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As
I alluded earlier, the timing of my arrival at Nintendo
played a critical part in the events that unfolded.
I learned within the first few days that Nintendo was
open to a new spokescharacter. Mario was iconic and
his innocence and good nature were very useful and beneficial
at times in conveying part of a desired image, but apparently
lacked the technological and futuristic flash that Nintendo
also wanted to convey. The scuttlebutt was that they
wanted something along the lines of a superhero. Being
a creative type with a formal academic training in marketing,
my mind’s wheels began to crank.
During
the second week, I was graduated to the post of Game
Counselor. As I’ve stated before, this job has often
been referred to as “the most coveted job in the world.”
A Game Counselor spends his day (or did in the late
1980’s) playing (and learning) games while wearing a
telephone headset and operating a phone in order to
talk to consumers who would call with questions or,
most usually, needing help getting through a tough spot
in the game they were currently playing. This is where
my awe for Game Counselors never wavers. GCs would talk
a consumer through his rough patch, all the while continuing
their own game, rarely hitting the pause button. It’s
not at all easy, but I learned to do it. Reasonably
well, I think. There were, however, several people that
were far better and more practiced than me. To split
focus like that and still accomplish both tasks takes
a remarkable concentration. One that Nintendo horrifically
undervalued.
It
was also at this time, that I learned of another flaw
inherent in hiring young people. When young people are
hired and promoted to positions of intermediate authority
without grooming them for the responsibility, the young
person in question (gaining this newfound power usually
for the first time) will many times turn into an ambitious
nazi (I use the lower case “n” to indicate a demeanor
and not political agenda). Power corrupts. For certain
personalities already predisposed, it’s not a big leap.
Suffice it to say, we had our share of self-important
tyrants. It was not easy for the rank and file of the
same age as the despot to work under such abuse. For
someone with far more experience and education, it left
bile in my throat. These morons were left unchecked,
largely because their supervisors were, for the most
part, also inexperienced and didn’t really know how
to effectively deal with the situation. And, in hindsight,
I also now believe that the Japanese management didn’t
care since the only people affected were Americans and
my experience with two Japanese companies left me with
the distinct impression that to find a prejudice and
bias by the Japanese against anyone not Asian (and that
was particularly American) was not uncommon. This bias
wasn’t really evident this early on in my tenure. So,
anyways, I was a Game Counselor.
Meanwhile,
the idea of a superhero spokesperson for the company
kept churning and formulating in my mind. Since I had
no time during the day to focus on the character (My
focus was already split between playing and learning
the game du jour, operating the phone, and servicing
the customer on the phone.), I worked on it at night
at home. Within three weeks of my hire, I had not only
the character, but an ad hoc marketing campaign mapped
out. Here’s where the timing element becomes so important.
The
growing number of letters that Nintendo received each
week was becoming almost unmanageable. Nintendo was
desperate to recruit CSRs who could answer this mountain
of mail. This required people with a writing ability.
Most of the Game Counselors thought I was crazy for
taking on the task of answering mail instead of playing
games all day, but since I had this ability and the
company had a need, I saw this as a way to distinguish
myself. And thus it was that I was moved to the Correspondence
Department.
It
was at this time that Nintendo was to launch it’s record-breaking
entry into the world of magazine publishing. Now, it
is not Nintendo’s custom to secure people actually trained
in a given discipline to perform the task. From what
I was able to gather, the style of Management was to
get whoever was at hand. Literally. I was told that
virtually all of the Americans in positions of relative
management were the only Americans that the CEO had
come in contact with regardless of their actual education
or experience (i.e. next door neighbor, realtor that
managed the purchase of the CEO’s house, a foreign exchange
student who’d once stayed at the CEO’s house in Japan,
etc.). So word went out to the rank and file that the
search was on for anyone that could write. Real magazine
articles.
Those
of us with an interest notified the appropriate personnel
and we were given a practice article. Not realizing
that they only wanted to evaluate our writing prowess,
I not only wrote the article, but laid out the pages,
complete with screen shots and head(line) – I did, after
all, have a minor in journalism with lots of writing
and page layout experience—more, I was later to find
out, than some of those in authority on the magazine
staff. My efforts apparently impressed someone enough
that I was given a “position” as Editor on the magazine.
There are quotes around “position” for a reason.
I
was an Editor in title only. Oh, I performed all the
tasks of an Editor and all the responsibilities of an
Editor, but my paycheck still said I was a CSR. No change
in pay due to the change in responsibilities because
(as we were told) this was on a volunteer basis. I decided
to continue to do it for a number of reasons, most selfish.
First, I liked the work. It was a task I was familiar
with and good at. Second, I liked the Japanese team
of artists at the art direction house that we worked
with. They were rank and file creative types like me
and void of the biases and prejudices of the older,
bigotedly entrenched Japanese management that I came
to know in both the Japanese companies I worked for.
