A Winner Is You

Last week, Nintendo had an announcement about their E3 announcements, which is about as meta as you can get, considering that spawned articles about the announcement of the announcement, and then tweets announcing the articles, and so on. When the announcement of the announcement finally came, along with the details of when the E3 Nintendo Direct would air, Nintendo dropped the news that they were bringing back the Nintendo World Championships, 25 years after the original event took place. Given that my Twitter bio features the phrase "Nintendo World Championships participant", I had a lot of people ask me how I felt about it. As with anything related to Nintendo, I have a lot of thoughts about it, naturally.

What most people don't realize about the Nintendo World Championships is how big of a deal it really was at the time. The open trials that I attended were held in the Javits Center in Manhattan; this is the same convention center where the New York International Auto Show is held every year, just to provide scale of the event. As I remember it, the expo floor was split into two sections, one for the competition itself, and one with banks of NES systems set up with newly released and yet unreleased games to play. Nintendo even created a completely unique cartridge for the competition, with three challenges based on Super Mario Bros, Rad Racer, and Tetris. It was a spectacle, and it's still something I remember fondly to this day. (My parents, less so; their main memory of the event was bribing me with a new Nintendo game to get me out on the early train to avoid being stuck there for several more hours. I chose Shadowgate, by the way, which was not one of my finer moments.)

It's really hard to describe how important of a memory going to the Nintendo World Championships was for me as a kid. Imagine being eleven years old and going to something like PAX, except that it was a one of a kind event and it would turn out that there would never be another one. If you're someone like me, that would be something you'd treasure forever. That event really solidified my love of games, and I've always felt lucky that I was able to be part of it, even if I did completely terribly and didn't advance past the initial round. (It turns out that when you've played World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros over and over, when you suddenly have to play it differently, it doesn't occur to you to not waste time collecting 1ups that you don't need.) I found the shirt in my basement last summer; it's too small for me but I was overcome with nostalgia just seeing it again.

That said, I was apprehensive when Nintendo announced they'd be bringing this back for E3; that seemed way too soon to do anything that would live up to the Nintendo World Championships that I remember. Upon reading today's details, that hunch appeared to be correct. Not only is the qualifying round going to be held at Best Buy, there are only eight locations holding qualifiers. For the entire United States. (And two of the eight are in California, because of course they are.) Having attended Nintendo's last in-store event held at a Best Buy for the Super Smash Bros preview, I'm dubious that these qualifiers will be run smoothly at all. The Smash Bros event was, to be kind, a mess: There was one console with the Wii U version of the game set up for the entire store, and the line took over an hour to snake around the store. That was after it took them what felt like an eon to actually get the Wii U display unit and hooked up, for that matter. As for the 3DS version, they had one poor employee with a 3DS literally tethered to her body who walked around to people in line to play while they waited for the Wii U line to move. It's only because Super Smash Bros is as good as it is that the entire afternoon didn't feel like a giant waste of time.

All that said, this feels to me not like a loving tribute to a significant event in the life of early 90s nerds, but more like a naked appeal to a very specific nostalgia. If this were truly a throwback to the original Nintendo World Championships, or if the event felt like it was planned to be the spectacle that the 1990 incarnation was, then I might be intrigued. But this? I don't use the phrase "crapping on my childhood" lightly, but that's honestly how this whole campaign feels to me right now. For a company that trades so heavily on nostalgia, this seems so poorly considered that it reeks of desperation. This is what I would have expected from a Nintendo on its heels in 2013, pleading with anyone who remembers the original Nintendo World Championships to think back to how they felt about the company then as opposed to now.

That's what makes this whole Nintendo World Championships event seem so oddly timed; simply put, this feels like a desperation move that Nintendo doesn't need to make right now. Nintendo is profitable for the first time in four years. Splatoon is easily the most anticipated upcoming release right now, by a wide margin. Plus, Nintendo's presentation at last year's E3 was easily the highlight of the show, so they already have a lot of positive energy heading into this year's show. Why they would risk losing some of that good will by putting together something like this, especially because it relies on Best Buy to not screw it up, is baffling.

