"How did LAN mode break the game? Most people don't even have the ability to play it. Flaws aside LAN mode in Mario Kart is widely considered to be a total blast. I've heard complaints about the dumb limitation that prevents one from picking their character but the experience itself is supposed to be great. Plus you can't blame market pressure. We wanted online support. They instead chose to half-ass it and give us a limited LAN mode instead. It was their choice to "break" the game. Had they put any effort into an online mode there wouldn't be any problems. It's like how Pokemon Colloseum doesn't suck because it included an RPG mode that the fans asked for, it sucks because it included a CRAPPY RPG mode that was not at all what the fans wanted. Nobody asked Nintendo to include a non-online LAN mode that doesn't allow you to pick your own character in Mario Kart. Nintendo chose to wang that feature themselves."
When people say that the MK: DD LAN is a blast to play, that's the Nintendo fanboy in them ignoring the facts. 8-player MK: DD IS broken because the game all of a sudden has no reward for skill, and it's completely arbitrary who wins. I'm a decent player, but in eight-player mode, I consistently end up in last place, behind people who never picked up the game before. If you play it, you'll see that LAN is a failure NOT because it's poorly dressed up, but because the very concept behind the game's items, the item spread, and the innate gameplay was created with a maximum of 4 players in mind, not 8. In effect, the game was developed to be a Mario Kart game, but when they added the LAN mode to try to quell clamorings from people who demand online connectivity or some fascimile thereof, they exposed the game to broken gameplay. Miyamoto made his Mario Kart game, and it could stand on it's own; but when corporate thinking like "we need to appeal to those fans who think that they want online or something like it" got it's hold on the game, an extraneous and gameplay-breaking mode was added to the game.
Could Miyamoto have designed the game to accomodate more than 4-players comfortable? Yeah, sure. Just let him go back to the drawing board, because the MK: DD gameplay he was making was absolutely not fit for anything beyond one system. He was making his game, until petty corporate attempts to appeal people like you pushed aside the integrity of his creation, and crammed in something that compromised the entire game.
And then of course we see fans clamoring for a 3D Pokemon that they would've liked to see on the GameCube. That's ridiculous, the designers know what they're doing, because Pokemon would benefit more from it's portability on the GBA than from being dressed up prettily in polygons. It would benefit more from being played on the subway, in-between school-periods, and during car rides than it would from being played in one spot in your house only. It would benefit from being played on a portable system that could easily be played with other people around, rather than being played on one console, a big TV, and in what is usually a solitary setting. Oh, and should Pokemon go online? Of course not. The entire Pokemon concept is based on PvP, one of the thorniest issues in MMORPGs. Can you imagine playing Pokemon online just to be trash talked by the kid with 6 MewTwos who then proceeds to take half your money?
Pokemon is just another example of how the developers need to be given the room to re-imagine their base concepts that work so well off-line, but would be broken online. They need to be given time to figure it out, because while fans can shout real loud, they can never make the next big thing, or we'd have a lot more of a crowded games market today.
And Pokemon Colosseum, as well as Mario Kart: Double Dash's gamebreaking LAN mode, is an example of what happens when you shortcut the time and respect you need to give developers to figure things out on their own. You break games by throwing on modes that the innate gameplay doesn't allow, and you pretty something up with polygons, only to realize that the innate gameplay simply that's been so successful for so long doesn't work outside the GBA environment. They circumvented the artist and subjugated his work to corporate thinking, market trends, and fan pressure, and they got a pile of unworkable sludge because of it.
Nobody asked for it? That's untrue. People like you are asking constantly that the creativity and hard work of people like Shigeru Miyamoto, his personal visions and ideas, his near-completed games, be sacrificed so that you can have games in an online medium you don't understand and before the people developing those games themselves don't have a full grasp of the medium.
Could we eventually see Pokemon in full 3D, and MK online? Sure. But not until the developers are given the time and free-reign to re-imagine the basic gameplay of their games in such a way that bringing them online wouldn't break the gameplay, but fulfill it. Circumvent that process, and demand online gameplay NOW, before the developers themselves have fully worked out the concepts, and you get games that are a smear on Nintendo's reputation of quality.
Nintendo only delivers hits consistently because they gave their developers the time and freedom to develop things as they saw fit. And Nintendo is only delivering sludge now because people are demanding that the developer's freedoms be pushed aside so they can have whatevcer they think they ought to have. The fact is that Nintendo only creates such great games because they put dedication and integrity and artistry into their work, and Nintendo has almost always created bad games when they've sacrificed that reputation to imitate trends, or to appease vocal trends.
"The Cube could be the market leader and it probably would have less online titles just because of Nintendo's attitude."
And how would Nintendo support online titles? Simply by having online games of their own. But let's be happy that we don't have those now, before Nintendo is ready to enter the online medium, because we'd get broken games like MK: DD and pitiful player matching from current genre.
Simply put, Nintendo can't afford to even think of supporting Online titles more fully because they don't have the resources of their own games to hope to make any dent in Microsoft and Sony's presences. What they have now are half-thought out concepts and tired implementations, hardly the stuff of dreams.
"Of course they weren't viable then. Very few people even had access to the internet. Online PC games were obscure at the time. You can't compare the f*cking SNES to the Cube. In technology terms that's eons ago. So Nintendo tried it when it wasn't viable, failed, and now won't try it when it is viable. Yeah that makes lots of sense. That's like Enix not releasing Dragon Warrior in the US because DW4, an NES game released well after the SNES launch, bombed. "
Obviously, Nintendo still believes that it's not very viable with the Cube. Broadband is slow in catching on. Already the MMORPG market, a market that appeals to PCs, which are predominantly connected to the internet, is having problems. And the business models of subscription (especially when applied to consoles) are vastly alien and unappealing to a great number of casual players.
AND, Nintendo knows that even if conditions permitted it, and even if they could go online, they'd have no software to sell it. Nintendo online would bomb without Nintendo games, and Nintendo games can't be developed without time, understanding, and vision from people like Miyamoto. Nintendo games can't be forced, demanded, or expected. They have to be subject to the developers visions and artistry, instead of to marketting polls, noisy fanboys, and corporate thinking. Nintendo games are fragile and special and all the more beautiful because of it.
We had to wait for Super Mario 64. We had to wait for Ocarina of Time. We had to wait, because mediocrity comes quick, and Nintendo-style excellence takes longer. We had to wait because a great idea released half-developed doesn't even deserve to be called a game. We had to wait because you can't simply tack Online onto a game, and expect it to be anything but a deadweight addition: it has to be fully integrated into the game's design from day one.
And if you're a Nintendo gamer, you'll realize that you can wait for Nintendo to go online. You can wait because when they do go online, it'll be out of their own fully realized visions and not half-hearted fan-service. You can wait, because you realize that the only reason you want Nintendo to go online is so that you can brag to others, win fanboy arguements with Sony kids, and be part of the winning team.
But Nintendo was never about being on the winning team, Nintendo was always about making great games, and because of that, Nintendo gamers are willing to wait. Because we can see that anything less, be it the FMVs in SMS, the game-breaking LAN mode in MK: DD, the forcing of Star Fox Adventures, anything half-implemented, not-fully realized, or lacking of artistic vision and spirit...anything less wouldn't be worthy of being called a Nintendo game.
Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com 
Topic: Iwata Talks About Online Games (Read 13515 times)
