Dear Malstrom,
I’ve stumbled over your blog a couple of weeks ago and I find it to be
very interesting. I’ve even read all your articles about disruption
and blue ocean by now, though I found the latter one was a little bit
too colorful. However, I wanted to address three little things, I’ve
noticed on your blog:
Too colorful? Nothing can be too colorful!
Being colorful is essential for the start-up:
The purpose of the Blue Ocean Articles really didn’t have too much to do about the Blue Ocean book as it was turning Iwata’s GDC 2006 metaphor of ‘landing on a new continent for the first time’ to the most grandiose parable. It was written during the midst of the Wii avalanche (2007), and I wanted to capture much of the craziness of that time period. It has many of Nintendo’s pre-Wii quotes and shows that Iwata explained exactly what Nintendo was going to do. Too bad no one listened! It catalogued many of the analysts quotes pre-Wii with almost all of them showing the PS3 as the ‘guaranteed’ victory with Revolution only selling like five million. Many said Revolution would be the last console from Nintendo. The articles talked about the ‘Detroit disease’, which is very real and is currently could be called the ‘California disease’. The news of the day shows the ‘Detroit disease’ growing larger rapidly more and more with each new day. In the last article, we go into the future and see gaming how it should be… everywhere. A depression is predicted in the near future… which sounded insane in 2007.
The articles are never completed, they are only abandoned. I have forbidden myself to ‘tweak them’ in any way after they are put up. This has been greatly embarrassing to me as well as humbling. It shows me at that point of time, I was an idiot in certain ways.
But my main point is that knowledge only comes through the process of creation. Games, books, music, perhaps even television and movies, do not begin crystallized in the mind. The way how a game is put on the shelf is very different then what developers imagined when they began! There are many a writer who, when beginning a work, has no idea how it ends or what it is even about. If he sits there and tries to come up with it all in his head, he loses and wastes time. But the process of putting pen to paper, the process of creation in any field, grows his mind like nothing before. In other words, the Disruption Articles couldn’t have been written before the Blue Ocean Articles and then the columns that came before them. It is a gradual process.
And while I am posting Kathy Sierra’s pictures, let us look at this one. Almost incredibly, word for word, does this match what is going on with Nintendo versus the incumbents. It is New Generation versus Next Generation.
1) Virtual Handheld
At some point you wondered, why Nintendo hasn’t presented a “Virtual
Handheld” (the DSi version of the Virtual Console for GameBoy,
Game&Watch or GameGear games) yet. I have asked myself the same
question and I have two theories:
The first problem is the nature of those ports. On Wii’s Virtual
Console Nintendo is just releasing ROMs of old games, that are simply
emulated. Next to the overall better visuals on the Wii, some games
get small graphical updates or bugfixes via patch files, but that’s
not very common. Now let’s take a look at the DSi and the possible
classic software for it. What other popular GameBoy games cross your
mind next to “Super Mario Land 2″ or “Zelda Link’s Awakening”? Right,
Tetris and Pokémon. Especially Pokémon was one of the most successful
GameBoy games and really has pushed the sales of the system. But both
Tetris and Pokémon utilized the GameBoy link cable connection. You
can’t simply emulate that, there’s no way of connecting two DSi
systems with a cable. But how are going to trade your Pokémons now?
Maybe it’s emulateable with a local wireless connection, that would be
the logical choice. OR… maybe they want to step it up and let the
“Virtual Handheld” work with an online Wi-Fi connection. Finally
playing “Zelda Four Swords” online with other people or trading your
old Pokémons over the entire world – that would be nice. But of course
developing and testing this needs its time and a Virtual Handheld
should be able to show its full potential, when it hits the market.
And of course this only applies if they don’t take the easy way out
and just rely on a simple local wireless connection or don’t even
support the multiplayer mode of old GameBoy games at all (which would
be disappointing at best).
The Virtual Console is one of the most misunderstood features among analyzing customers (i.e. forum dwellers) right now. It has been the misconception that Virtual Console was a ‘rom dump’. As customers, we are familiar with running emulators on our computers. Thanks to some words from a Hudson employee, we have a much better vision of what really takes of the service.
The biggest problem of the Virtual Console is legal. There are so many legal knots to re-release old games. For example, who does hold the copyright on this title especially if that publisher went out of business? It kept the lawyers busy for quite a while!
