Quite a lot of people have left Nintendo of America over the past few years, and the latest individual to depart is the company's manager for publisher and developer relations, Kirk Scott.
If you've tuned into Nintendo's Nindies Showcase in recent years, you've likely seen him promoting a lot of upcoming releases for the Switch eShop as the "friendly neighbourhood" indie guy. Now, after five years, he's decided to call it a day at Nintendo:
I am no longer working at Nintendo. The past 5 years have brought incredible joy from working with all of the amazing indies, and that work will continue! Since Feb. of this year the events we have all experienced have crystalized my thinking. I’m tired. Opening doors for minorities, being inclusive, and enabling success for everyone in the indie space will be a priority for me. It brings me joy! I can’t wait to continue this work with all of you. We have an opportunity to make things better for others and educate while making great games. Stay tuned!
As noted in his final message, he'll be continuing his work within the indie space.
In recent years, Scott often appeared alongside Katie Casper - who left Nintendo of America in March this year. He also took over as the face of indie games after Damon Baker departed from the company at the end of 2018.
From the entire community here at Nintendo Life, we wish Kirk all the best in his future endeavors.
[source twitter.com, via gamasutra.com]
Comments 58
I wish him the best, I don't recognize him though.
Oh man, not Kirk Scott! Nooo
Hope he does well, the Switch has become the perfect platform for indie games.
Kirk has been such a positive energy to the Indie scene. Great to see him move towards his new desires.
You'll be missed Kirk!
He wanted to make a Switch.
Aww, not the friendly neighborhood Indie guy!!!
@SSJW Lol I love the combination of your username and avatar Super Saiyen Justice Warrior. xD
I wonder if he'll follow Damon Baker getting a job at Microsoft now with their apparently very positive future... time will tell.
@AggravatedRobber He does make reference to Nintendo at the very beginning. It just wasn't included in the above quote (via Gamasutra). I've added it in now.
I'm sure, like many others, he has enjoyed his time at NoA.
Oh man... not Kirk... Kirky boy... I wish you the best of luck, you were a great part of the team.
You will be missed.
Okay... I had no clue you existed before this article. But you will be missed. 😂
Kind of noticing a trend of Nindie-related employees leaving. Could just be a coincidence, though.
No offense, but I have never heard of Kirk Scott. I watched Nindies, but I guess I never remembered the name of the guy.
Feel awkward... never heard of him.
I don't know who this guy is, but if he was the voice pushing the "We can't have legacy support because it hurts indies" nonsense, I'm honestly kinda glad to see him leave.
I like a lot of indies, Wargroove, Stardew Valley, Iconoclasts, Night in the Woods... But I feel like indies shouldn't need "protection" from legacy games. They should aim to succeed in their own right.
I positively hate the idea that having legacy content hurts indies. If it does, then indies needs to up their game.
But if he has nothing to do with that stuff, well, then fine, like I said, I don't know who he is, I'm just not a fan of the extra special treatment indie games have gotten, over legacy content.
@ShallweSlay Other than not writing "Have Your Say" it was NL. They like to stir things up to create debate, which creates clicks.
the great nintendo exodus? what's happening to NOA? seems like everyone has left in the last couple of years. not sure why, the switch is thriving and long may it continue!
@quinnyboy58 i think it's just more recently they've been putting more faces out there in the form of Directs and such, so it's more noticeable when they leave.
Shame to loose Kirk but the industry needs someone to do what he's leaving to do, so huge respect and all the best to him!
@ShallweSlay,
I think the reason they had no comments for that article was because of the issues raised within the Nintendo store thread, which in all fairness was not all that much, it seemed a lot of comments were calling people racist, without any real evidence, it was all a case of you do not agree with me, so therefore you are a racist and horrible human being.
@ShallweSlay Thanks for your concerns – hopefully I can address some of those now.
In an ideal world, we'd be leaving comments open to encourage health discussion and understanding - indeed, for the Nintendo NY store post, I stated right at the start of the comments section that people would need to be accommodating to the views and feelings of others. Healthy discussion is – and always has been – the prime objective when it comes to community interaction on NL and indeed across our whole network of sites.
However, after more than 270 comments – a small amount of which were sadly quite negative and were therefore removed – we decided to close off the comment section for that piece. We don't have full-time moderators on the site and it's impossible to effectively police a comments section which gets over 200 posts in a few hours.
Given what had transpired on that topic, we decided to disable comments on the subsequent piece regarding Nintendo's official statement.
