Look, sometimes you’re really proud of something and want to show it off. Even as the CEO of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata was not immune to this, since he apparently made sure everyone at Nintendo Europe was playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf ahead of the game’s launch.
Speaking on the Back Page podcast (spotted by FRVR), Ashley Day, a former PR and social media manager at Nintendo UK, recalls the experience in a retrospective on the Nintendo DS. “There was a very unusual push behind-the-scenes to make [Animal Crossing: New Leaf] a success,” he remembers.
“This came from the top. This came from Iwata,” he said. “Certainly in Europe, I don’t know what it was like in the States or in Japan, but every single employee at Nintendo Europe and all of its subsidiaries was given a free copy of New Leaf months before the game came out.”
This wasn’t normal for the games giant. Employees had access to freebies, sure, but not before the shelf date. Iwata made an exception for the handheld Animal Crossing installment, because he wanted everyone to understand the charm and rhythm of the series.
“Iwata made a point and said, ‘I want everyone, it’s now your job to play New Leaf, like play it every day,'” Day says. “He wanted people to understand at Nintendo what it was like to play Animal Crossing habitually.”
I’m not an Animal Crossing fan, really – I respect the series much more than I actively enjoy it – and even I’ll say, having your boss come in and utter the words, “It’s now your job to play New Leaf” is truly the dream. Forget real capitalism, we’re partaking in fake capitalism with bells and Tom Nook now.
Of course, “he was right,” and Nintendo’s European operations became a hot bed of Animal Crossing aficionados, because New Leaf dailies became fundamental to everyone’s days. “It was amazing to see,” Day adds.
“Some of the older generation of sales people who were in their late 50s and didn’t really touch games all that much suddenly became ultra obsessed with Animal Crossing,” he remembers. “They were trading on the Animal Crossing stock market and making clothes.”
New Leaf wound up being a massive release, and Day puts some of that down to this mandate. Whether that’s true is hard to actually verify, but having everyone behind the game definitely won’t have hurt.
Animal Crossing: New Leaf became a benchmark for the series, remaining a fan-favorite to this day. If even your accountants and admin staff are into it, the thing must be good, right?