Then, each game has its own emulator which makes the file size significantly larger. The game must also be properly tested. Unlike the PC emulation, where one emulator runs all the games, this has one custom emulator for each game.
Although I cannot confirm this, there appears to be a cost in that each Virtual Console game must have a ESRB rating or have its license renewed. All this takes money and time. I have no idea what the returns are for the Virtual Console (although Hudson seems pleased by it), it may not be financially worth putting out these old games.
I think the Virtual Console has been one of the best things ever for what it meant for gaming. I believe a good game should be able to sell forever. If it is demonstrated that these twenty year old games can still rake in money, perhaps, just perhaps, game companies would attempt to make their games to last the test of time. Heck, we can’t even get them to make their games last the test of two months!
Also, very important, I think the Virtual Console is extremely important in that it forces current game companies to compete with the classics. Sure, they can put out a new version of Bubble Bobble. But what if I like the NES version better? Taito is competing against the classic which is how it ought to be. Let us pretend, hypothetically, that NSMB Wii is a huge disappointment and no one likes the levels. The customer can always buy SMB 3 and be happy. NSMB Wii is not a lone platformer on the Wii. It literally is competing against SMB 1, SMB 2, SMB 3, and SMW. It like a dream match-up of Miyamoto vs. Miyamoto, except Old Miyamoto vs. Young Miyamoto, and we shall see which is the victor!
I want Virtual Handheld because not only do I believe some of these Gameboy games can live forever, that it can teach game companies that games not even 8 bit can sell forever with four shades of colors, but that it forces game companies to compete with the handheld classics. Any game company who cannot compete with black and white, lower than 8-bit games should not even be in this business. Old gameboy games outselling them would rightfully humiliate them. For over a decade, I’ve been saying the older games are better. But putting them on the market, this saying becomes truth as the old outsells the awful new. Mediocrity enrages me and nothing gives me greater pleasure than to see the untalented flee from this industry… where they shouldn’t be in the first place.
As for your hypothesis about the Game Link cable, I would have to say ‘nay’ to that. Most Gameboy games didn’t use the Game Link cable Nintendo wouldn’t be reprogramming any of the games to use DS wireless anyway. The DS, while playing Gameboy Advance games, could never play those games in multiplayer. And customers never really had a problem with that.
The Virtual Console is not fun for Nintendo. All those legal knots! And testing out old games!? If they could get away with it, Nintendo would pull the plug from new Virtual Console games (but gamers would, rightfully, complain). I think a decision was made that it wasn’t worth the financial cost and risk to make a Virtual Handheld. Consider that NES games cost 500 points. Gameboy games would be costing like 200 points. Is that sustainable for the costs needed to put them up? No.
My second assumption has to do with the quality of the current DSiWare
service. While WiiWare got titles like LostWinds, World of Goo and
MegaMan 9, the DSiWare gets clocks, calculators and cut down demo
versions of NDS games. DSiWare seems to be still in the early stages
of development and it clearly doesn’t exploit it’s full potential yet.
You could even argue, that the same applies for the WiiWare service,
while it’s going stronger and holds some more popular games. The
problem now is, that the release of a Virtual Handheld service would
potentially kill off DSiWare. Why should you want to download a Mario
clock, when you can download Super Mario Land 2 – The Six Golden Coins
instead? Why should you want to get the Tingle Pack, when you can get
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening for the same price? The DSiWare
service just isn’t strong enough right now, but if it grows and gets
some good successful games, there might be hope for an upcoming
Virtual Handheld system. But right now, it seems to be too early or
risky for Nintendo, I think they want to make some money with DSiWare
first and solidify that service.
Well… does this make sense or am I telling bullsh*t here? I would
like to hear your opinion on that and on a DSi Virtual Handheld in
general, because I’ve been wondering about that since the release of
the DSi in Japan.
If a Virtual Handheld killed off DSware, that would be a boon to gamers. Any game that gets killed off by a Virtual Handheld would have to be very bad! Games that cannot compete against black and white below 8-bit games should not even have been released!
Let’s remember that WiiWare appeared when Virtual Console had many classics and was going strong. WiiWare games had to be different and unique enough so a Virtual Console game wouldn’t steal its sale.
