Iwata Asks: Splatoon

[Pavolink]

sundin13 said:

Pavolink said:

Why does Zelda doesn't fit?

Because it is a different type of game. With online centered games, your experience (typically) involves doing the same thing repeatedly, with the other people making the experience different. With single player centered games, your experience (typically) involves doing a lot of different things and not really repeating yourself.

A spread out launch schedule in an online games keeps all the players focused on one thing, and as excitement for that one thing begins to diminish, new elements are added, which revitalize the community (in Splatoon specifically, it seems that they will release new maps fairly frequently as well as new items basically daily to keep players coming back, as well as the more major mode updates). With a single player game, if you run to the end of the content given, you simply stop playing the game. This presents numerous problems with pacing, maintaining interest, keeping the skillset maintained etc....

Episodic games (in response to your response to me) tend to be a little different as that implies a single player game, however, they typically are designed to give each piece its own feeling to give you some closure at the end of each "episode". This is like how many TV shows do things, which keeps the player interested in what comes next, without really breaking the pacing. A single player game has to be designed around this idea to work, and it typically works best using story to hold the episodes together (instead of gameplay) so it can't really be shoehorned in.

With typical multiplayer games on the other hand, because the experience is inherently different, it is more suited to a spread out launch schedule (for the reasons stated before). In multiplayer games with a boatload of content upon release, it isn't unusual for a player to find the piece they like the most and pretty much exclusively play that piece, thus spreading the community and having players miss out on other content. This also weakens longevity, as when they get bored of that mode, they consider that to mean getting bored of the game. Games like CoD can sustain this because they have a giant playerbase and a ton of legs, but smaller games often struggle with keeping community interest, so Splatoon's release schedule (if they map out their releases well), could be a boon for all players.

On the other hand, releasing a game lacking on content (1/3) could also spread firstly a bad impression and people skiping it. Because of that, your current userbase could be as low as to make the the first players get early bored. Thus, they will lost any future interest in the game and won't bother with the subsecuents modes months after.

I guess we will see how will people react to it.