Tears of the Kingdom may just be the biggest Legend of Zelda game to date - so big, in fact, that Nintendo made its own social media platform for developers to help speed up production.
During Japan’s Computer Entertainment Development Conference, Tears of the Kingdom director Hidemaro Fujibayashi and engineer Kenichi Hirose went behind the scenes with an in-depth look at the open-world Zelda sequel's development. As reported by Automaton, the team made quite an effort to help better streamline devs' work and improve communication between them - so much so, that they created an in-house social platform.
Much like Facebook or even Reddit, this platform served to promote discussion and sharing between its users - the Tears of the Kingdom devs. Dubbed the "Rupee Bulletin Board" in honor of the Zelda series' iconic gem-like currency, it sounds like Nintendo's homemade social media site did everything it was supposed to do - devs could post feedback regarding playtests in real-time so that the rest of the team could easily keep track of everything.
The platform even had its own unique "like" or "upvote" system - devs could give each other "Rupees" if they agreed with something. This served as a useful priority system and made it much easier for Nintendo to summarize any data. The Rupee Bulletin Board came equipped with a set of rules, too - devs wanted posts to be objective, with opinions solidified only by facts rather than any personal or subjectively formed impressions.
Nintendo also maintained a strict "no-argument rule" - any feedback would've needed to be given constructively via posts and, of course, Rupees. As a Zelda stan myself, I love learning unexpected facts about the devs like the creation of the Rupee Bulletin Board - it'd be fun to see a fan-driven forum of sorts with similar systems in place, like Rupees instead of likes. I'll leave that to the professionals, though.
