Nintendo Mii characters and user-generated game content (Games 2.0)

I am curious to see how customizable the mii avatars will be. I would love to make my little lego mii (and they DO rather look like lego people, at least to mii) into a cyborg batman with vampire fangs and snakes for arms, though I doubt it will be so complex.

In any case, this is off topic, so I will stop typing now.

The differnce between PC mods and console mods are that no one is going to see your console mods. Even if I transport my Mii characters to another console, it's only one other console. It's not the same as releasing a map for Counterstrike to the public. The social part is the most important part.

Unless Nintendo is planning to do that, then I don't see them making tremendous strides in that regard.

@ Probot
Actually, with the Wii's Connect24, I think that would be easy. With Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2, there's already something in place that let's you upload your custom-made levels to a server, I think.

The Mii avatar stuff is interesting but I dont really see anything relevant beyond a simple novelty. Id love to see Nintendo incorporate something more elaborate like say, face mapping from your pictures to the Mii.

One of my favorite game genres is wrestling games, not for the gameplay, or story modes, or events, or even for hitting people in the head with a chair, it's the create a player mode.

I am violently excited by the prospect of using Mii in multiple games. I think it would be über sweet if the types of customizations were based on the games you played.

Minish Cap from Zelda
Overalls from Super Mario
Striped Shirt from Mother 3 (oh please!)

I think you get the point. If Nintendo can make this happen your Mii will be more a representation of what you have played...

Which console makers are confessing such worries? A moment's rational thought reveals this to be completely silly and groundless.

Imagine if somebody told you the movie and TV studios were terrified that the advent of affordable HD cams was going to make everyone a movie maker and no longer a consumer of movies and TV content. You'd laugh in their face.

Personal computers are extremely common. Household objects. And the tools needed to produce one's own application widely available and even free of cost in some cases. Are we expecting everybody to take up programming like the early abortive attempts to sell 8-bit systems 25 years ago? Or do we recognize that opportunity and motivation are two widely separated things, and that even with motivation it takes a real talent to do something worthwhile.

For every contributor to the Wikipedia there are tens of thousands who read but make no contribution. Even when they spot a mistake or have something additional to contribute, only a minority makes the effort.

I don't pick up a book with the expectation that the author will leave the last chapter blank for me to fill in. I read the book with the expectation the author had a complete story in mind, start, middle, and end. If not, it should never have been submitted for publication.

Games that allow the player to create more content with the engine are a great addition to the experience but only a certain segment will take full advantage of that. Most will just go with what is offered, whether it was part of the original package or created by a amateur with the provided tools.

to #2 Probot

Technically Nintendo has already achieved that in Animal Crossing WW, where your patterns and messages can be transferred to other people's game instance virally. The trick is to recreate this in a console game, but Nintendo has an advantage in this regard. (I won't be suprized if Nintendo implements something similar to Contact's offline multiplayer style in regards to Mii.)

Screw Mii, MySpace, bogs, etc. (I love being a Wikipedian, though)...and give me Twilight Princess, Resistance, and Blue Dragon!

#5. Noone is worried that someone is going to become their own game developer or an armchair Scorcese.

Film companies are not worried that a user will become a better content provider. They are worried that you will spend all your time watching uploaded videos of high school kids lip synching to Ashlee Simpson instead of renting Netflix.

Console makers are worried about are sites like MySpace where you can spend hours and hours customizing your personal page. This is hours and hours that could be spent otherwise playing the Wii. There are so many more entertainment options these days that getting someone to engage with your product for just an hour is a miracle.

Nintendo is worrying about the new found consumer love of customization. People are going to love making creative Mii and will want other people to see them. It may seem like a really small thing to you, but it could be a hook for engagement. People love Joystiq because they can sit and post about stories they love and hate. That is the engagement console makers would like.

#8: Um... I'm pretty sure only one of those is for wii.

to #9 rockintom99

And I'm pretty sure this article is not only about Wii as well. Someone does seem biased..

Haha, rockintom99, I don't think that was FSK405K's point. But I agree heavily with Seth. It's all about customization now. Hrm. You know what would be sort of amusing? Remember in Ocarina of Time behind the windows in the court yard? Pictures of Nintendo characters... tottaly out of place, purhaps, but it never did detract from the game. If you could run across portraits or pictures of your Mii characters while wondering around Hyrule in Twilight Princess, that would generate an "ooo ahhh" kind of effect, if only minimal. Some sort of integration with games in that way with your Mii characters would be neat.

#7

The same argument still applies. The majority of players completely ignore or make little use of customization features.

It is a minority of consumers making their own MySpace pages, and fewer still devoting long periods of time to customizing those pages. After a while it just becomes wanking and you want to actualy do something.

I've had broadband for seven years and the likelihood of YouTube putting a severe dent in my viewing of TV shows is minimal. If I had to choose between an hour spent with homemade videos of idiots falling off skateboards vs. a high quality series like Battlestar Galactica, I'm going to ignore the skateboarder unless he's screaming in agony outside my home. In which case I'll go outside long enough to use a shovel to put him out of our mutual misery and get back to my show.

It's very simple. Quality content will always trump amateur crap on the web. If the kids would rather watch YouTube videos than play your game, it's likely because your game isn't much good. If you cannot compete with homemade lipsynch videos, you should just quit and leave the field to more competent creators.

Fans of wrestling games (especially me :P) REALLY love customization features. However, Mii doesn't just apply to Online stuff (which the article draws from, primarily like PC players, which are more often than not Online these days), it goes into your controller and you can take it with you.

Mii doesn't make a huge impact on Online, because it isn't meant to. It's usually meant for local gaming, and people that might actually recognize your characatures.

Though with wrestling CAWs, they take gads of time to truly customize (the texture design in DoR is approaching Photoshop-like levels with Layers and all that 0_0) and while rewarding, it's not very approachable. The level of ease that Bill Trinen was demonstrating the Mii Channel with is really attributed to how simple the design was kept.

Teehee! If you notice in some of the Sep. 14th vids the female Miis are topless in Wii Boxing. Teehee.

*THOMPSON ALERT THOMPSON ALERT*

interesting how apparently nobody heard about how Sony is planning to have a more open-ended user created content system. For the next Unreal tournament, for example, supposedly you can create new maps and mods on your computer and play them on your PS3.

Now, take that with a huge grain of salt. I mean, PS2 also had linux, which was supposed to allow internet surfing. Where is that now exactly? I'm sketchy about Sony pulling it off, even worse so with Nintendo. I just don't see it happening with the wii. Nintendo is a bit too controlling of their content.

Microsoft would probably be the best company to implement user created content, seeing as they are software and most their titles are PC ports anyways, but.. once again, they're way too tight in controlling their content. They want to make money off microtransactions. Why should they allow user-created content that could do the same, if not better, than the same "official" mod(microtransaction)?

Actually... when you put that into perspective, microtransactions and user-created content are basically opposites. You just can't have both really. In that view, Nintendo may be the best suited to pull it off since they're not as caught up in microtransactions.

The problem with socially driven game content and atmospheres is that I HATE PEOPLE.