Mario Kart World released on June 5 as a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive, selling over 780,000 physical copies in Japan within four days (according to Famitsu ). As the game introduces brand-new characters, features and open-world exploration while running on completely new hardware, it is somewhat unsurprising that it required a bigger dev team than past entries in the series. But Japanese video game industry analyst Papen has made a full analysis on the personnel that were involved in Mario Kart World, and their data suggests that Nintendo massively increased the number of staff for the new game, with the art department counting three times more staff members than 2017’s Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
According to Papen, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe had 18 members involved in game design, 72 in programming and 73 in the art department – which is 163 people in total. However, Mario Kart World welcomed a significantly larger number of staff, with the biggest boost in manpower happening in the art sector. With 22 game designers, 86 programmers and 192 artists – Mario Kart World had a whopping 119 more artists on board compared to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
Out of the 192 members of the artist department, some were split into two teams – the field design team, with 88 members and the character design team, with 57 members. This breakdown suggests that a big factor for the upsizing was Mario Kart World’s vast open-world map.
Additionally, data suggest that most of the art team members are completely new to the series. In Mario Kart World’s field design team, only 6 members had experience working on Mario Kart 8 DX and only 1 had worked on the Booster Course Pass. When it comes to current members of the character design team, only 3 have experience working on 8 DX, and none worked on the Booster Course Pass. It is also important to note that around 80% of staff who worked on 2014’s Mario Kart 8 also participated in the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe project.
It was big news when Xenoblade Chronicles series developer Monolith Soft announced that they were handling Mario Kart World’s field and character designs – however they weren’t the only co-developer whose staff was working in the design department. Aside from Nintendo and Monolith Soft, Bandai Namco, Imagica Geeq and 1-Up Studio also helped work on the art of the game. For Mario Kart 8 DX Bandai Namco was the only known co-developer participating, which puts into perspective the big difference in workforce behind the two titles.
Japan’s major developers have been putting effort into increasing their workforce in the creative sector. Recently, Capcom also revealed that almost half of the company’s development staff specialize in character animation and visual effects, and they are actively trying to recruit even more talent in these fields. With more Switch 2 exclusives yet to be released, it wouldn’t come as a surprise if Nintendo continued increasing their staff numbers in order to be able to create more ambitious projects for the new console.
