Nobody slept with anybody’s mother, are we clear?
This month’s Edge Magazine devotes a lot of attention to Nintendo’s forthcoming multiplayer inkathon Splatoon, and it’s really rather interesting reading – particularly the revelation that Miyamoto originally thought there was no appeal to the game. Nintendo are of course doing the squad-based shooter in their own way, and that includes the decision to drop voice chat from the game prior to release.
Splatoon’s co-director Yusuke Amano told Edge, “this is coming from personal experience,” when asked about the decision. “When I played online games,” he continued, “I didn’t like the negativity I got and people telling me, ‘You’re crap. Go away.’ So we wanted to focus on the positive aspects of online gaming.”
It’s an interesting idea and some would suggest a very brave one, given that voice chat has been woven into the fabric of the online shooter in recent years. The team-based nature of the game and the desire to co-ordinate efforts with squad-mates across the map could be an area where voice chat will be missed, but then Nintendo were never really considering Splatoon as a hardcore competitive shooter. The target age of the audience is lower but the anticipated fun is far higher, and in order to maintain that family atmosphere voice chat simply had to go. There was no other way around it.
But enough about online aggro – did you see the amazing Splatoon cover on the digital edition of Edge, where the eyes follow you around the room? It’s yet another sign, if it were needed, that Splatoon is going to be good, clean messy Nintendo fun.
Thanks to GamesRadar for capturing the cover in all its glory.
To be honest, I’m OK with this. Silence is golden and team tactics are overrated! 🙂
Couldn’t agree more! Nobody’s actually using voice chat for tactics anymore, it’s all just for hurling obscenities at one another, so it saves me having to manually ‘mute all’ at the beginning of every single match.
The only time I’ve used voice chat recently with random people has been in GTA V during heists. Therefore it is not a feature I will feel is absent.
Although having read the Edge special I’m looking forward to Splatoon. The question now is how much do I commit to more amiibo?
An option to only enable chat with people on your friends list by default, or select to only voice with certain people at the start of a session, would be nice, but Nintendo’s online philosophy tends towards safety first, which is admirable in its own special way. The most enjoyable and verbose fun is still often to be found while playing games in the same room as your opponents.