The accused is charged with polluting our beautiful home.

Before I indict the Nintendo community, I have to indict myself. There’s video proof that I’ve hooted and hollered for the reveal of various Nintendo games. I’ve spent days consigned to refreshing Famiiboards for Nintendo Direct leaks. A friend cited my recent enthusiasm for Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour as evidence that Nintendo is shooting fish in a barrel. And, yeah. But I’m not just the fish… I’m lining up to buy the barrel and the water too. So when I dive into my frustration surrounding the current state of our community, I’m not taking aim from a superior vantage point.

Nintendo recently announced the newest Splatoon title, Splatoon Raiders. It’s the first spin-off entry in a series whose Switch titles both sold more than 10 million copies, so Raiders marks a significant expansion of an IP that quickly earned a slot in Nintendo’s S-tier. Its reception, sales potential, and multimedia presence match and exceed many of the mascot characters that’ve been on Nintendo’s roster for quadruple the time. As such, Raiders looks to be another notch in Nintendo Entertainment and Planning Division 5 (EPD 5)’s — the internal development studio responsible for both Splatoon and Animal Crossing — belt.

But, it’s also a strange proposition for a multiplayer-first series that already explores discrete genres and styles. Splatoon 3 has a robust single-player action platforming adventure, a PvE horde mode, a collectible card game, and a roguelike tower to climb. What makes Raiders worth being spun into a standalone title? What was the rationale behind EPD 5 pursuing this game rather than Splatoon 4, when Nintendo has shown a keen interest in having an always-updating, perpetually active, and varied PvP Splatoon game in its ecosystem? 

These are the questions I asked myself in light of the reveal. The wider community, though, was instead preoccupied with what sat intangibly in the shadows: a general Nintendo Direct. What does Splatoon Raiders’ announcement on the Nintendo Today! app foretell for a showcase with even more game announcements? This question echoes across the internet, the latest chapter of a phenomenon that has loomed over the Nintendo community for as long as the Direct presentations have existed. A preoccupation with what’s next has defined conversation since Satoru Iwata piloted the format of digital hype events over a decade ago. 

This fixation has only been worsened by Nintendo’s deviation from routine, dropping news randomly in Directs and beyond. As Nintendo showcases become irregular, as the company’s channels of communication shift to the proprietary and the obtuse, the compulsion to read past any actual news for hints of the next headline has become the only constant in a (Deep)sea of change.

The ability to find order in the chaos is currency, and a cottage industry of ‘expert’ speculation dominates Nintendo YouTube and social media feeds. Appearing knowledgeable about a company this furtive has become worth far more than the ability to provide clarity on what any of us are actually looking at. Look no further than the slavish devotion to ‘insiders’ with hit rates well below 50% or the laundry list of YouTube channels spilling rote commentary about when the next Direct will arrive, peering into their frosted-over crystal balls for evidence that Nintendo’s latest tweet was actually teasing a game that doesn’t exist yet.

The blind lead the blind — the hierarchy decided by who’s fastest to hit record on OBS and stretch a Famiiboards post into a 10-minute video better than the next. And I don’t blame them. Many of my friends are full-time Nintendo content creators with absolutely no choice but to toss the next piece of bait into a lake oversaturated with meaningless speculation, feeding an ever-gluttonous school of fish. The algorithms love this quick-hit content that’s easy going down but nonetheless leaves commenters just dying to throw in their future-obsessed two cents.

I name no names because I’m not looking for any drama. The trend is self-evident and cashing a check is worth more than promoting deeper conversation about Nintendo. I want my friends fed, and wondering what Donkey Kong Bananza’s Direct suggests for future Nintendo reveals keeps the fridge stocked with the good stuff. But it’s also dubious to suggest that all this speculation is quality. Or that those doing the speculating have deep knowledge of Nintendo at all. 

While it’s a popular (and somewhat true) narrative that Nintendo is receding into itself, obfuscating the details of its internal workings to appear monolithic, these claims are parroted with hyperbole that relieves the burden of having to truly learn about the company before you go spouting off.

Here’s an exercise: You can read through the Mario Kart World credits right now and learn about any member of the team. Take Masaaki Ishikawa, World‘s Art Director. You can go to MobyGames and see that he’s been with Nintendo since 2005, first working on Nintendogs, credited under 3-D Design. You can learn that Nintendogs was made by Nintendo EAD Software Development Group 1 by researching Nintendo Fandom, discovering the team was refactored into modern-day Nintendo EPD 9. Then, you can go read the Ask The Developer interview about Mario Kart World to learn even more about EPD 9’s history and design philosophies that led to its newest flagship game.

Very few Nintendo content creators are willing to do any of that. Even fewer audience members are. Where’s the incentive to learn about the company when you can spit out a 12-minute, two ad-break survey of the day’s hot Reddit post? 

