Poor Luigi.
While Mario gets to travel the universe, possessing a dinosaur and relaxing in his swimming trunks,
his younger brother is yet again forced to endure a nightmarish haunted house filled
with existential terror.
Oh well.
At least he’s got Gooigi to keep him company this time.
Yet while ghostbusting definitely doesn’t make Luigi feel good, there’s nothing horrific
about the working conditions that made his latest supernatural misadventure.
Next Level Games, the developers behind Luigi’s Mansion 3, pride themselves on having something
that’s depressingly rare within the modern games industry: a heathly work life balance!
This is the story of how a small team of Canadian developers got handed the reigns to a forgotten
Nintendo franchise, and how they managed to turn it into one of the most exciting Switch
releases of 2019.
Long before Luigi’s Mansion 3, or even before Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, there was a
little game called Sega Soccer Slam.
This is not a traditional sports game.
While the basic premise of football is there (kick the ball, get it in the goal), players
on the field are allowed to punch and hit each other to gain an advantage.
While not the biggest deal in the history of gaming, Sega Soccer Slam won a cult following,
including, clearly, some fans at Nintendo.
The company decided to reach out to the developers of the game, Black Box, to ask if they’d
like to make a Mario-themed spiritual successor to their original work.
There was just one problem.
Less than one month after Black Box had released Sega Soccer Slam, the company had been purchased
by EA.
Indeed, faced with the prospect of working for the infamous gaming monolith, many of
the team that had actually worked on Sega Soccer Slam had jumped ship.
So it was that Nintendo instead reached out to Next Level Games, where many former Black
Box employees had made themselves a new home.
Next Level had already enjoyed success working with a few different publishers, but they
quickly found they really enjoyed teaming up with Nintendo.
The resulting game, Mario Strikers, was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Next came a second Strikers game, followed by a Punch Out remake, before the team were
granted a special video conference with Nintendo’s higher ups.
Nobody at Next Level knew what the meeting was really meant to be about.
Executive Officer Kenseke Tanabe started a drumroll of sorts before announcing, "You're
gonna make Luigi's Mansion 2!" Bryce Holliday, who served as the game’s director, was so
surprised that he couldn’t even respond!
This new project involved Next Level working with a slightly different team within Nintendo,
and that meant greater scrutiny from Shigeru Miyamoto, who served as a producer on the
game.
While not heavily involved with the project, Shigeru described his role as being “like
a shepherd”.
He didn’t tell the team what to do, but did tell them what not to do if he felt that
they were getting off track.
Kenseke served as the liaison between Nintendo and Next Level, and he would meet with Shigeru
every two weeks to discuss the game.
He would lay out all of the work the team had been doing and how things were shaping
up.
Then, Shigeru would tell Kenseke about what he’d been watching on television recently.
Kenseke was confused – at first, he thought this was an attempt at breaking the ice, as
he and his team were a little nervous.
Instead, he realised that Shigeru was trying to passively teach them about the importance
of narrative structure within the game.
As part of development, Shigeru even flew to visit Next Level in Vancouver, Canada.
Everyone was on their best behaviour, ditching their usual office attire of shorts and casual
clothes for fancy suits to try and make a good impression.
Shigeru was mostly impressed by what he saw, but whenever he was presented with anything,
he kept asking, “Is this really fun?”.
At his insistence, the team scrapped all of their planned boss fights, because, apparently,
they didn’t feel “Luigi’s Mansion” enough.
Next Level’s finished game, Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon, won the hearts of players.
It was inevitable that the company would eventually begin work on Luigi’s Mansion 3.
By this point, Next Level was working exclusively with Nintendo.
They felt that this relationship simply fitted their preferred work style – they could
trust Nintendo to be professional, and it meant producing games of a high calibre that
sold well.
If there’s one company that Next Level tries to avoid emulating, it’s EA.
Where EA offers its employees free food, and a gym, and massages, Next Level provides its
employees with none of these perks.
According to Next Level’s founder, Jason Carr, these perks are often used as a trap.
Studios will say, “Here’s some free food, and more pop!
Stay here forever!
Eat the magical fruit!”
Instead, Next Level provides something far more important to its employees: a work-life
balance.
Developers aren’t expected to put in long hours, day after day.
While the occasional long night is inevitable, crunch periods are avoided wherever possible
so that employees can spend more time with their families.
Says Jason: “The big thing for a lot of us, especially with guys getting older and
having families, we thought we could build an environment where we could build games
and not kill guys….We realise that there’s a whole life outside of making video games.”
Other employees within the company agree with this philosophy, as is very clear from the
studio’s anonymous Glassdoor reviews.
It’s rare to see anyone in the games industry describe their workplace as a “healthy work
environment”!
There’s no arguing with results.
At the time of making this video, Luigi’s Mansion 3 is enjoying an overwhelmingly popular
review score on Metacritic, proving that treating employees with respect, working professionally,
and doing your best to have fun can help to make an enjoyable game.
Perhaps the moral of this story is best summed up with Shigeru Miyamoto’s unofficial motto
for Next Level’s Luigi’s Mansion games.
When he visited Next Level’s office, Shigeru made the wise statement, “Make something
better today than you made yesterday.”
It’s okay if you don’t create your magnum opus straight away.
Life is about learning, developing, and making slow improvements.
Next Level succeeds as an indie studio primarily because it knows the value of patience, of
taking the right amount of time to achieve a goal, and of not pushing too far ahead in
too short a time.
Have patience with yourself.
Don’t worry about being perfect.
Simply focus on being better today than you were yesterday, and you’ll be satisfied
with your achievements.