Wii Friends Codes, Not Perfect

Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo has gone on record with his thoughts of the Wii friends code system. He’s a father, with a daughter, so he’s letting his own personal judgment get in the way of a good community built game system.

In talking about the open access of the Internet he said, “I as a father do not feel like allowing my daughter be engaged in that kind of world.” He’s more inclined to protect his children from the dangers of the Internet and random (often insulting) people by requiring a 1:1 paring with real friends.

For many gamers the Wii friends code system is far from perfect. It’s so far from perfect its a barrier to entry and any form of fun on the console platform. Nobody is against protecting their children, a parent will be the first to admit they’re desire to protect their kids over all else, but clearly someone isn’t thinking outside the box on this topic.

The only way to protect your children is to enforce a large numeric key which you must hand deliver (or e-mail) to your friends in order to play? We’ve got more creative enforcement in child safety on our TV sets using the VCHIP which allows parents to password protect certain television programming.

It’s not hard to consider a tiered security setting where the adult must unlock the system for online access, by either requiring a credit card to provide evidence you’re old enough or simply asking for your birth date before beginning online registration. Once you’ve done that you can set a management password to control online access.

A parent should have a management console within the Wii to manage sub-accounts on the console and grant certain access. Using a send/receive friend system through the console like Xbox Live would easily be implemented where the parent can (if configured) require all inbound/outbound friend requests to go through them as a proxy.

Other access grant/revoke features:

  • Online Gaming: Lock children down to playing online on specific games or full restrictions to disallow online play.
  • Online Friend Gaming: Allow children to only play online with friends in a private game.
  • Voice Chat: Allow voice chat with friends and anonymous gamers with the ability to restrict all voice chat or force mute on non-friend gamers. This limitation can be enforced in text-chat as well.
  • ESRB Rating: Limit game play to specific levels of ESRB ratings.

It’s clearly possible, with a tiny bit of infrastructure, to limit your child’s online presence without adding more barriers than needed. The console should ship with the highest level of restrictions so a gamer parent that doesn’t want to deal with the complex barriers has instant protection, but a parent with a little patience can setup their child’s online play to be toned exactly as needed for their age.

As it is now, the barriers cause any adult gamer to become frustrated and move towards other online avenues such as Xbox Live or Sony’s PSN. Nintendo’s so closed minded about their implementation that they’ve limited the network play to being nothing but a nusense and continual aggrivation with entering dozens of pin numbers (“friends codes”) to play.

For great ideas on how to design a network infrastructure some top executives should keep an open mind, jump on Sony’s PSN and Microsoft’s Xbox Live solutions and see how they do it. Once you’ve played Halo with a bunch of swearing and cursing twelve year old children you’ll be able to figure out a few tweaks and restrictions you can add to voice chat to make the experience much cleaner and friendlier.

It feels as if Nintendo hasn’t put any effort into exploring the idea of a layered pretection system in a community atmosphere. Child saftey can be enforced at many levels and handled differently for varying age groups. Don’t be lazy Nintendo, put some time into it.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Post

Episode 570: Fallout: New Vegas ReduxEpisode 570: Fallout: New Vegas Redux

This week’s Gaming Flashback, Fallout: New Vegas, sets the crew on a long discussion of what made New Vegas good and Fallout 4 a failed sequel, and the inherent problems of the mainline Bethesda games as opposed to Obsidian’s take.

This week’s news includes:

  • Nintendo “investigating” reports of accounts being breached
  • Nintendo gearing up for increased Switch production following global shortages
  • COVID-19 lockdowns have led to surges in popularity for survival and sports games
  • Animal Crossing trading is being ruined by absurd trader fees

Let us know if you, too, are obsessing over the latest Animal Crossing.

3 Reasons Publishers Desire Us to Keep Old Games3 Reasons Publishers Desire Us to Keep Old Games

When we invest in a new video game we want to feel satisfied by the content supplied in the game, we want to know we’re getting our moneys worth in the investment. Publishers, on the other hand, want us to keep our old games so they stay out of the used market. A publisher does not make a dime on used game sales. Their primary weapon to stop game sales? Downloadable Content (DLC).

