. This was the first time that didn't happen. That Nintendo had lost five thirty two million dollars as a result of the drop in sales and the costs that Nintendo had incurred in that year. Sadly, it would not be the last time this would happen to Nintendo. Now, income from net sales and Nintendo products had actually been on the decline since two thousand eight, So that wasn't like this was a big surprise, but it definitely wasn't welcome news. Uh. At two thousand twelves E three, Nintendo spent a really a good amount of time and energy talking about the Wii U. So this was them trying to say that the WU was going to be the next big thing, you know, since the Wei. They were trying to position it as the future of the company and a true innovation in gaming. But the company ran to some trouble with this. A lot of critics were saying that the E three presence wasn't a very strong one, and and that was partially due to a pre E three event in which the president Awatta unveiled the e U and a lot of the games involved. So in other words, people felt that this pre E three event kind of stole the thunder from Nintendo, and thus it didn't make as strong as showing at E three. In fact, I g N went so far as to say that Nintendo lost E three and that going into the event, the company could have one E three now lost in win win, winning or losing E three. UH. That largely is just what we say after the fact, like which company came out looking the strongest after E three, and I g m s argument was that Nintendo could have come out looking the strongest, largely because both Microsoft and Sony we're still in the old PS three, Xbox one or Xbox three sixty rather days, and that neither of them had shown a lot of innovation in the space. So it was Nintendo's game to lose, and sadly, accordint to I g N, anyway, they did lose it now. Late in two thousand twelve, Nintendo announced that the we uh It's update to the Week console would hit store shelves in the United States on November eight, and in the United States, there would be two versions that would be available. One was the basic version, which was an eight gigabyte UH memory version with game pad, Hdmi cable we use sensor bar a c adapter UH for a price of about two dollars. Then there was more of a deluxe package, which came with a unit that had thirty two gigabytes of memory um and all the stuff that the basic setup had, plus a game pad charging cradle, a stand for the game pad, a stand for the console, and a copy of Nintendo Land, which was sort of a mini game collection, uh, kind of similar to Watching My Find in something like Mario Party. And this version would be priced at three forty nine dollars. Interestingly, it was launching in the United States first. It actually launched a little bit later in Europe and even later still in Japan. Now the launch sales figures we're not what Nintendo was hoping for. There was about three million units sold by the end of two thousand and twelve, so to be fair, they had only been on sale for about a month and a half. But it was a holiday season, so you expect a pretty strong adoption rate around the holidays, but Nintendo just didn't see that. Part of that was that sometimes we use were hard to find. It was similar to the old we problem where you would go to a store and they wouldn't have a unit in for for weeks, or they would get one or two in and they would be sold almost immediately. Nintendo representatives later said that they thought the slow sales were largely due to a lack of compelling games for the system at launch. I can I can buy that. I think that if your video game system does not have enough compelling titles when it goes to launch, it's got an uphill battle ahead of it because the people who adopted early will get disenchanted with titles that don't really take advantage of the system, and then the word of mouth spreads that it's not a very good system. And it may be a great system, it may just be that the games that best take advantage of it are a year or two down the road. Um, it's a tough thing to do. You really want to have a strong launch library when you go out with a new console, and that was the problem we You just didn't have that. Now in two the company was starting off the year in a pretty rough place, so it operates at a loss for the second year in a row. Over the fiscal year of two thousand and twelve, the company lost three hundred sixty six x million dollars, and remember the previous year it had lost five thirty two million here's the other thing you have to keep in mind. The two thousand eleven fiscal year did not include the launch of a brand new console. Two thousand twelve did include the launch of a brand new console, and even with the new product, the company still lost three hundred sixty six million dollars, which to me tells me that it would have lost even more money if the wu had not come out at all. Maybe, I mean, maybe that's wrong, because maybe the cost of developing, marketing, and shipping the Weiu was part of that huge loss, And maybe if they didn't do the Wi, you those costs, since they never would have been incurred by Nintendo, maybe it means that they would have lost less money. I'm not I'm not good at finance, y'all. Anyway, Nintendo had projected it would sell five million we use by the end of fiscal year two thousand twelve. It had later adjusted that prediction down to four million we use, but in fact they only sold three point for five million, so they were aiming for five. Said, maybe that was too ambitious, Let's aim for four and still only hit three point four five million. The company also experienced week sales with the three D s which was performing lower than expected, so things were looking pretty bleak across the board at the E three that year. At two thousand three, Nintendo actually said, you know what, We're not gonna hold a press conference at E three the way we've done in