Maybe I'll be wrong, and this will live up to the memories that I have of 1990. I'm not optimistic, but it could definitely happen. I'm not particularly inclined to find out, though; I'm happier to sit in my basement, clutching my t-shirt from 1990, and pretending that was the last Nintendo World Championship. It's the only one that matters, in any event.

Fresh Ink

Splatoon’s unorthodox demo finally was released this past weekend, giving us an chance to get our hands on Nintendo’s first major new IP since they stopped putting the word Wii in front of any noun they could find. What surprised me, among the generally positive reactions to the game, is an undercurrent of opinion that Splatoon is dead on arrival. One article even went so far as to suggest that Nintendo shut the whole thing down and turn it into a free-to-play affair, because it’s doomed at a $60 price point. This doesn’t surprise me, of course, because the simple reason for all of this doom and gloom is that it’s very hard to see the appeal of a game that is not for you, and Splatoon is a game very specifically not for the typical online multiplayer shooter fan. What’s more, that’s the game’s biggest strength, not its weakness.

There are two major complaints about Splatoon’s gameplay, from what I’ve read, and they both tend to center around the perspective of the hardcore gamer without consideration for how people who haven’t reached level 30 in Destiny might approach a multiplayer shooter. [Update: John Siracusa correctly pointed out that the level cap in Destiny is 32, not 30.] One is the motion control; the tutorial in the Splatoon demo requires you use the Wii U Gamepad to look around, and only uses the right stick for lateral view control. This is understandably jarring to anyone who’s played any first or third person perspective games on a console before; I certainly turned it off immediately and went back to using the dual sticks as I was accustomed to once the tutorial was over. This isn’t necessarily a gimmick to justify the use of the Gamepad, however. I gave the demo over to my oldest daughter, who is becoming fairly adept at games in her own right but hasn’t yet had any experience with a game like this aside from a brief excursion with Disney Infinity, which didn’t hold her interest long enough to warrant learning to control a 3D camera.

What I noticed is that she spent the entire time looking straight down and didn’t know how to look where she was going with the motion controls turned off. She started to figure it out, but not really. It hadn’t occurred to me to turn the motion controls on for her during the limited time allotted for the demo, but I think it could actually be more intuitive for people who are not used to playing this kind of game. Even games like Portal 2, which are generally very inclusive for people who aren’t adeptly skilled at games, have a high learning curve for new players because the camera control is unintuitive; using the gamepad in this way, to literally move the window on the gamepad to where you want to look, could help a lot of people who have struggled to play this sort of game before.

The other big complaint from hardcore gamers about Splatoon is the lack of voice chat. For most people not deep into that culture, the lack of voice chat isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. I’ve heard horror stories of parents who took their grade schoolers online in Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare and got a swift education in foul language. Having played the demo, I can safely state that team chat really isn’t necessary to be successful (especially since both teams are at equal disadvantage), and it’s reassuring as a parent to not have to worry about who’s on the other mics hooked up to the game. That’s not to mention a lot of the gatekeeping and harassment that happens over voice chat to women who play online multiplayer. If one is privileged enough to not ever have to experience that, not having voice chat is a flaw, but it’s a relief to many others who do have to endure that in other games.

Because this game doesn’t include the checklist of features that are assumed to be necessary to have a successful online multiplayer game, the storyline in the hardcore gaming community is that this game will struggle to sell. These arguments tend to reference Sin and Punishment and Bayonetta 2, those games being the last shooter type games that Nintendo has attempted. My feeling is the complete opposite. Honestly, I’d be concerned if Nintendo was trying to court that type of player, and skewed Splatoon toward those types of preferences. There’s a reason that Activision doesn’t port Call Of Duty games over to the Wii U anymore; that’s not the type of game that sells on the Wii U, and it would be a mistake for Nintendo to try to make something for that audience that frankly isn’t really there. It’s actually reassuring that Nintendo is willing to throw out some of the mainstay features of online shooters if they don’t serve the game they’re trying to make.