If Virtual Console has been one of the more misunderstood services this generation, WiiWare is one that is even more misunderstood. WiiWare isn’t like Xbox Live Arcade or PSN downloads. WiiWare really isn’t about digital distribution.
WiiWare is nothing more than a game laboratory. It is to test new gameplay concepts to the market. Nintendo sees this laboratory as essential to the health of the games industry. It is too risky to experiment with $50 or $60 titles. However, with digital distribution, the laboratory becomes possible. There is a reason why WiiWare titles are so darn quirky. It is intentional!
DSiware I see as performing the same role as WiiWare with one addendum: to make the DS platform immune from disruption of the iPhone. The so called ‘non-games’ such as Brain Age or Nintendogs the hardcore cried over are freaking epic masterpieces compared to the $.99 games found on the iPhone or other phones. Nintendo is swiftly co-opting any potential mini-portable game disruption with the DSiware.
2) BS Zeldas
Quote: “I am referring to BS Zelda! Why can’t I buy this game,
Nintendo? I like how Link can be a girl. Though, once rescued, I
suspect Zelda would be most surprised! This should come to the Virtual
Console somehow.”
Since I’m quite the Zelda guru, maybe I can clarify some things here.
The BS Zeldas (yes, ZeldaS as in plural) on Nintendo’s Broadcast
Satellaview Add On for the Super Nintendo were one time events. They
were broadcasted like interactive TV shows in 4 episodes per game. In
each episode two more dungeons were accessable on the overworld and
you had only one hour to complete them (but the dungeons were pretty
small and easy, so it was not a problem). You only could play those
episodes ONCE at a very specific time, it was like missing a TV show
and not being able to record it. However, if you finished all eight
dungeons, you could fight Ganon at the end of the fourth episode. But
like I said, those games were like live events. And they were using
the advantage of being live events. The main characters (like Zelda or
Sahasrahla) got live voice acted (!) and there was even orchestrated
music played in the background (which is very funny, if you think
about how many Zelda fans today want voice acting and orchestrated
music). At specific times on the clock there were special events, like
you got infinite bombs or some dungeon only opened for a couple of
minutes. But of course those events were announced by the live voice
actors, who guided the players through the games during the entire
time. The players, who scored the most points at the end by collecting
a lot of rupees even had the chance of winning prices.
There were three games broadcasted in total. The first one was a 16Bit
remake of the first Zelda game, that’s what you have seen in the
video. The overworld was slightly changed and it had eight completely
new dungeons. The second game was a mere “2nd Quest” for the first
game, the overworld was somehow different again and there were again
eight new dungeons. But unlike the 2nd Quest in the original Zelda
game, this 2nd Quest or 2nd Map wasn’t any harder than the first one.
The last game was called “Ancient Stone Tablets” and it used the
graphics and basically everything else from A Link to the Past. It
storywise took place after A Link to the Past, where Link was on his
travels in “Link’s Awakening”, and you were visiting the same exact
Light World in A Link to the Past, which was only changed in some
details. There were eight new hidden dungeons, that were pretty small,
but had a lot of secret rooms with hidden rupees (for the highscore
system).
What! You mean Nintendo was doing live events and all years and years upon anyone else? Say it isn’t so! I read in the gaming press today that Nintendo is a caveman and doesn’t know how to progress technologically.
How nice! Three new old-school Zelda games (after a fashion)! They all ought to come to Virtual Console. Sure, there won’t be any live events, but still there would be interest in them. I’d buy all three easily.
About Link being a girl. That’s not the case. Link himself is absent
in all those games, you are playing yourself, and you will be
referenced as the “Hero of Light”.
Zelda fans need a sense of humor! I know the girl wasn’t Link but it is much more fun pretending it is a girly Link. The end of the game with Zelda would be quite interesting! And such a change of gender is something that could NEVER occur in the latter Zeldas due to upsetting the Almighty Narrative.
However, you were simply using your
BS Avatar. It’s basically like using a Mii in a Zelda game. But since
Link was always supposed to be just an avatar for the player, I guess
this pretty much fits the idea (okay, but Miis in Zelda would look
somehow strange, I guess… at least if they attempt to keep the style
more realistic, Miis in a game of the style of for example “Spirit
Tracks” could work).