No one slows down, steps outside the headline, and realizes we can actually speculate better if we unmask Nintendo’s blank facade and come to know the faces behind the games — to engage more deeply with the craftsmanship and see true patterns. Not patterns in Tweet timings that suggest news is right around the corner, but patterns in personnel. Patterns in which development teams are most often tapped for console launches, or summer releases, or simply which internal team might have a game ready for release at the given moment.

We won’t ever change the mode of discussion, in part because it simply is just fun to partake in the speculation. This content doesn’t dominate because it’s boring. But we can at least be informed, put in the research and the time to speak about Nintendo with clarity. The company’s development structure and its nuances can be understood with enough effort — I won’t give in and tacitly perpetuate the idea that Nintendo is one big game factory that churns a new game out every few weeks.

It’s this thinking that turns each Nintendo game into an assembly line product where the community scrutinizes every trailer to ascertain whether all the “right” boxes are checked. Speculation’s cousin is over-analysis, and for the last decade each significant release has become a bottomless well of analysis content that always bends in favor of what the community wants to hear. 

Case in point: Donkey Kong Bananza is filled with crocodile iconography. One of the resultant points of discussion around the game pre-release was whether long-time Donkey Kong Country villain King K. Rool is going to show up. Countless YouTube videos and Tweet threads and Reddit posts exhaustively picked around in scraps of footage for tidbits that suggest the Kremling crocodile gang was mounting a comeback. I love Donkey Kong Country, but who cares? 

What I want to know more about is the creative spirit driving the game I’m looking at, not the one I’ve imagined for myself. Donkey Kong Bananza is off-type with a dense, interlocking set of systems and controls that are both brash and intricate. It also features incongruous design flourishes; the art design includes ‘90s Banjo-Kazooie-inspired googly eyes on various enemies. That’s all delightfully new from the Tokyo-based EPD 8, previously responsible for the 3D Mario games. It represents a significant departure from its past work — many of its verbs and gameplay concepts are instead taken from EPD 3’s modern Zelda titles.

Bananza is a top-shelf Nintendo project that begs to be put in conversation with the sandbox freedom of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and the kinetic joy of 2004’s bongo-controlled platformer Donkey Kong Jungle Beat. And it begged for deep conversation and context, even before its release. 

But instead we expended ourselves wondering about whether King K. Rool is hiding in the game, fretting over whether certain characters’ presence “retcons” the games around it? These lines of discussion are far removed from any truly interesting analysis — empty calories and easy clicks. They don’t engage with its game design, the world it builds, the institutional knowledge and talent it leans on. We got countless interviews with Bananza’s Producer and Director diving deep into their creative philosophies, and all the community took away was a petulant, short-sighted conversation about how the game began development on Switch 1. Another dead-end discourse.

Just six weeks ago, the first wholly original Mario Kart title since 2014 was released. Just last week, the first 3D Donkey Kong platformer since the ‘90s. And we’re already anxious for the next thing, rumored Nintendo Directs hiding at the end of the month.

We want, we rush, we rehash the same talking points ad nauseam while the content creators steering the discussion fail to wade in further than the shallows. It’s exhausting, it’s low-grade. We let the pace be dictated entirely by what’s new, what’s hot, what’s in Nintendo’s narrow cone of marketing vision. Even when Nintendo gives us the opportunity to engage with its back catalog by dropping classics like F-Zero GX or The Wind Waker or Super Mario Strikers into our laps on Switch 2, they can’t enjoy more than a passing glance. Eyes never leave the horizon.

Speculation and analysis will forever be cornerstones of the Nintendo community. It’s always going to be fast moving. It’ll never make the same time to dig into the company’s history and its offshoot pockets that I wish it would. But it doesn’t have to be so reductive. We can travel deeper into these works, speculate and analyze from a stronger, considered position. We can reject monolithic perceptions of Nintendo and chisel a more nuanced sculpture.

It’s worth doing — not just because my heart beats to the rhythm of HD Rumble. But because the Nintendo community itself is worth it. The people therein are wonderful, progressive people. As the wider gaming community becomes colored by its toxic, regressive contingent, the Nintendo community is defined by an ardent, inclusive spirit. Look no further than the organized, emphatic defense of the trans character Vivian in the Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door remake last year.

The Nintendo community  — our community — is a good, passionate, tolerant, goofy, excitable, welcoming place. It feels like home even if the foundation needs a little work. I’ve been in it for most of my life, and I’m never leaving. Never leaving these games, these worlds that occupy my imagination, the friends I’ve made in them. I’ve lived with people I’ve bonded with over Nintendo. Worked with them day after day. Talked to them every night. I will keep squealing for big announcements and F5’ing for new rumors. 

But I’ll do what I can to pay forward the knowledge of the company I have, and advocate for a better way of speaking about it. One that has more substance. One that can hold Nintendo to account and isn’t beholden to the whims of hollow conversation. We can hammer out some better talking points, drill deeper into the moment. We can patch holes in our thought process and build something better, opening the door for discourse that’s worth inviting into this space we value and share. We have the tools to make this community stronger. Let’s use them.