years past. Typically, when E three rolls around, the big big companies like Microsoft and Sony and usually Nintendo each hold their own press events, typically the day before or two days before the show floor opens, and then you also get lots of the bigger name production companies like EA or Bethesda doing their own events. Uh this was the first time Nintendo said, you know what, we're gonna gonna step out. We're not going to do a full press event. Instead, they held a small Nintendo Direct event before E three started. Now, Nintendo Direct events or things that happened fairly regularly back when uh uh Watta was the president. He would do these personally and uh so it was kind of a way of telling people what Nintendo was up to regularly throughout the year. But this direct event started before E three. Uh but Nintendo did go to E three. They had exhibition space on the floor, so they were present. They just didn't hold a press event. So you could go to E three if you were part of the industry. E three is currently an industry only event, so you could go to E three and you could go to the Nintendo section and see what they had to display, But they didn't have a big press event unfolding all of that at E three. One of the things they showed off at this Nintendo Direct event was the We Party U, which allowed you to use the w U game pad for tabletop style games. They also showed off other games at E three. Not all of these would be aimed for a release, so they showed off Super Smash Brothers, Super Luigi U, Yoshi's New Island, The Legend of Zelda, Windwalker HD, the Pokemon's games X and Y, and yes, I know I'm saying it wrong, and yes I know it's not funny. Moving on. Also, they showed off Mario Kart eight. In August two thousand thirteen, Nintendo announced that they had a new handhold console. They were going to release the two d S, so they were working backwards. The three d S had been out for a couple of years. Now they're going to d S, so the two DS is essentially a dumbed down three DS. It has largely the same hardware, except it doesn't have the three D screen. It has the two screens, and it's also in a slate form factor. In other words, it's a solid, almost tablet like form factor. It's just a tablet that happens to have two screens separated by by a bezel like a case. Uh. It doesn't close. It's not a clamshell design like the other DS systems, where it's it's solid. Some people like that and some people hated it. I was indifferent because I have not held had a handheld system and so long apart from my phone, my phone is my handheld system. Actually, that's a huge issue for Nintendo. So in the fall of two thirteen, Nintendo purchased a twenty eight percent interest in another company called p u X Corporation. Now pu X Corporation started off as a division inside Pana Sonic, but then panas On expund it off as its own company. And what it does is work in voice and face recognition software as well as audio and video processing. So again Nintendo is trying to beef up its ability to deal with voice and face recognition. It tells you a little bit about the sort of stuff the company was thinking about developing into the future. So now we're up to two thousand fourteen. Guess what didn't start off very well at all. Reports of falling profits prompted Nintendo CEO Wata to announce he would take a fifty percent cut in his salary. He said, you know, if if the company is doing this poorly, I cannot be rewarded for it. So I will take a half cut in my salary. I would make half as much this for the next six months or five months. Uh and other executives received cuts in their salaries between twenty Wata he saved the biggest cut for his own salary, and he said that the reduction would last for five months and then the company would revisit the issue in June of two thousand fourteen. And this was a pretty interesting move. I like the move. I like I like executives taking ownership for a company's performance, not doing well and saying, look, if if we are rewarding ourselves at full salary, whether we're doing well or not, where's the incentive to do well. Now you've created an incentive to do well because you're not making nearly as much money. From April two thousand thirteen to December. Uh, the company had only sold two point four million we U units. Uh. Now, the company had adjusted protected sales from April two thousand thirteen to March two thousand fourteen. Remember that's that's a fiscal year for Nintendo. April through March. They wanted to sell two point eight million units. Actually, that's that's how many. They sold. Two point eight million units from April two thousand thirteen to March two thousand fourteen. But that's not what they were hoping for. Originally, they were aiming to sell nine million units, so their goal was nine million, and they hit two point eight million. They didn't even get thirty three percent of the way there. That is dreadful, dreadful performance. And the annual report was pretty graham. It was the third straight year of losses for a Nintendo. This time the damage came to four hundred fifty seven million dollars and losses. So still not as bad as two thousand eleven. That was five thirty two. Two thousand twelve was three hundred sixty six something like that, and then two thousand thirteen was four hundred fifty seven million. Yikes. Now, at the two thousand fourteen E three, Nintendo again decided not to have a full press conference, and this was a little confusing because when they decided to skip the press conference in two thousand thirteen, Nintendo representative said, this is a one time thing. We're skipping this year, but that doesn't mean we're done with E three. We're just skipping this year. We'll be back again, don't worry. Two thousand fourteen, they skip it again for the press event, so instead Nintendo held a video presentation called the Digital Event. It was actually