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Nintendo explains how their collaboration with Paladin Studios for Good Job! came to be
Back towards the end of March 2020, Nintendo surprise revealed Good Job!, a workplace puzzler. The game was also released the same day it was revealed. That project was a collaboration between Nintendo and Paladin Studios. In an interview with NintendoEverything, Nintendo of America producer Takao Nakano explained how the collab came to be.
It’s been a long time since we first met Paladin. I think it was one of those game events somewhere. I’ve played some of their smart device games before, and all of them have a very cheerful atmosphere, and I got the impression that they make their games with great care.
Also, I heard that Paladin had experience working with Japanese game publishers previously, so from that standpoint as well, I may have been more interested in Paladin as a game studio. Since then, we had been looking for an opportunity to work together.
In 2017, our Nintendo team had an opportunity to visit Paladin Studios and at that time we discussed further about working on a project together. Nintendo requested Paladin to work on an experimental game idea, and from that experiment project the base of Good Job! was born. After discussions between the two companies, we agreed to polish this “raw stone” into a product, and the full game development started.