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[IbizaPocholo]

Nintendo had its own internal “social media” to streamline the massive workload during Tears of the Kingdom’s development - AUTOMATON WEST

Nintendo sheds light on internal infrastructure used for the development of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

automaton-media.com

At Japan’s Computer Entertainment Development Conference (CEDEC) held on August 22, Nintendo held a lecture on the topic of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s development (reported on by GameWatch). Interestingly, a portion of the presentation, held by director Hidemaro Fujibayashi and engineer Kenichi Hirose, focused not on the game’s development itself, but on the infrastructure designed to help streamline the developers’ work cycle and improve communication among them.

Tears of the Kingdom’s basic production flow, as introduced by Hirose, consisted of the following steps: Drawing Board > Implementation > Playtest after reaching a milestone > Data collection > Analysis. After the last step was completed, things would loop back to the drawing board, and the cycle would repeat itself, and so forth.

However, the team needed a way to make the last three steps of this process smoother and more efficient and the solution to this issue was to use an in-house bulletin board system customized to fit the needs of Tears of the Kingdom’s development. The system was charmingly called the “Rupee Bulletin Board,” based on the familiar gemstones used as currency throughout the Zelda series.

Rupee Bulleti

The Rupee Bulletin Board made it possible for Tears of the Kingdom’s developers to post feedback from their playtests in real time for all other team members to keep track of. In addition, the system allowed the developers to “give Rupees” to posts they agreed with, similarly to a “like” or “thumbs up” function on social media. This gave the team a clear visualization of what takes priority, prevented overlapping of the same opinions, and made it significantly easier to summarize analysis data.

As a rule for using the Rupee Bulletin Board, the team enforced posting only opinions based on concrete information, rather than personal impressions. The developers apparently also had a no-argument rule, as all feedback would be posted and evaluated through Rupees.

Apart from the Rupee Bulletin Board, Tears of the Kingdom’s infrastructure engineers also designed an image-board-based tool that made it possible for the team to manually check a whopping 120,000 object combinations made using Link’s new Fuse ability.

For people that don't seem to read the article, they had a development process in which people could give feedback on things they like/dislike via rupees like in the Zelda game. The title of the article makes it seem they just had online based communication, and most of the comments reflect that

 

[Sintoid]

So what?
Most part of Project Manager Tools have Team features like share comments, give feedback and assign tasks to group of developers/engineers

 

[NanaMiku]

Kinda like Trello?

 

[Dacvak]

Huh. That’s actually kind of a neat idea. It’s better than having 300 Slack channels, like where I work.

Kinda like Trello?

I imagine it was more gamified than normal project management software. Seems like it only served that one purpose of getting easy feedback.

 

[Robb]

the system allowed the developers to “give Rupees” to posts they agreed with, similarly to a “like” or “thumbs up” function on social media.

Can’t wait for The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Instagram on “Switch 2”.

 

[alucard0712_rus]

120.000 item combinations...
TOTK is very underrated game. I'm 350 hours in and it's still fun!

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

They forgot to include Social Messaging to include better Dungeons and Bosses

 

[Hudo]

So what?
Most part of Project Manager Tools have Team features like share comments, give feedback and assign tasks to group of developers/engineers

Kinda like Trello?

As I understand it, it's more gamified and also directly usable from within the tools/the game engine. E.g.: They can post comments/"place a ruby" in the location of the game that the team had an issue with.

 

[GigaBowser]

best game of all times best ot of all times thank you my friends

 

[Sintoid]

As I understand it, it's more gamified and also directly usable from within the tools/the game engine. E.g.: They can post comments/"place a ruby" in the location of the game that the team had an issue with.

Like most common 3D Tools Team Oriented
Nothing new
Wanna try one for free?
PTC Onshape

 

[Kumomeme]

just like how developers need to hear feedback from players through social media, this 'Rupee Bulletin Board' is basically like a way for developers to hear feedback strictly among them only.

 

[struggler_guts]

The developers apparently also had a no-argument rule, as all feedback would be posted and evaluated through Rupees.

Sounded good until that part. No discussion just 'whoever gets the most likes gets their idea moved forward' ???

 

[Hudo]

Like most common 3D Tools Team Oriented
Nothing new
Wanna try one for free?
PTC Onshape

I am just the messenger, man. Personally, I am happy if I am left alone for one day and don't have to interact with shitty bullshit like this.

Also: The people who developed Slack deserve a special place in hell.

 

[TintoConCasera]

That's one weird way to design a game imo, too many cooks in the kitchen and all that.

 

[Xdrive05]

So kind of like what Jira does? But... more?

 

[ReyBrujo]

Nintendo using Slack for internal communication, check.

 

[Sintoid]

I am just the messenger, man. Personally, I am happy if I am left alone for one day and don't have to interact with shitty bullshit like this.

Also: The people who developed Slack deserve a special place in hell.

This kind of tools are very useful to collect feedback but almost dangerous when used to interact.
Some kind of "Ok I appreciate your opinion but now let.me do my job"

 

[K' Dash]

Sounded good until that part. No discussion just 'whoever gets the most likes gets their idea moved forward' ???

This is the correct way to do it, otherwise shit won’t get done.