really cute. I don't know if you've ever watched it, but it is worth watching because it's it's very silly and Nintendo pokes fun at itself in a way that is refreshing. However, that does drag. It's it's about I think forty five minutes long, and it could have been half an hour easy, maybe less, because there's some stuff that drags on. I literally started skipping ahead at some points. Anyway. At E three, during this Digital Event, the company announced that me Characters, that's M I I, the little characters you could create in Nintendo. We that they would start to show up and smash Brothers games for the three d S and for We You, So for the first time, you could actually create your own Smash Brothers character to fight against the iconic characters of Nintendo like Mario and Link and Zelda and Samus and those sort of characters or Sammu's I honestly don't know how to say her name. I apologize. Nintendo also introduced at that digital event the Ambo How Ambo's are a brilliant idea. It's not the first time anyone's come up with this idea. There's Disney's characters have this, and then there's the Skylander characters that have this. These are figurines, physical figurines you can go out and buy, and they can interact with a we U game pad. You set the figurine on top of the game pad and there's a chip inside the figurine that then communicates wirelessly to your game pad and allows you to import certain characters into in too compatible games. It also the chip inside the Wei you uh amibo also can record information, so you can beef up a character over time and use it to play against other people, for example. There's a really interesting idea. And of course by creating a new product, a new physical product for people to buy. It gave a new line of revenue for Nintendo, so it was a really interesting way to try and go about this this decline in sales. They also showed off several games, including Yoshi's Wooly World, Captain Toad, Treasure Tracker, a few of the Pokemon's games. Mario Maker was shown off for the first time. Really, it was just a tease that was shown at this digital event, and a tease for the new Legend of Zelda game, which as of this recording still hasn't come out yet. It was supposed to come out in two thousand and fifteen, but then it hit a delay, and so we're still waiting for this new Legend of Zelda game to come out. A collection of good games started to show up on the Wii You and that actually gave a little bit of a boost to we use sales, and three DS titles started to do well as as at the same time. But it wasn't like the figures were spectacular. They were just better than they had been, So it wasn't a a Grand Slam home run, but it was a move in the right direction. Now, starting in two thousand fifteen, when Amibo's actually began to hit store shelves, and by hit, I mean they would gently land on a store shelf for a split second before someone bought them. This became a huge problem for Nintendo pr nightmare really, because the Amibo figures had relatively small production runs, meaning there weren't a whole lot of them made, and that meant that only a few would end up going to any given store in a region. So if you have lots of different stores in your area, one of them might get a few of a certain generation of Ambo, and once they're gone, they're gone. Nintendo's idea was that they were going to produce small runs of figurines, and when you when all of those were gone, instead of replacing them with new versions of the figurine, they would come out with all new characters, all new figurines that had brand new ones that had nothing to do with the old ones, because they had so many characters, uh dozens of characters that they could go through. And so the idea was that they were going to cater to a certain group of fans. Those fans would buy the figurines, and then new figurines would come out and they'd buy those, but Nintendo would not go back and make tons and tons and tons of the older figurines because they didn't anticipate demand being as high as it was, and that was a huge mistake because demand was through the roof. People were camping out to buy amibo's and you couldn't necessarily get them online either. As soon as they would show up in stock online, people would buy them and they'd be gone again, and it became very frustrating for a lot of collectors and a lot of gamers who legitimately wanted these amibo to play with in their games. In fact, some of them, they weren't collectors. They had no interest in buying all the different amibos. They had a specific one they wanted, and then it would get and it would get purchased, it would be unavailable, and people were having trouble finding them. It ended up creating a secondary market. So these figurines, which for retail price were at twelve dollars and cents, were sometimes being sold for more than a hundred dollars on various auction sites because he couldn't find them anywhere else, and it was creating a real sense of frustration among the fans and Nintendo and the company started to address this by increasing the production runs so that they were producing more units per generation. But as far as I know, there's been no announcement of going back and producing new versions of the older Amibo figures, so those are still scarce. And it's not It wasn't like it was a manufactured scarcity on purpose. Nintendo wasn't necessarily setting out to create a scarce resource because Nintendo does not benefit from that. Nintendo is selling them at the at the standard price. It's resellers that are marking the price up. Nintendo does not benefit from the marked up price. And that's a real issue UH for the company and for its fans, because it gives the company a black eye. It says, uh, yeah, you know, we messed up, but deal with it, and the fans say, no, that's not cool. So Amibo's have been without blessing and a curse. Now, in the spring of two