The game that Nintendo is trying to make, by the way, is rated E10. That’s important for a lot of reasons, not the least of which that it dictates who the audience of the game really is. It’s quickly reaching the point where you can count on your fingers how many major console releases are rated below T; the number drops even more dramatically when you remove sports games and toys-to-life games, especially given that even Lego games are moving into the toys to life realm with the upcoming Lego Dimensions. That’s not to say that Splatoon is a game that’s made specifically for kids, because it’s not by any stretch, but it is a game that’s built so that kids can play it. The rating is not part of the marketing message, to be sure, but publishers know what kinds of content will lead to which ratings and absolutely tailor that based on who they want their audience to be.

You can see that not only in the content of Splatoon but in how and where Nintendo is advertising it. Many AAA releases advertise on prime time network television or during sporting events because that’s where they think their audiences are; I’ve seen plenty of AAA game ads during NFL games, for instance. The other day, while watching Teen Titans Go, one of my daughters came over and told me very excitedly that she saw the game I was playing that morning on Cartoon Network. Cartoon Network is the most influential network in all major kid demographics right now, and by choosing to spend their ad dollars there, Nintendo is making a big statement about who they want to buy their game. It’s a good bet, too; I’ve spoken at length on Isometric about the lack of console games that families can play together without having to worry about exposing my kids to something they aren’t ready to see. Granted, most parents aren’t as dialed into upcoming game releases as I am, but rest assured that kids can be relentless when they see something that appeals to them advertised on shows they’re watching. That alone can move copies, and for some households, it may even sell consoles now that the rest of the software available is fairly substantial.

Ultimately, what defined Nintendo’s approach to the last console generation was a belief that there were people who wanted to play games who weren’t being served by the console market as it was. They were right, almost to a fault; there was such a market out there, and those people did want to play games, but they weren’t looking for the kinds of involved experiences that a TV-based console dictated. Those new players wanted gaming in smaller chunks, to pass five or ten minutes waiting in line, not hour long sessions in their living rooms. So while the Wii appealed to them initially, once the fad of Wii Sports wound down, they weren’t interested in buying new games to replace it, and they certainly weren’t willing to spend another $300 on another console that was still tied to their living room TV when they had a device in their pocket that served that need just fine. Worse, since Nintendo had mostly alienated the types of consumers who were still interested in buying a new console by focusing on experiences like Wii Fit and Wii Music at the expense of more traditional games, it took them a long time to win back that audience’s trust.

What’s shaping up to define Nintendo in the current console generation is a subtler variation on the same theme. While the games being made for the Xbox One and PS4 skew further and further in the direction of what they believe their audience (read: hardcore gamers) want, Nintendo is clearly betting that there is a wider audience that is already inclined to play console games but is not able to find anything that’s outside of the games that have been approved by the hardcore gaming community. While Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros were more or less expected to be what they are based on the two series’ predecessors, just by virtue of having none of the baggage of an existing franchise, Splatoon shows what Nintendo wants to make now: Games accessible to players of multiple skill levels and ages, with an emphasis on fun over competitiveness. Nintendo appears to have accepted that they’ve lost the opportunity to win over people who have never considered themselves gamers before to the mobile devices those consumers already own, and they’ve sold all the consoles that they’re going to be able to sell to anyone who’s also inclined to play Bloodborne, because no one’s expecting a truly “hardcore” experience on the Wii U anymore. To bet that there’s a middle between those two extremes, full of groups of people who are subtly or not so subtly being told that the games being made are Not For Them, seems like a really smart move, and in line with the blue ocean strategy that carried them through the Wii years.

Will it work? That remains to be seen. Nintendo’s a company that’s been known to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory more than once in the past. That said, the game, based on the demo, is good, and Nintendo appears to know who they need to market toward, so Splatoon has every chance to succeed. If you’ve looked at the current landscape of console releases and found yourself frustrated, even if you have no interest in the game itself, it’s worth keeping track of how Splatoon is received in the marketplace. Purely in terms of determining what kinds of games get made for the rest of this console generation, Splatoon could easily be the most important game released this year.