I'm afraid the events of the past few days have shown we don't live in an ideal world, and sadly a consequence of that is that we've had to close down ANY discussion surrounding these topics. So why cover them, you're probably going to ask? They're still relevant pieces of Nintendo news so of course we will cover them. It's just a shame that negative comments tend to follow, as a side effect of that is that the positive comments are also lost.
I hope that goes some way to explaining our reasoning – we're 100% opposed to racism in all its forms, as was hopefully evidenced by the message we sent out on our social media channels the other day.
@Damo
Which Liam was the correct thing to do, although on the whole it was a healthy discussion, but as with everything you will get people just trying to cause issues.
Sad to see him go. Best of luck to the guy.
Oh no, I won't get to watch him trying to figure out what to do with his hands while on camera anymore
@johnvboy I don’t always agree with your video game opinions but I agree with you on this. Thank you for being a voice of reason the other day.
On topic: always liked kirks presentations, thought he did a great job and wish him the best going forward.
@ShallweSlay,
How so?, it's you that are bringing up issues in an unrelated comments section, and I think you are looking for things that simply are not there in most comments.
@Corum,
Thank you.
What a shame..Lets hope they find someone to replace him for great indies
@ShallweSlay,
You do seem to be making a lot of sweeping statements, and I understand things are tense, but the rioting, violence and looting from all backgrounds will not help matters, and a lot of people on the comment section were simply stating that.
As to us being miles apart, I simply can't comment as I have had nowhere near enough interaction with you to judge on way or the other, you do seem a little unbalanced though, as this comment section has nothing to do with what you are arguing about,
@ShallweSlay,
I have no preconceived notions, and you don't even know me, my comments on this and the other comment section were SIMPLY stating it's unfair to label everybody racist, simply because their views differed from yours, I stated I was against all forms of racist behaviour, I just refuse to believe it's everybody that's racist.
I was only saying that a main point in the other comment section was about the looting and violence, I never said there was anything wrong with the protests in general.
As for your lesson thank you I shall take it into account.
And we have now resorted to the "How dare you" comments, always like those types of exchanges.
@ShallweSlay,
You are a fool, but at least you are a consistent one.
@ShallweSlay If there's an issue with a comment you are encouraged to use the 'report' button so we can moderate it.
@ShallweSlay,
No I do have other things to do, I can't spend all my time conversing with idiots on comment sections.
Keep up the good fight and good luck on changing the world.
@Damo,
Do not feed the troll, this comment section has nothing at all to do with the initial comment.
@ShallweSlay,
You do not seem to be getting it, but this comment section is nothing to do with race, so to say I have injected into it is wrong, you my friend are stirring things up in the wrong place, take it higher, you seem to have a very big chip on your shoulder.
There was no need for you comment in the first place, it was totally unrelated to this article.
And when you say you are sick, so am I at people like yourselves trying to put everybody in the same boat, and label them racist just because they have the audacity to disagree with you.
@ShallweSlay,
Why am I a racist again?, I have said nothing for you to jump to that conclusion, and you can think what you want, I have no control over that, you do seem to have issues with people that do not agree with you though, I would seek some help for that if I were you.
@ShallweSlay,
I do have a bit of spare time at the moment, and this is quite fun actually, I do not normally converse with crazy people in real life, so this is a bit of a novelty.
@ShallweSlay,
You seem oblivious to the fact that your comments are sounding more crazy each time, you are not annoying me in the slightest, in fact I do find you very interesting, you clearly have issues, but then again so do many people.
Again I will say that your comments are out of place in the first instance, this is not about right or wrong, it's you need to keep discussions in their relevant place, you should have contacted NL via e-mail and voiced your concerns, of course would not do that, as it did not offer you a public platform to vent your views on.
@ShallweSlay,
It's not me, I have been on here with the same profile for years, and do not have to time or inclination to create multiple user accounts, imagine if I did, it would mean replying to your comments multiple times, and nobody I feel would want to do that.
@SSJW ,
I do not think there is one to be honest, shame really as this was a good article about a member of the Nintendo team leaving, and it's been derailed by a totally unrelated comment.
NoA really seems to have an incredibly high turnover rate in the post-Iwata era. People used to stay for a long long time with some minor exceptions. Now it seems to be a short-term gig across the board. Stepping stone position, or a nightmare nobody can wait to escape, it's hard to tell...
@johnvboy Well... to be fair @ShallweSlay original comment was directed towards the Moderator about not being able to comment on the specific article, in the first place.
I'm not implying that you don't have the right to share your point of view, as well. I have my own personal opinions about the subject, and I think that dialogue is good in the long run. That is, as long as it's mature.