thousand fifteen, Nintendo announced it would bring some of its games to mobile platforms, which is something it had never ever done before. In fact, Nintendo representatives before that point had been adamant that there was no interest or desire to end up going over to the UH mobile side that they would never really do that they would instead focus on their own platforms, But two thousand fifteen showed a change of heart, and the company also announced that a new console code named in X, was in development. So this was the company acknowledging that there is another console on the way. This was back in two thousand fifteen, but there weren't that many details other than the company claiming that this was a brand new direction. It was not just a new iteration of the Wei or the Wei U. It was a new model for sould gaming for Nintendo. We don't necessarily understand what that means yet. It might mean that it's a hybrid, that it's something that bridges both the living room experience and the mobile experience, but we don't know for sure, and we won't know for a while, probably maybe not too long as of the recording of this podcast, but nothing official has been announced. Uh So. News also broke the Nintendo was partnering with Universal to create theme park attractions, and I know that got a lot of people excited. The idea of visiting a theme park that has Nintendo style rides or experiences, characters, that kind of thing. It could be a huge hit, and I gotta admit I would love to see some really cool interactive theme park attractions that are based on Nintendo properties. I know that there have been people who have recreated things like Mario levels using bungee chords and trampolines and that kind of stuff, so that you can kind of run a course that is inspired by a level in Super Mario Brothers. I would love to see something like that done with a universal theme park budget. That would be amazing. Um, So hopefully that is something we will see in the future. Now, Nintendo's E three and two thus fifteen showed off some of the games that had been announced the year before, so they started to really show off things like Mario Maker and Yoshi's Wooly World. But those are games that we got a peak at. In two thousand and fourteen. Nintendo also announced a partnership with Skylanders, which would allow certain Nintendo amibo to enter the Skylanders world. But in general, a lot of people felt that that E three was a pretty quiet one for Nintendo. They didn't really come out and announce anything groundbreaking or truly surprising at that E three. Now in July, that's when we get to the really sad part of this story. The gaming world was shocked when Nintendo announced that Nintendo president Saturo Iwata had died from bile duct cancer. He was just fifty five years old. He had previously undergone treatments for his cancer, including a surgery in two thousand and fourteen, and this death was pretty sudden. I get the sense that people did not know that this was coming. It was a very kind of unexpected thing to happen. Uh. Genio Takida and Shigiro Miyamoto took over the company as interim replacements. They were leading the company together, and the industry as a whole grieved over a Watta's death, and lots of sympathetic messages came in from companies like Microsoft and E A lot of luminaries in the gaming industry spoke highly of Awata and warned his loss, UH and our loss with his passing. It was a very heavy time. And keep in mind, this is also happening while Nintendo was struggling. They're having issues because the We You just was not selling very well compared to earlier console, certainly not as well as the We. The We sold about a hundred million units overall. The Weiu was not doing that well and that made shareholders antsy, and then to see the president pass away, it was really a rough moment. On September two thousand fifteen, Nintendo named Tatsumi Kimishima as the new president, with a Takeda receiving a title called Technology Fellow, and Miyamoto got a title called Creative Fellow. Kimishima was the former president of Nintendo North America. Even before that, he was the president of the Pokemon's division. Uh So, he had been when Nintendo for more than a decade and uh now was assuming the leadership role of the overall company. He had even been the managing director of Nintendo before becoming the president. Nintendo also changed up its organizational structure at that point, consolidating several game development teams and and shifting things around, really in an effort to redefine its corporate structure and its strategy. And finally, now we're getting to the story I alluded to at the beginning of this episode pretty soon. First, I guess I should say before I get into that Nintendo, there's a lot of spectator speculation that Nintendo is going to show off the n X console at E three this year in two thousand and sixteen, with a goal of potentially having it on the market by holiday two thousand sixteen. A lot of analysts say that their their bed thing, this is going to happen, that Nintendo feels it is necessary for it to happen in order to turn things around. I'm sure there are a lot of shareholders who feel the same way. UM. I don't know if that's realistic. I don't know if the n X is going to be unveiled and launched this year. It's possible that we'll get a tease and a launch next year. Um. But it's also possible that Nintendo has its ducks in a row and it's ready to move on this because it would be a way of reinvigorating the company. If they've made the right choices with their new hardware, that's gonna that remains to be seen. We'll just have to keep our eyes out and that comes up. E three happens in June, and it is currently April as I record this, so we'll just have to watch and find out what happens. Now, let's get to the story I talked about at the beginning of the episode. The Gamer Gate related