Isometric Moving to Relay.FM: The New Feed is Here!

As promised when we announced our move to Relay.fm, we have a new feed, which you can find at http://www.relay.fm/isometric/feed. We’ll be repointing the existing feeds this week, but if you’re subscribed to the 5by5 Master Feed or you want to be absolutely sure not to miss an episode (because Monday will be awfully boring without being able to listen to Bri breaking bookcases or Georgia threatening orcs in the nicest way possible), you’ll want to take a few minutes to resubscribe. Here are instructions on how to do that in the major podcast clients:

Podcasts on iOS:

Just click on the feed link, click Subscribe in the box that pops up, and you’re done!

iTunes: 

Choose File > Subscribe to Podcast and paste the URL into the text box.

Overcast:

From the main screen, click the + in the upper right, then “Add URL”, and paste the feed into the text box.

Downcast:

Tap Add, then Add Podcast Manually. Paste the feed where it says “Feed or OPML Address” and tap Subscribe in the upper right..

Instacast:

Tap the + in the lower left on the Podcasts screen. In the search box, paste the Feed URL and tap Search. On the show page that comes up from the search, tap the + in the upper right to subscribe.

Pocket Casts:

In the Discover menu, tap on search in the upper right. Paste the feed into the search box and tap search. When the show page comes up, tap Subscribe.

That’s it! Thanks, as always for listening! (And for regular readers of this blog, I promise to have something other than technical details of RSS feeds soon. Stay tuned!)

World Autism Awareness Day

Since today is World Autism Awareness Day, I decided it might be handy to collect some of the links where I discuss my experience with parenting children of autism in one place.

On Isometric #29, we talked about why it’s terrible to use autistic as a slur, as well as the lack of representation of autism in video games. I also expanded on that discussion in a blog post here.

Back in October, Aleen Simms interviewed me for her podcast Less Than or Equal, and we talked about the experience of parenting children with autism (along with gaming inclusivity and how I came to terms with Lego Friends).

Finally, one of my very first posts on this blog was about how better to relate to parents of children with autism, and how to avoid minimizing their experiences.

Isometric Moving to Relay.FM: What You Need to Know

By now, you’ve probably heard the big news about Isometric moving over to Relay.FM next month. Bri summed up the reasons why we’re moving pretty well; I’m personally really excited because I’ve gotten to become good friends with a number of the hosts over at Relay since we started Isometric, and the network is doing a lot of exciting work right now. It’s always more fun to work with your friends, and I think the folks at Relay feel the same about being able to bring us on board.

That said, change is always a little bit scary. I’ve gotten a bunch of questions about what’s going to happen to the show once we move, so rather than trying to answer those 140 characters at a time on Twitter, it made sense to try to collect a FAQ of what to expect when Isometric moves over to Relay in April.

Will I need to resubscribe when Isometric moves?

Maybe. If you’re subscribed to us via the 5by5 Master Feed, you won’t see our episodes in that feed anymore, so you’ll definitely want to subscribe to the Isometric feed on Relay.fm. Otherwise, even though we’ll be redirecting the current feeds so you don’t have to subscribe to the new feeds, we do recommend it so that you make sure not to miss an episode, because things can sometimes go wrong with feed redirects. I’ll have another post with details on how to resubscribe once we have the new feeds set up.

Will I still be able to listen to the old episodes?

Yes! We’re bringing over all the old episodes, and we’re going to be putting all of the After Dark content into the main episode. We’ve heard that the After Darks could be hard to find for people who were listening to older episodes, so this should make things much more convenient.

Will you still be live streaming?

Yes! We’re still planning to stream the shows at our normal time on Thursday nights. Once we move over we’ll be streaming from relay.fm/live; keep an eye on the Twitter account for the announcement of when that switch will take place.

If you have any other concerns, feel free to ask me on Twitter or email at feedback@isometricshow.com if it doesn’t fit in a Tweet. We’re looking forward to working with Relay to bring you more of Isometric’s signature information and nonsense starting in April!