After Twilight Princess, the Zelda team ‘relaxed’ by unleashing Miis in Hyrule. I think that would be quite cool!
Like how they did a four player 2d Mario, I would like to see a four player Zelda but not like Four Swords. Gauntlet was a great game and still remains quite a classic. Have each four players be able to be different not unlike Gauntlet. And have the four explore the vast dungeons and all together. Despite all this ‘gaming progress’, I still haven’t seen any game match what Gauntlet started. Except for WoW. WoW would be the closest present day equivalent (except WoW’s gameplay is mind numbingly dull). An action based combat would be very interesting.
Well, if you think about it, a lot of the
concepts of Nintendo’s BS system were later used in one of their more
popular consoles. You were able to download games (you could even
download and play actual SNES games like A Link to the Past) and you
could use an avatar in all those games. Any similarities with our
Virtual Console and Miis probably aren’t coincidential.
No doubt! Ideas take a long time to bake.
However, I hope you can see, why those games won’t simply “somehow”
appear on the Virtual Console. It’s not possible to recreate the BS
Zelda expierence, because those were one time live events. You don’t
get the live voice acting on the Virtual Console and since Nintendo
lately did not show any interest in online leader boards, the
highscore system would probably get cut out, too. Of course you could
somehow take the content of those games and try to make two classic
Zeldas game from it (there are even fan projects doing that), but
those games would be just “lite versions” of the original NES Zelda
game and A Link to the Past (you were always able to finish those
games in 4 hours, remember), so not really interesting. The only real
reason to buy the first BS Zelda game would be the 16Bit graphical
style, which looks pretty nice, especially in the dungeons. But
downloading those games would happen more because of curiosity than
anything else.
Curiosity would be enough. There is a significant demand for more old school type Zelda. Nothing like for 2d Mario, of course, but it is there.
The music is interesting.
3) User Generated Content
While I totally agree with you, that games solely based on user
generated content like Wii Music or Little Big Planet aren’t the best
idea, I got the vibe from you, that you don’t support user generated
content or “custom content” at all (if I’m wrong, I’m sorry and you
can skip over the last part of my mail). I don’t support that view,
since I think, that custom content can be a good way of expending the
life span of a good game with good original content. Epic’s original
Unreal Tournament on the PC would be a nice example for this. One of
the reasons, why it was pretty popular, was the free Unreal Editor
shipped with the game. With the editor it was pretty easy to create
new maps or mods. This helped keeping the game fresh for a long time,
even today there are still new Unreal Tournament maps and mods made,
which is amazing (I’m talking about the first UT here, of course). And
UT of course now wasn’t a FPS game, that did simply rely on custom
content. It was not a “Build Your Own Shooter”-game. It came with more
than 80 original maps, six gametypes, more than a dozen weapons and
lots of other stuff and is still considered to be one of the best
multiplayer shooters of all times. What Unreal Tournament did was
extending good game content with custom content to keep itself fresh
over the years. Of course you have to say that the community delivered
lots custom content with really good quality, while this was an
excellent move from Epic Games, you can’t expect that to work
everywhere, in every game (like in Little Big Planet for example, you
won’t meet professional level designers there). But it may play out
for itself, at some point everyone would like to see new content for
their favorite games, so why not let them make it theirselves?
I have much to say about the user generated content fiasco and it would require an article to do so. Keep in mind that I am an old school PC gamer. I am a maker of mods and various maps that have appeared from Warcraft 3 to Quake to Unreal Tournament to all the way back to Lode Runner. People ask how someone can not own a PlayStation console. Well, that is how. I was quite busy.
There are many, many issues with user generated content, ones that the game companies haven’t even considered. One of the biggest issues is that it is a legal black hole. There are more that are even more serious than that.
What was being billed as ‘user generated content’ in LittleBigPlanet or Wii Music would be better described as ‘Construction Kit’. Think of ‘Pinball Construction Kit’, and you have an idea. It never sells although I think that RPG maker sold at the height of the Final Fantasy days.
Most of what you call ‘user generated content’ isn’t really ‘user generated content’. You are still relying almost entirely on the content within the game itself. Examples of user generated content, such as Blizzard games, generally have no new content in them. They use the same sound assets, same art assets, same interface, and more of the full game. Since Blizzard games are stuffed with content, fans can reassemble content in many fun ways. All map and scenario editors are like this.