That being said, I think that you both have gone deep enough down this Rabbit Hole.
@NEStalgia,
Very true, shame really as you would think a long term career with Nintendo would be a dream come true, I suppose as everything else the reality can be quite different.
Btw, never got to reply to your comment on the other thread the other day as it was closed down, but thank you.
@the4seer,
Still not the place for it though, and nobody will convince me otherwise, while open discussions are always a good thing, I feel there was very little one could do to converse in a normal manner with this particular poster, they were just hellbent on getting their points across on any comment section, and relished the fact they had an audience.
@johnvboy That dream of "working at Nintendo" we all had when we were 12 doesn't sound as dreamy the more we watch! There was an article...somewhere....maybe here, some years ago featuring an interview or op-ed about having applied for or worked at NoA. It's a very very (very) corporate environment. And as a Western subsidiary of a Japanese company, it tends to be kind of "chaperoned" as the children who need parenting. I don't get the feeling it's nearly as fun to work at Nintendo as virtually any other gaming company, and that it's more like working for an IRS auditing contractor than an entertainment icon, Mario swag in sterile glass cases aside. The Treehouse crew seem to have some autonomy, probably because they interact directly with Japan HQ and are more "part of the team" than the "children" at the subsidiary. Unsurprisingly, they don't seem to turn over as fast as the rest of the staff.
But what's so striking is that it seemed that when Iwata took over the NoA CEO role from Kimishima that all got eased and people seemed like they were staying longer term. As soon as he was gone, people started feeling almost as fast as they arrive, Reggie inclusive. We're going to be on our 3rd Indie lead since the Switch launched. That's got to be a new record! When one or two employees have gooey "I'd like to spread my wings and move onto exciting new roles, family, socially responsible jobs" it's a fluke. When there's a parade of them over years including the company president...that's a movement!
Edit: Not to mention the pay scale in the gaming industry ranges from "panhandling" to "successful panhandler" at best, and I imagine Nintendo sits slightly above that average with benefits included, but eventually people have to choose between bread and Gold Mario Amiibo Options.
@NEStalgia,
I do agree with a lot of what you have said, but you can't ignore the generational differences, I do see with my job the younger people coming into it do not see it as a long term thing, they just value their social lives more, not that this is a bad thing.
Wish him luck. Sounds like he is a nice guy.
But when I can only play 5 games of the US top 20 on my Switch. Something is wrong over at "publisher and developer relations" 🙄
Great he is an Indie fan. How about we get a racing fan next?... No F12020, No Dirt5, No ProjectCars 3. Missing out on every racing game announced in 2020.
Get an Industry leader that knows all the top players.
@johnvboy
Settle it in SMASH!!!
@the4seer,
I have no chance then, never got the hand of Smash bros.
@johnvboy Good point. Though most of the people at Nintendo that come and go are definitely not in that younger generation. But yeah, I have seen that the younger set doesn't like to stick with long term jobs and likes job hopping. Though I've never been sure on if they just don't like stability and try to drift between jobs, or if it's because of the difficulty in finding something that actually balances rewards for demanded effort, so people just keep switching hoping to find something that works. In the gaming industry overall, that's going to be like finding a needle in a needle stack, using only a needle. Though Scott's still staying in the industry, and might just be a fancy farewell for "hey I found someone that pays in actual legal currency rather than platinum coins"
@NEStalgia,
You just reminded me, I have not been on my Nintendo account for ages, I could be a platinum coin millionaire.
@johnvboy Don't get too excited and spend them all in your head before you get there...... When I logged in for the first time in ages there was only the sound of my broken heart echoing through the empty coin box...
What in the heck is with all the racism in this country? Listen, if you want to continue this conversation, consider Twitter or email, not an article that's specifically written about something else. This is not about racism or any means like that. Just because NL posted something like that, (actually it was related to New York's store being vandalized, which actually should not have been a topic for discussion, therefore a friendly site) should not mean you should still be blatantly talking about it constantly in different topics, which has nothing to do with racism. What's up with the world now? First, COVID, now racism? Can anyone keep their own comments to themselves please? Don't say anything else if you don't have anything nice to say. That's all there is to it.
I wish him well in all his future endeavors.
@NEStalgia,
After those words I don't think I will log in.
@KingBowser,
Pretty much said the same thing to the original poster.
I think I remember him from one Nindie video in person and one as a disembodied voice with Katie Casper. Wasn't around long enough to make a big impression with the community in general, but he'll be missed and best of luck to him in the future.
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