"Playing Games Day and Night"... Nintendo Subsidiary 'Mario Club' Identity Revealed [New Jobs]

Game Testing Subsidiary Established in 2009
All Non-Regular Game Enthusiasts Converted to Full-Time Employees

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Nintendo, regarded as the world's top game company beyond Japan, oversees numerous subsidiaries. Most of these are branches that produce games or design and manufacture Nintendo's gaming consoles, but there is one uniquely different subsidiary: the 'Mario Club.'

The Mario Club is a subsidiary named after 'Super Mario,' a key figure in Nintendo's growth history and a cultural icon of Japan. About 400 employees work at this company, and their sole job is to 'play Nintendo games.'

Introduction screen of Mario Club, a subsidiary of Nintendo Japan. Mario Club homepage

Founded in 2009, the Mario Club is Nintendo's 'debugging specialist' subsidiary. Employees here play Nintendo games before release to identify bugs and other quality-related issues early, thereby enhancing the game's completeness. In other words, they serve as game testers who can test games in advance.

Today, games are highly complex software, making pre-release quality control and debugging essential. However, most companies outsource 'game tester' roles to external firms or hire temporary part-time workers to perform these tasks.

Nintendo also previously employed enthusiastic gamers as non-regular contract workers to test games, but in 2009, they converted all of them to full-time employees and launched an independent subsidiary department. The result was the creation of the Mario Club, which has proudly served as Nintendo's professional game testers for 15 years now.

Nintendo is not only Japan's top digital game content company but is also famous for its corporate culture that focuses on employee welfare. Nintendo capture

Over 15 years, the seasoned employees of the Mario Club have developed gaming skills considered among the best worldwide. They do more than just test game quality; they identify system loopholes that developers might have overlooked and explore balance elements that could affect the game's enjoyment, compiling detailed reports.

Although they do not directly participate in game development, they play a crucial role in maintaining 'Nintendo Quality.' For this reason, Nintendo always includes Mario Club employees' names alongside game developers in their official credits.

Nintendo is known for its dedication to product quality management. This stems partly from its experience in the 1980s, when the global game market was emerging, and the leading company Atari's reckless mass production of low-quality games caused the entire market to shake.

Nintendo's steadfast commitment to quality management has fostered unique roles like the Mario Club and a distinctive organizational culture. In fact, regular employees at Nintendo's Japan headquarters earn salaries that are not significantly higher than those at comparable IT giants. Instead, the company offers personnel systems that provide opportunities for individual skill development and decision-making that boosts morale, as seen in the Mario Club example, cultivating a unique sense of loyalty and pride. This is why Nintendo is considered one of Japan's most coveted 'dream companies.'

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.