For anyone who considers themselves a Nintendo expert, it might be time to put those skills to work. Nintendo of America has an opening on their team that sounds like a dream for gamers who could wax poetic about the journey the company has taken from the NES to the Nintendo Switch 2, or would be happy to discuss the Nintendo story with people who know the company well.
According to the job listing on the Nintendo careers page, the Digital Archivist would dive into the minutiae of company history. It includes creating a digital framework for a wealth of information, from technical records and source materials, to knowledge surrounding legacy systems and platforms. In short, the job is about making sure the past is not only safely preserved, but accessible to anyone who might need to learn more in the future.
One of the bullet points describing the duties of the position actually refers to developing a “knowledge repository”. For a company founded in 1889 – the same year the Wall Street Journal first hit newsstands, just to provide some context — that started out selling handmade playing cards, then branched out into selling toys in the 1960s before first turning to video games in the next decade, a way to easily access so much information is crucial. Plus, it sounds like it could be fascinating, if not fun.
Nintendo Is Looking for Someone to Help Preserve More Than 100 Years of Company History
There’s definitely aspects to the job that are more technical than taking a tour of memory lane, like designing and maintaining “metadata schemas for historical software and software assets”. The listing does ask for someone familiar with various frameworks like Dublin Core, EAD, or PREMIS, which to the untrained ear may sound like alphabet soup from Ireland. But there’s also a more human aspect to the job.
Part of the listed duties include acting as an informational sponge. There’s doing research to verify historical information and crafting reference materials, but the Digital Archivist also gets to interview experts and long-term employees at Nintendo. The idea of being able to discuss Nintendo history – or, as the job listing refers to it, “institutional knowledge” – would be an exceptional exercise for anyone who has ever touched a Nintendo game.
In fact, Nintendo could be making history right now. The recently released Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake is doing incredibly well, with physical sales of the game topping the UK sales charts just days after its release. It’s entirely possible that the future Digital Archivist of Nintendo is one of the many people around the world who has gone on an adventure with Link and Zelda since the game dropped on November 5.
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