And this team of Japanese artists liked me. Through
our broken languages (They spoke much better English
than I did conversational Japanese, but we learned from
each other.), we knocked out some great articles and
produced some of the best issues the magazine has seen,
setting four publication records in the process. Much
of the credit for that success goes to this art direction
house. I would work with this group on projects other
than Nintendo Power as well (guide books, instruction
manuals, and even T-shirts). Third, I found a mentor
in the Senior Editor of Nintendo Power, a brilliant,
savvy, talented woman, just a few years my senior, and
the only person in the building with more writing and
publishing experience than myself. Fourth, I thought
this was a good career path in a field I enjoyed. This
was the most important thing for me. I thought there
was career potential here. Mistakenly so.
Meanwhile,
in addition to my Editor duties, I continued to perform
my other responsibilities: those of being a Correspondence
CSR. I, along with the other 30 or so people, answered
the 8,000 per week letters from consumers of all ages
(some written to us in crayon—I actually liked those
best). However, this was a daunting and time-consuming
task. Reading the letters was not always easy (Crayon
can be hard to make out and not everyone is a really
good speller). Once the letter is read, a decision must
be made as to what the best response would be. Since
the response must be appropriate and within the parameters
set by the legal department and should form a unified
voice for Nintendo, standard responses were created
and stored. Some 450 of them. 450 of the most specific
generic responses geared to answer a consumer without
sounding like a form letter and still reach the consumer
within a reasonable timeframe.
Searching
through 450 paragraphs to find exactly the one you need
can be the most time-consuming part of the process (especially
if the paragraphs aren’t categorized and if many of
them are differ only slightly in content). The average
time spent in responding to a letter was around 9 minutes
(my rough estimate at the time). We used WordPerfect
4.2 at the time and it was fairly efficient (Remember
this was before the addition of a mouse to our computer
arsenal—Yes, little one, there was a time when we didn’t
use mice. Everything was done with a keyboard. Keee
boaard. And database was not a common term.)
I
mention WordPerfect 4.2 because it is important to note
that after a few months, Nintendo spend a lot of money
to upgrade and train us to use WordPerfect 5.0. Why
is that important to note? Because the main difference
between the two versions is that 5.0 has a macro editor.
Oooooh, a macro editor. What the hell is a macro editor?
At the time, I didn’t know either. In fact, the whole
computer thing was relatively new to me. Well, to everybody.
But unlike many of my younger co-workers, I didn’t have
any computers (even Apples) introduced at my high school.
We used typewriters. Tiipe wriiiterrs. So I was
learning on the fly. But that was cool because I was
always good at that. That particular quality has landed
me more than one job.
Okay,
so, back to the macro editor. For our purposes, the
macro editor had its own programming language and allowed
me to create a program within a program. Over the course
of three weeks, I categorized and tagged all 450 responses
and created a menu-driven program that would allow a
Correspondence CSR to select from a series of menus
the exact paragraph he/she required, press a key, and
instantly insert the paragraph into his/her current
letter and position the cursor for the next paragraph.
No more manual dredging through the random landfill
of responses in hopes of coming across one that will
work. No more manual time-consuming cut and paste. By
today’s standards, it would probably be considered primitive,
but it reduced the amount of time required to respond
to the average letter to less than a minute and a half.
I could do it in less than a minute.
I
showed this program to the Correspondence supervisor.
For what will forever remain reasons of his own, he
was largely unimpressed. I don’t like to break the chain
of command, but I thought the program had too significant
an impact and I’d spent too much time on it to let it
die, so I demonstrated it to the department supervisor—who
WAS impressed. Very impressed. He asked me what the
immediate supervisor thought of it. I told him that
the immediate supervisor was unimpressed. I can only
speculate that it was because he hadn’t thought of it
himself. The department supervisor thought it important
enough to follow through with. The program was installed
so that all could use it, but it was treated as a joke
and the immediate supervisor encouraged no one to use
it. Some did. Some didn’t. Okay. But, here’s the thing.
Nintendo had spent a lot of money for us to learn 5.0,
meaning they’d spent a lot of money for us to learn
the additional tool of the macro editor. I was the only
person to make real use of it and was promptly discouraged
from doing so by my immediate supervisor. Granted he
was within a year or so of my own age with less management
experience, but you gotta love the corporate mentality.
Simultaneous
to all this, I continued to contribute to the magazine.
Nintendo Power was (and may still be) a 110-page
collection of how-to’s, reviews, and articles of interest
to Nintendo players and the gaming world at large. Besides
the contribution of the Captain Nintendo articles, there
were times when I wrote, edited, and laid-out more than
a third of the issue. That is by no means an exaggeration.
Work hard and then you’ll be rewarded. That’s what we’re
taught, right? Riiiiiiiight.
Next
chapter: Every Captain Must Have His Mother Brain
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