I haven’t made it exactly a secret to anyone that I am very into Nintendo as a whole, mainly because of its products but also because I have followed the company for more than half my life. From childhood when I used to follow it dreaming of a job there, to current days where I simply aim to keep up with the game industry in which Nintendo plays a sizeable role.
My current stance on Nintendo as a whole is that their design continues to be mostly impeccable, but business choices simply scream of a lack of adjustment to the current state of the industry. There’s a lot of these too, and some I could talk about for quite a while, such as the whole situation with the re-release of older titles. But for now, because in the past couple months I’ve spent a lot of my time with Splatoon 2, I want to talk about Nintendo’s games and how their competitive-friendly marketing is constantly at odds with what feels like competitive-unfriendly design.
For the purposes of this post, I’ll focus on Splatoon 2 and how it reflects this inconsistency. Since I doubt I’ll have time later I should also mention now that one of the core problems remains the fact that Nintendo does NOT have dedicated servers in order to support a principally online-based competitive game, but that’s such a glaring problem in the entirety of Nintendo’s ecosystem that I won’t talk much about it as it does not pertain to design.
Splatoon 2
One of the few runaway successes of the Wii U era was the new franchise, Splatoon, a third-person perspective shooter where the main mechanic of painting and swimming in your ink to go faster and refill your tank gave a new freshness to the notion of a team-based shooter. Not only that, but maybe in part due to the success the game also enjoyed very healthy attention, with regular releases of new content including weapons and maps went on for about a year.
This also spawned a new community of competitive games. We saw the rise of Splatoon teams, fan-run tournaments, servers for competitive discussion, and what remains overall a very lively community. Unfortunately, that’s the extent of my knowledge with the first Splatoon though. I did play it a significant amount of time and saw others play it, but it feels so long ago that I can hardly say much about it.
When the Switch began hyping us up with Splatoon 2 the message was instantly there that Nintendo was marketing this to the competitive crowd. Whereas the marketing of the first game was obviously aimed at kids, the one for 2 was completely different. Feel free to judge for yourself:
Splatoon 1 Ad, aka “YEA KID POWER!!”
Splatoon 2 Ad, aka “adults playing against each other”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEMKpui2krI
And that doesn’t even come close to all those ads and teasers featuring multiple people in Splatoon bars or that one in the first Switch trailer where you had Splatoon teams going into what presumably was a Starcraft stadium.
In any case, the game is nowhere near close as competitively-minded as they want to pretend it is. Normally for balance to work in a shooter where different weapons thrive is to allow each weapon to fit a specific niche (Support, DPS, Defense, Tank… by now I’m just borrowing the overwatch character categories), and in an ideal situation each specific weapon category is highly advantageous in specific situations while weak in others. This of course also should factor in stage design, with certain stages favoring specific behaviors over others.
When it comes to Splatoon, the main mechanic of inking the ground for both movement and reloading leads to a situation where faster inking weapons have a natural advantage over others. The only way to reasonably counteract this is to either design stages so that weapons with weaker movement have good nests for positioning and defense, or to give slower/less-ink weapons specials or subs that can solve mobility or defense issues. This is why tanks are not a realistic option in Splatoon: the inking mechanic means that slow movement will always be punished by faster moving enemies.
With Splatoon 2, it feels like someone at Nintendo knew all these things, but intentionally or unintentionally ignored them in order to lower the skill cap and increase volatility. Short range weapons are significantly stronger due to having very strong sub and special sets. Long-range weapons, many of which require charge times, are discouraged from being able to camp any spot on the map thanks to several specials and subs designed specifically to force movement. To boot, a lot of these support weapons are given more support-based subs and specials, the sort of specials where you can’t just pop it when threatened in order to survive.
Lastly, there’s the fact that most stages seem designed to be center-focused, having rather open middle sections and limiting the amount of influence long-range weapons can have from specific nests. Compare, for example, the difference between Humpback Pumptrack (Splatoon 2) and Blackbelly Skatepark (Splatoon 1). Both of these stages feature a significant amount of slopes as the main mechanic. In Blackbelly, however, the upward slopes are limited to the spawn areas, whereas the middle area slopes downward aside from the giant nest in the middle from where the sniper can see nearly the entire middle. Aside from this one nest there’s also several different options for long range to set up a position.
So while Blackbelly is encouraging positioning and specific defense spots, Humpback is sending a different message. The middle area is sloped upwards, effectively blocking significant portions of the stage to any long-range weapons on the sides. Meanwhile, there are entire paths to the sides as well as trenches going around the middle wherein short range weapons can navigate successfully while long range sets will be considerably tunneled from effective stage control. Where Blackbelly gives visibility to those holding strategic spots, Humpback promotes movement by blocking the effective range of long-range weapons and developing avenues for short-range to respond.
This is what allows Splatoon 2 to develop into extreme scenarios. Scenarios where multiple of the same short-range weapon strengthens the team rather than weaken its flexibility. Scenarios where in any given online match the middle of the map is likely to turn into complete chaos as everyone picks the powerful-short-range-weapon-of-the-day. Or worse, scenarios where you have lone players walking around with weapons where they kill anyone they see immediately, have multiple escape options from any engagement, and can deploy specials when threatened due to building it up stupidly fast due to high-inking capabilities.
Now, the reason why I believe this is intentional is because I can see how design-wise this is great for Nintendo. It leads to a game where it becomes easy for most people to join ANY match and perform competently if they just pick the strong, easy-to-use weapon. It means that someone who has played the game 2 hours since purchase can still feel strong and contribute even when playing against people who play more but happen to be using the “wrong” weapons. It also means that every player will be happy because they’re inking and getting kills, which particularly helps people feel good now that the game omits the negative info of how many times people died from the results screen. Ultimately, it all coexists in a way where I don’t think the inability to balance is out of incompetence, but out of intentional desire to retain players. We could even go into a conversation about how the act of winning a match winds up being not only linked to your skill, but the random chance of pulling the proper teammates, effectively simulating the reinforcement cycles of slot machines and leading to the case of saying “let me play a bit more until I win” all the way into the next stage rotation.
In short, it’s all design that makes it more fun for more casual players, even if it comes at the cost of lowering the impact of skill, which is what is so desired by more competitive players. Which honestly makes a ton of sense coming out of Nintendo, the company that gave us things like the blue shell. Nintendo is, and always will be, ultimately a company that makes games for EVERYONE, and part of me thinks that they will always prize having anyone be able to pick up a Switch in order to have fun with Splatoon 2 over having a stadium filled with fans in order to watch the apex of Splatoon 2 skill displayed by 8 highly skilled players. Nevertheless, it’s worth calling out how this is the reason that regardless of what their marketing team attempts to tell us, Nintendo is by design failing to effectively support competitive communities with their design.
Unfortunately, it’s also the reason why Splatoon 2 winds up being less fun for players like me. I traditionally enjoy more strategic and unique weapons, in part because I appreciate creative mechanics. In this game, for example, I love the addition of the Brella class due to bringing a unique element by aiming to introduce shielding to this game. I also normally enjoy the process of picking up more precise weapons and mastering them. So you can see why it’s unfortunate to be this sort of player, incidentally within the same demographic their marketing seems to aim for, and then find a game made for others.