1. Publishers Spend Lots on Marketing

A great example being GTA IV, hardcore gamers have a short attention span and live on hype more than physical games. Today, games live in press releases, demos, cinematic and live gameplay footage at conferences and on the web. Then, a game hits the shelves and sells millions of copies for a week or two before it’s forgotten. Publishers have marketed their game well, spent thousands on conference booths, streaming video bandwidth and rushing game demos through development and testing cycles early to get eyes on their titles.

Let’s face it, gamers that scrambled to buy Grant Theft Auto IV have moved onto the next big title or have decided to go outside for some fresh air (probably the former). Hardcore gamers consumes games like candy, sells them off for store credit and works towards their next purchase.

2. Publishers Want Loyalty

DLC breaths new life into old games, making them remain valuable for months after the hype and excitement has died. We’re now spending USD $60.00 for some of these new “current generation” game titles for a few days or weeks of excitement. Free downloadable content brings new reasons to play our “old stale” games and allows us to feel comfortable about our 60 bucks spent on a title.

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is receiving a new “Fan Pack” for gamers to re-energize themselves about the “old” sequel to Rainbox Six Vegas. A game released in March is considered old by gamers, probably rarely played on Xbox Live anymore and needs something to keep the fans interested. This helps build loyalty to your product so the next franchise title which is released has a better chance of being purchased by your fan base because they can look forward to additional free content in the future.

3. Publishers Hate Used Games

Publishers are helping stick those games in the hands of the gamers for a longer period of time by supplying free add-on packs. Why would you re-sell your precious title back to the store when you could hold it and wait for potential DLC?

Publishers receive no revenue from the resale of a video game so it’s in their best interest to keep it out of the used markets. If there is a chance your beloved game will receive new features, at no cost to you, wouldn’t you hold off from selling it to see what’s coming?

Once a gamer has sold their title to a retail chain for pennies they’re unlikely to re-buy the title with the typical 80% markup when DLC arrives. They may opt to borrow a friends copy or rent the title rather than re-purchase it; neither fair well for the publisher in terms of revenue.

Games are expensive. Consumers must be wise to the best value in their video game titles and publishers want you to choose them for your gaming entertainment. Competition is high, profit margins are low and the market is all about sales volume. Publishers want repeat customers, people who feel their games are valuable before and after the purchase and are willing to share their loyalties with others.

Do you collect old console games, or do you sell them off to game stores and/or eBay? Would you consider holding off a sale if there was a great chance of new downloadable content?

Wii Sports Resort and Wii Motion PlusWii Sports Resort and Wii Motion Plus

Nintendo plans to capitalize on the monumental success of Wii Sports by doing what they do best, building a hot game with an accessory backing its success. The new Wii Sports Resort will be a mini-game set like Wii Sports and Wii Play but with a beach setting and games like frisbee.

Frisbee? How can the Wii motion controller handle a Frisbee toss? Wii Motion Plus of course! We believe they’ll be packing the game in with the Wii Motion Plus to add more value to the purchase. Honestly, this adds more value to the accessory as a driving force to make sales and increase margins. Game accessories are a great way for Nintendo to profit, consider the pack in game marketing material.

As Wii Play has shown us, historically, gamers want the accessory and the bundled game is just icing on the proverbial cake. Wii Play, as a game, was lacking in many ways and would be, as a stand alone product, a definite must-not-have title. But, considering the amount of Wii controllers sold, this allows Wii Play to show up high on best games sold month over month.

Wii Sports Resort takes this to a new level by using the term “Wii Sports” in the game, allowing the masses to flock to the store to get anything that can reproduce the fun of the original title. Nobody knows, yet, if it will reproduce the same fun factor but the accessory is neat.

(Thanks, joystiq)