Our social network is in another castle: The new face of Nintendo

As Nintendo gears up for its next console generation, the hardware and software guessers have focused on patent leaks and rumor mills, looking for any juicy hints and scraps as to the company's future. Maybe we'll get a crazy controller, a hybrid home/portable device, or a few retro-throwback features.

But if you want to understand the Nintendo of the future, the writing is already on the wall, and that wall is a very public one, revolving around social media and player interconnectivity. Nintendo is rapidly redefining its take on being a "family friendly" entertainment company, setting the table for a very weird Nintendo NX generation.

Forget the Wii's "blue ocean" strategy of winning over new players with gimmicks. Nintendo may very well be eyeing an even more intense way to capture new fans' minds and hearts with fully interconnected, online-focused products that will need constant tending by, and public responses from, a company that came to prominence in a much more conservative era.

Splash of controversy

We start with Wednesday, which saw Nintendo being criticized for jokes set to appear in Paper Mario: Color Splash, the upcoming Wii U entry in its long-running, tongue-in-cheek RPG series. To an uninitiated passerby, the new game's jokes looked cute and pedestrian, with a gang of the game's "fun guy" characters (as in, "fungi," referencing the mushrooms on their heads) making a Watergate joke after being busted for running a scam.

On social media, critics connected enough dots to suggest a correlation between how those jokes were written and one of the sexually charged code phrases used in the early days of the controversial social-media hashtag "GamerGate." Whether this was intentional or coincidental, it was also the kind of story Nintendo very well could have ignored, since the connection wasn't overt. Instead, by the next day, Nintendo of America responded to multiple media outlets' questions on the matter. It offered this statement to Ars Technica.

"While we typically do not speak on localization matters, we feel the need to confirm that these jokes are not linked in the game," the company said. The two references were part of a jokey setup parodying Watergate, NoA said, but it had been "spliced together and misconstrued as a crude reference to an online hate campaign." The company put a bow on the matter with an emphatic denial: "Nintendo firmly rejects the harassment of individuals in any way and was surprised to learn that its gameplay was misinterpreted in this manner."

Remember when Mortal Kombat didn't have blood?

This kind of direct response should read as interesting to anybody who has followed Nintendo for the past few decades. For one, the unabashedly conservative company was once an industry vanguard for shying away from anything that could be perceived as offensive. Remember, Nintendo's rise to prominence included a stringent policy about in-game content well before the ESRB slapped ratings on game boxes. NES games couldn't ship in the United States with any references to religion or drugs let alone any particularly violent or crude content.

That policy remained intact for some of the Super Nintendo era (particularly for the weird, translucent "sweat" that replaced blood in the SNES version of the original Mortal Kombat), but it eroded as the company faced increasing pressure from rivals like Sony and Sega. Yet other than the profoundly M-rated Conker's Bad Fur Day, Nintendo's first-party fare hewed toward inoffensive content whenever possible. This meant Nintendo wasn't really put in a position where it was asked to publicly comment on questionable fare—it never really produced any.

Nintendo speaks up now with directness and frequency.

As that changed, Nintendo developed a reputation for being stoic and silent in the face of public controversy. For one, the company didn't publicly acknowledge the fact that it had included, and later removed, sounds of Muslim chanting in the original N64 Ocarina of Time release until a 2012 interview. In another instance, Nintendo never commented on controversy surrounding its 2005 game Super Princess Peach, in which the heroine's only superpowers came in the form of emotional outbursts. (It's hard to imagine such a game seeing release in 2016.)

And a 2008 version of Animal Crossing for the Nintendo DS was promoted with a press-only version pre-loaded with other people’s play and user-generated names… including racial epithets. Nintendo offered a mealy mouthed non-apology at the time, blaming the issue on a “viral” dictionary-sharing issue.

But things are different today—so much so, in fact, that we might disagree when Nintendo says it "typically" doesn't speak up about localization and content controversies. It speaks up now with directness and frequency.

Love in the time of Fates

In 2014, Nintendo found itself in the middle of a social-media outcry regarding Tomodachi Life, a life-sim game that expanded upon the promise of the popular Animal Crossing series. Where the latter asked players to control a cartoony avatar and move into a bustling, whimsical town full of talking animals, the former took a far more personal approach by asking players to move their own self-styled Mii avatars into an apartment building.

With little in the way of "gameplay," Tomodachi relied more on emotional impact, particularly in having players move their real-life friends into neighboring apartment units. Various Mii characters could meet, become friends, hang out, and even fall in love and have children. The game's humor and fun came from that human touch—especially since players didn't get to pick who fell in love with whom. However, Tomodachi's romance system only worked for heterosexual unions, which drew complaints and criticism from gay Nintendo fans.

Nintendo was quick that time to offer a frank apology, saying it had "failed" to include same-sex options but was unable to add them into the finished game thanks to coding issues.

Nintendo continued to respond to social media-driven concerns for other games, largely surrounding edits and changes made to Japanese RPGs' Western releases. In the Xenoblade Chronicles X, a 13-year-old girl's noticeably provocative outfit was updated to conceal more skin. In Fire Emblem: Fates, Nintendo removed a "gay conversion" moment in which a character's drink was spiked with a "magic powder" to make it easier for her to get into a heterosexual relationship. In both cases, Nintendo tried to cut off the controversy with strong statements.

How "My Nintendo" could become your Nintendo

Nintendo's increased engagement in the online conversation surrounding its games mirrors an increasing focus in online engagement within the games themselves. Animal Crossing, Tomodachi Life, Fire Emblem: Fates, and now the smartphone-minded Miitomo are all games that focus on connecting players to each other and/or fostering new relationships between characters. That's not to say Legend of Zelda's quests and Super Mario's kid-friendly, rainbow-colored romps are going anywhere, but Nintendo clearly isn't done pushing its new wave of interconnected games.

The recently refreshed "My Nintendo" rewards system (which is currently only compatible with the iOS and Android app Miitomo) makes this abundantly clear. That app lives and dies by the gentle, daily prodding of accomplishing simple, friend-related tasks to claim more points. Like your friends' statuses. Leave comments on their Miitomo walls. Try out new clothes every day. Coins, coins, coins.

Miitomo's daily-reward carrot dangle is pretty loud proof that Nintendo wants its players constantly jacking into its content and networking services. This movement was foreshadowed by Nintendo 3DS initiatives, from the StreetPass rewards given for repeatedly checking into your portable system to the cosmetic Badge Arcade rewards given to that weird app's daily users. Miitomo is a sign of even more interconnected services for the company's future games products (and you can bet your Super Mario overalls that Nintendo NX will double down on My Nintendo-related perks and online services).

But Nintendo can't expect players to engage online without simultaneously standing on guard, keeping a lookout for signs of offense and discontent among its loudest online fans and critics. If your product lives and dies on a networking and communication platform—and that's pretty much all the microtransaction Miitomo is—then you have to engage in the online conversation around those games more than you might have before. In Nintendo's new, more social gaming world, the company has to have lifeguards hanging out around the social media pool, blowing the whistle when appropriate.

Nintendo is gearing up for a future in which its customers' interest and activity is the product. The company still has classically designed offline games coming down the pipeline (particularly 2017's incredible Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild), but games focused on social engagement are a bright spot for a company that's otherwise financially struggling as of late. As a result, we can probably expect Nintendo to stay engaged in the conversation that seems to constantly swirl around its evolving and sometimes controversial brand.