With games like Unreal Tournament and Quake, the mods are almost at the same level as a new game. Since many PC games use FPS engines as a base, these mod makers are extremely close to being full fledged game developers. They are performing similar work.
Modding isn’t user generated content. The entire premise of user generated content is so people who do not know how to program can make their own games. Very, very few people know how to program and have time to do so. PC gamers tend to have some of these types who will do so. Console games? No way. And consoles tend to be a closed environment which limits things even further.
If gaming is a content business as I believe it is, user generated content is one of the cruelest exploitations ever foisted upon the unwitting customer. With user generated content, the game company shirks off its responsibility to provide content. This responsibility is given to paying customers who never receive any payment, copyright, and sometimes no credit for their work. The paying customers are doing the job the game company was supposed to do.
There is arrogance among game developers that everyone wants to be a game developer. This is not so. If people wanted to become game developers, they would be learning programming and art design and making games they can sell and market onto the PC. This is why those who are attracted to being a game developer will find no interest in a ‘user generated game’. You can’t make a name for yourself there. You can’t copyright what you do. It is not just a liability, it is a liability of time. And since you can’t copyright it, your ideas can be taken by anyone. A big example of this was the DOTA mod for Warcraft 3 whose makers ripped into protected Warcraft 3 maps and outright stole the JASS spells and even textures from other maps without even giving them any credit. Ask those who have been involved in the Warcraft 3 map making community for a long time, and they will tell you this. What is the point of investing time in user generated content when someone else can just rip it for themselves? You can’t copyright it. You can’t defend against it. If you invest tons of time in something, you would be rightfully pissed if someone did that.
User generated content has so many legal bombs, public relation bombs, and it isn’t what the customer wants anyway. It is shocking that anyone in the games industry took the idea seriously as the idea would have been laughed out of any other entertainment medium (imagine a director being told to set up technology where people could make ‘user generated movies’. He’d laugh in your face). What is most shocking is that Nintendo, of all companies, believed in it. I lost faith that Nintendo knew what they were doing, business-wise, after the user-generated content fiasco (which they still have not abandoned).
Worse, user generated content would have been considered to be a red ocean path since Sony was launching LittleBigPlanet at the same time as Wii Music! There is a much bigger story about the user generated content and Nintendo that we don’t know about. I suspect it includes Will Wright and Iwata’s fascination with web technology somehow.
Going back to Nintendo, I agree that Animal Crossing or Wii Music
don’t work for me and that video games should first of all focus on
official content. But what Nintendo could do is extending some of
their games with editors to let people create their own additional
content for those games, especially if those games do have a
multiplayer mode. They already did this with the stage builder in
Super Smash Bros. Brawl, while the game did have a LOT of good
original content and the stage builder was very, very simple, this
feature became wildly popular. There are entire web sites just
focusing on custom stages. IGN even has their own Brawl stage section
and there are thousands of user created stages out there in the web.
And that’s while you couldn’t do anything spectacular with the editor,
it offered just some blocks and some simple elements. And even the
possibility of sharing replays and screenshots became very popular. I
could imagine that the multiplayer mode of The Legend of Zelda: Spirit
Tracks will get a level editor too, since it would be very easy to
edit DS Zelda environments, especially with a touch pad interface.
This even might be the big exclusive DSi feature of the game and I
would get a DSi just for that, because I would love to create my own
Zelda multiplayer maps. At some point me and my friends noticed, that
a level editor would be awesome for Wii Golf (because playing those 9
holes over and over became a little boring). Or imagine New Super
Mario Bros. Wii to come with a built in level editor, how awesome
would that be? So, while games solely focusing on user generated
content are definitely not the future, user generated content itself
as an extension for a game can be very important and successful.
Thanks for reading.
This is why what is considered ‘new’ is actually extremely old. Nintendo has already done this with Excitebike and Wrecking Crew. The most fantastic version of the level editor had to have been Lode Runner. I think I made like 500 levels for that thing (Commodore 64 version).
Excitebike, Wrecking Crew, Lode Runner, and Battle Lode Runner are on the Virtual Console now if anyone is dying for a level editor. They’re all good games.
