To Nintendo Co., Ltd. and GameSpy Industries: an open letter on the recently-launched Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection service.
I've been a pretty insane fan of Nintendo systems and software for many years now. I owned a Nintendo Entertainment System and a handful of games like pretty much every other kid, but my late 20's is the time I chose to amass a library of nearly five dozen games across your current three hardware platforms. However, there are two games out of that library in particular I want to talk about today: Mario Kart DS and Animal Crossing: Wild World; as representatives of Nintendo's efforts behind the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.
I'm a software developer by trade. I have a particular interest in internetworking and have a probably unhealthy obsession with the intricacies of the Internet and the spectacular ways in which it can fail. I've watched the development of the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection with great interest and also knowing that, as a first effort, there were bound to be a few bumps along the road. It's the nature of the beast, especially when you throw the historically troublesome (compared to wired Ethernet, at least) 802.11 technology into the mix.
On the whole, I think you folks have done a great job. The design is incredibly simple. It takes very little effort to get from game to online, the numbers you published for Mario Kart DS, illustrating the huge percentage of game owners that took their DS online, back that up. I especially recall the one time I took my copy of Wild World into a local McDonald's and connected without so much as an extra dialog box. I welcome that convenience since the technology is so seamless and easy to get into. Many kudos all-around for getting this absolutely right.
But, of course, I also have some real problems with the Wi-Fi Connection releases. My issues arent with things like having a "friends chat lobby in Mario Kart (though please do mark that suggestion down; I believe it would make matchmaking easier.) Im not complaining about how many people drop out of Kart races because they're losing and the lack of a penalty for doing so. Nor am I complaining about how animals stop walking around in Wild World when you go into online mode. No; my complaints concern two core problems with the Wi-Fi Connection and software; problems that are causing myself and other players real headaches and should have been avoided.
The first issue is the abysmal condition of the router compatibility list. The problem with the compatibility list is not so much that a new product has come out and has a ton of compatibility issues -- I've played with enough wireless equipment to realize that is nothing but the norm -- but rather, the fact that these compatibility ratings have been given little chance to improve by the decision to compile the Wi-Fi Connection code into games, where it can never be updated.
I will readily concede that the Wi-Fi Connection is probably the first time in Nintendo's history that you have had to intentionally design a product that, by design, must communicate with products from other companies that were not designed with it in mind. I realize, as a developer, that this is a hard problem. However, it is a serious problem that there is no currently apparent way for the Wi-Fi Connection code in games to be updated. We may well get better Wi-Fi Connection code with better compatibility in future games like Metroid Prime Hunters, but that does nothing for the copies of Mario Kart, Wild World, and even Tony Hawk's American Sk8land that we're playing. In short, the code for the Wi-Fi Connection needs to live on the DS as a platform service, in an area where it can be updated by future games and the WFC itself.
The other problem is one that I've seen since the days of the GBA, extending into GBA-GCN connectivity and DS wireless play; this is purely a problem with game design. There seems to be reluctance on your part with the notion of taking the possibility of a disconnection seriously, and it is an absolutely glaring problem with Wild World. Now that we're playing not just with a usually reliable cable between two Game Boy systems, it's time to stop throwing away game progress just because there's a communication error of some kind. It's time to handle disconnections gracefully.
As you're no doubt aware, any kind of communications problem, be it lag, a dropped wireless connection, or even just a minor confusion in the protocol causes an online Wild World session to throw up a blue screen and announce to all players (even ones with stable connections) that they're about to be kicked back to their last save point. This is unacceptable anyway, but is especially troublesome considering the game revolves around the changes you make to the game world, not to mention rare items you may acquire, then lose, with no hope of reacquiring them -- the game needs to keep going when there's connection troubles, taking only the action of removing the problematic player to his own town with his inventory intact. I suppose it's a testament to how good the game actually is that I've lost my progress due to this very problem several times in one evening and still tried to go online again just tens of minutes later; a game this good deserves a far better underlying system.
Well, there you have it. I realize that the bulk of this letter does indeed sound quite negative, but I feel there are some important lessons that must be learned for future releases. I hope this letter is taken as it is intended to be: as constructive criticism that ensures future Wi-Fi Connection releases will be the higher-quality products that we're accustomed to getting from Nintendo. I'm very happy to see you've taken the steps into the online world and in the unique way that you did; I believe you've delivered on "easy, safe, and free" in a remarkable way. All I ask is that you make a better effort to deliver on "reliable."
Thank you for your time and attention. I hope these points will be taken to heart, and look forward to seeing what the future brings.