WiiNintendo

Let’s talk a bit about online play.  First, a bit about me.  I have maybe an hour today to game, between my job and family responsibilities.  I don’t have tons of online friends that I try to schedule online games with.

Simply but, are friend codes annoying? Yes. Are they a deal breaker that completely ruins online gameplay? Not at all. I’ll use the existing DS online system as an example, since the Wii’s will likely be similar.

First of all, friend codes are not required for online play - you can always play against random opponents that are matched to your skill level. I just finished putting the smack down on some snakers in Mario Kart DS, getting repeatedly headshotted in Metroid Prime Hunters, and playing waaaay too many rounds of Clubhouse Games bowling. Each experience took a few minutes to get up and going, which is important as Nintendo is marketing its system and features to players of all levels. Simply put, I don’t think a significant amount of Nintendo’s audience cares about online leaderboards, intense stat tracking, etc.  I don’t expect anything more than the current NWFC website.

As fast as it took me to get games going, the one bottleneck with random play is the time it can take to search for players. Mario Kart and Metroid forced you to wait for 4 players to join.  A possible solution is if each game gives the users an option to stop searching for additional players and begin the game. For example, there can be an option that says “Play Now”, or a similar message, that appears while the game is looking for players. If the players that are currently connected all select the option, the game will immediately begin.  I believe Clubhouse Games has this option, but only during friend games.

Of course, friend codes come into play when you want to play with someone that you are friends with. This is the most annoying part, as all involved parties have to physically type in the friend code. However, this annoyance only lasts the 20 seconds or so it takes to type out the code.  Yes, I know this has to be done with every game, but I’ve done on the DS several times without incident.  I haven’t found out more annoying than entering cell, home, work, and email information for a contact on my cell phone list.

With that said, I disagree with having game specific friend codes.  The Wii already has a unique code, and there should be functionality to add or delete people from specific game lists.

I’d like to see Nintendo dedicate effort to other online gaming issues.  After inputting a friend code, I would like to see if a player is currently online or not, and possibly what game they are playing. That way, it would be easy to send a message to someone asking to play a particular game. Again, I’m not expecting a fully featured Xbox Live experience, but the basic functionality of seeing if your friends are online or not seems like a reasonable expectation for a free system.

We’ll see how Nintendo rises up to the challenge.