episode or related story. Uh, this is a complicated story, and there are a lot of things I need to kind of explain in order to to really give you guys the the context of what's happening. So there was a Nintendo employee named Alison rap and Allison was the was a marketing employee. She worked in a marketing division for a Nintendo so her job was to, uh, to do marketing for Nintendo products. She was also the target of a massive harassment campaign that was absolutely insane. It made no sense. It was just mean spirited, vicious, and vile. And here's what happened. So Nintendo had made a decision to tone down the content of certain Japanese games when being adapted for the Western market. And that's a very general thing to say. So what's actually happening. Well, most of the content had to do with depictions of sexuality or sexual characteristics, particularly in young female characters. So the Japanese versions were a little more explicit and sexualized, and some representatives at Nintendo apparently felt that this was not a good approach for Western video game audiences, and so the move was made to tone that down. Um. Now, some people who associate themselves with the gamer Gate movement, felt this was another example of video games being ruined by people. They're ruining the video games. That's not the way the video game was meant to be played. Uh. They identified rap Alison Rapp as a target for their frustration, largely because Alison Rapp worked for Nintendo and she had posted about feminism and feminist issues on Twitter in the past. So they leapt to the conclusion that somehow Alison Rapped one was responsible for toning down these games, and two didn't share their opinion that this was a bad thing, and so therefore she should be targeted and harangued and harassed and bullied and threatened. And that's exactly what started. Now. First things first, like I said at the beginning of this episode, this is never a justified course of action. It is wrong to harass people in this way. It is wrong both ethically and legally. It is against the law to harass people in this way. Don't do that. You are a bad person. If you do that, don't be a bad person. Be a good person. Even if you disagree with someone, be a good person. That doesn't mean just let the thing happen. You can voice your opinion, just do it in a way that's not an attack on another human being for goodness sakes. So that's the first thing. It's wrong on the face of it. But the second thing is that rap had nothing to do with the localization of products for Nintendo. In other words, she was not responsible. She had no input on changing the content of a game from the Japanese version to the American version. Nothing, not even input into that area. So holding her responsible for something that she did not do is crazy. Third, raps own history, her own writing, her Twitter history suggests she felt pretty much the same way as a lot of the gamer gate folks felt that she did not see the need to alter games, that she didn't see the set realization necessarily as wrong. Uh. Not to put words into her mouth, but a lot of her writing suggests at least that taking the Japanese culture for what it is is what you should do. You should not apply the ethics of one culture to the Japanese culture. That was kind of her perspective. So she wasn't even advocating the changes that people attacked her for, So she wasn't responsible for it. She didn't advocate for it. She just happened to be female, and she happened to have voiced her opinion on some feminist issues and that was enough for her to be targeted and bullied and harassed. So they actually at that point when once it was even clear that Alison Rapp had nothing to do with the problem, the attackers didn't back off. They doubled down. They found an essay that Alison Rapp had written in college, which was not hard to do. It was linked on her linked in profile, and in that essay, Rap essentially argued that Japanese cultural norms are different from Western cultural norms and it's wrong to apply the moral perspective of one culture to another culture. And she was specifically talking about the sexualization of teenagers, which is a pretty taboo topic here in Western culture, especially the younger teenagers. It's a very taboo subject, and Alison Rapp has been pretty vocal about supporting the Japanese culture side to a point where some people are actually offended by it, and her attackers began to use that against her. They began to send messages to Nintendo executives saying that Alison Rapp was supporting UH pedophiles, that she was in favor of this from happening, that she thought that things, you know, laws regarding pedophilia should be removed, and that was putting words into Alison Rapp's mouth. But they were essentially using her own own writing against her in this case, which is weird already, not that I you know, it's weird because the original argument the attackers made was that they did not want changes made to the video games they wanted to play. They wanted to have the access to the content that Nintendo representatives had identified as being inappropriate for Western audiences. And now they're using in an argument that that same argument that Nintendo representatives used in an effort to get Alison Rapped fired. So, in other words, they're using their own the thing that they hate as an attack against the person that they've identified as the appropriate target. Keeping in mind she had nothing to do with any of this. Now here's the next step. Nintendo fired Alison rap This adds another complication to the story. Now the company claims that the reason that they fired her had nothing to do with the harassment she had been enduring and the the threats that had been leveled at her and the pr problem that this was creating. They said, no, We're aware of that, but that's not what this is about. The reason we fired her