I had a idea to restart momentum, but I think with this price cut stuff going around (and I’m just as upset as you. I’m hoping this is just a fake or something).
I’m not so much upset as I am perplexed. But then again, I have been perplexed since the ‘User Generated Content’ direction. Does Nintendo not know that games are a content business? Imagine a restaurant with ‘user generated food: let other customers cook your food for you!’ Not only would everyone hate cooking their own food, they would hate eating dishes from people who do not know how to cook. Such a restaurant would not be in business long.
My question was on Wii Music. You always say it has user generated content and that killed it. I see kind of what you are talking about, but not exactly. I think that it is where the focus is on making your own songs, decorating albums, and showing them off. I can’t wrap my head around the idea of how Wii Music could be done differetly. How could the concept be there, but have no UGC (the concept I assume was the idea in you “Why Wii Music is Genius” post). How would you design Wii Music to make the game full of content.
There is a history of music as games. Electronic Arts even helped innovate it long ago. There was so much potential in a music game.
Nintendo should have realized that consumers have already pointed the way to go. Take a look at this:
Mario Paint is decades old. Before the Wii came out, there was even interest in another painting type game. Yet, if you look on Youtube people are still making songs for it! PC programmers have removed Mario Paint’s music composer from the game and put it on PC. Clearly, there is something going on here.
People love fiddling around with music, especially older people, the type of people that Brain Age targeted. They like messing with the music editor and all.
The composer mode in Wii Music could have been done much better and made to be more fun. Mock the high school band experience. Like a kid is not doing as he should so can ‘thwack’ him with your baton (high school music teachers know what I mean). Imagine where you had to manage and train your student players to be good. Then your Mii composer character could rise in his “career”. This would be more ‘game’ experience with music elements, for sure, but it would be far more entertaining.
Letting musicians design the music game was a mistake. Who is going to be excited about the ‘match the pitch’ game? What people want from a music is to take out all the boring stuff one has to do to play music. Most people want to make music but few have the patience to sit through all the practice and all.
I tried looking up the custom videos of Wii Music songs people have made. You would think, by now, there would be many. But there are very, very few. Here is one of them:
Some people say that Wii Music shouldn’t have used midi, but should have used something that sounds ‘better’. These fools don’t realize that much music making software is very expensive and there is a reason why midi is used. Nintendo couldn’t have done anything about that.
There is no excuse for the low amount of songs in Wii Music. Far more ‘public domain’ songs should have put in. The entire library of music from Nintendo games should be in as well. Super Smash Brothers Brawl has a richer music selection than Wii Music, and that is just sad. The lack of music is a big reason why Wii Music felt ‘content’ less.
Nintendo at first said that consumers didn’t understand Wii Music. But I think Nintendo didn’t understand what consumers wanted from a Wii Music game. They don’t want the vision of music offered by the musicians which is about meeting tone and all. The consumers are interested only on the consuming side of music. They aren’t interested at all in what it takes to make music.
Imagine if there was some great classical music on there and the game would break it down for you and *teach* you how to listen to such music with a musician’s ear.
High school band students could have used a composer part to put their part into it to hear how it could go. Older folk, as I’ve said, love to tinker with composing software as well.
I passionately disagree about the goal of the product being that the consumer’s ‘creativity’ is the source of the entertainment. I passionately disagree with that because I say that even developers’ creativity is not the source of entertainment (though they think it is which is why we keep getting bombarded by mediocre games).
Aside from ‘User Generated Content’, there is the issue that game development does depend on a teleological view (not often used anywhere else these days). But more on that later.
Also, it seems the dirrection of the company may turn for the worse if they don’t get their heads out of their bums. How about writing an article about how could momentum be created again (even if it won;t be as great) or where Nintendo went wrong (Distendo, almost). If you can’t finish the old articles, then how about some new ones?
Hope this doesn’t bug you too much. I really want the Wii to do well, as I’d love to see a console last 7 or 10 years.
What does it matter whether the Wii does well or not? Video game consoles are to me as fruit flies are to a curious scientist. Fruit flies are used because they have a very short life span. We can learn much watching this video game market.
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