is because she was working a second job that went against Nintendo's corporate culture. Now, Alison Rapp has admitted that she did do some moonlighting work in a secondary gig using a totally different name. So she was using a different name doing a different job. That's all the details we have. We don't know what the job was, what she was doing. You know, how was this in violation of Nintendo's corporate culture. None of that has been revealed as of the recording of this podcast. Now, she maintains that it was the controversy around the harassment that led to her being fired. In other words, she says Nintendo never would have fired her even with the second job issue, unless they also felt that there was all this other brew haha going on. So if the brew haha wasn't happening, Nintendo would have just turned a blind eye and Alison Rapp could have continued to work for Nintendo and have this secondary job. Now, is that true, We can't say for sure one way or the other. Honestly, if Rap was violating company policy, I don't hold Nintendo at fault for acting on that. If she's violating corporate policy, Nintendo has every right to act on that, though personally, I think it makes it much more sense. It's much more appropriate to have a conversation with Alison Rapp to to maybe reprimand her or say hey, this is in violation of our corporate policy. You have to make a choice. Either you work here or you do something else. But you cannot do this other job and work here. It's against our policy. But that's not what happened. They fired her. There wasn't this step of let's talk to her first, but it just went straight to let's fire her. So if reps secondary gig was in violation of Nintendo's policy, and if Nintendo makes it a standard procedure to fire employees who violate this part of the policy, I don't think Nintendo's at fault necessarily because they're just doing what they always do. So if this is something that happens to any employee that has found to be working a secondary gig, then that's that's the way the cookie crumbles. That's the corporate policy. I don't necessarily agree with it, but if that's the corporate policy, you gotta abide by that. Or you suffer the consequences. But if Nintendo rarely enforces this rule, that's another matter, because it brings up the question, if you don't enforce this rule all the time, why did you enforce it in the case of Alison Rap. Now, Rap maintains that Nintendo was aware that she had this secondary gig and that the policy that they are citing is not typically enforced. Again, I don't know the truth of that, and I also want to make it clear that my personal opinions and wraps point of view about the morality issue, those ideas aren't in alignment. I don't really agree with her on this, and maybe that's just because I'm old, but I disagree with her perspective. I understand where she's coming from. I disagree somewhat with that, but that's fine. Adults can disagree and they can have conversations about this. But my main objection is that she was targeted, harassed, threatened, and bullied for no reason. Shouldn't have happened at all, and it's deplorable that it happened for no reason and Nintendo didn't do more to protect her and defend her and speak up for her. So even if the reason she was fired was purely because of this corporate policy. It still remains that the company did not take a firm stand to say it is wrong to treat anyone this way. It is a wrong message to send that women have a place in the video game industry. They should not be run off, they should not be treated like they aren't human beings. They shouldn't be persecuted. And that's the real issue I have with Nintendo and this particular story. Personally, I hope that more of the story unfolds and that Nintendo takes the opportunity to really establish a much more firm anti discriminatory, anti harassment stance on the issue. I feel like a lot of companies have been very careful about this because they don't want to run off their audience. But I also think those companies need to take a hard look at what that audience is demanding and how that audience is behaving and ask themselves, is it a responsible thing to not speak up about this. That's why I'm speaking up, because I really think there are better ways to go about getting your point across to support your arguments than to try and destroy the person who feels differently about it. Than you do that. I truly believe that. And if you don't believe that, don't listen to my show. You're not gonna be happy. So just go listen to something else. It's okay. I won't miss you. For those of you who remain, I love you guys. I very much looking forward to having conversations with you. That being said, if you want to have a conversation with me, you need to write me. My email address is tech stuff at how stuff arts dot com. Now I know I haven't responded to many of you for a long time, and here's the reason why, because I found out about it today Outlook. Microsoft Outlook has very helpfully moved almost all the listener mail into a clutter folder. So, in other words, it's like a spam filter. In other words, most of the listener mail has been going into this clutter folder. So I didn't see that I was getting mail. I didn't see that listeners were writing in. So I'll be going through the backlog of listener mail and trying to answer as many of those as I possibly can, and I apologize for that. I did not realize it was happening until today, So do write me. Know that I will be looking at that clutter folder, and I will be reading and answering emails. I look forward to hearing from you again. That email address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you can always drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle on both of those platforms is tech stuff H s W. And I'll talk to you again really soon. 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