The Confusing State of Nintendo and Competitive Gaming
Originally Published November 14th, 2018
Nintendo knows that some players take their games very seriously. Even at the beginnings of the Nintendo Entertainment System, where high scores were erased when the console was reset, there were competitive players for single-player games like Donkey Kong, Tetris, and Balloon Fight. Nintendo even went out of their way to host the Nintendo World Championships for these players in 1990, manufacturing a unique game cartridge that was specially programmed for the championship challenges. It would take 25 years for the gaming giant to host another championship, this time based on modern titles like Splatoon, Super Mario Maker, and Mario Kart 8. But this time, these competitions were here to stay. The Nintendo World Championship made a second return in 2017, and since the release of Super Smash Bros. for Wii U in 2014, there have been “Invitationals,” where celebrities and esports stars alike are officially invited to compete against one another with select games. By hosting more competitions worldwide and tailoring games like Splatoon 2, ARMS, and the upcoming Super Smash Bros. Ultimate to competitive players, is Nintendo finally supporting the competitive scene?
Unfortunately, the most that Nintendo is doing right now is trying, and only in certain aspects. In an interview with ESPN at this year’s E3 conference, Nintendo of America President and C-O-O Reggie Fils Aime gave an interesting response when asked about the format of competitive tournaments in the future. “As we see success, we'll continue to invest, and that investment is going to look different than what other companies are doing. We may sponsor some sort of circuit. We may do things purely online as a way to encourage the community. We're going to experiment across a number of different titles and across a number of different regions.” Reggie also talked to Variety Gaming about getting involved in the competitive scene, and said that the common esports scenario where professionals play for a living or for a large pot of money was one they weren’t really interested in. If Nintendo is trying to dip their toe into the competitive scene, it certainly doesn’t want to do it traditionally, and it really isn’t quite sure of how to handle competitive gaming yet.
That being said, new titles designed for competitive play like ARMS and Splatoon 2 are seeing a lot of support from Nintendo through physical tournaments and constant balancing updates worldwide. But other franchises are not seeing as much love. Developers behind Mario Tennis Aces, one of the more obvious esports picks, deliver game patches in huge waves instead of incrementally for testing, which often leads to outcries for changes that aren’t seen for weeks or even months. Not to mention that most of the events with the game have been online tournaments, which have been received as less serious due to the lower-budget nature of online-only events. Even Pokemon is seemingly stepping off the competitive pedestal with Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee, despite the Pokemon Company holding their own annual traditional championships since 2004. These games see the removal of competitive breeding, and even though franchise director Junichi Masuda is stepping away from the role after this title, there’s no telling if Game Freak will continue to implement this philosophy of showing players a “different side of the game” in future entries.
It’s not just the games that sometimes betray the competitive scene, though. The hardware and services provided by the Nintendo Switch are also hindering its potential of being as competitively viable as other platforms. Not all games being able to run at a fluid frame rate of 60 F-P-S can compromise those games for competitive play, even at the local level. The Nintendo Switch Online service is still variable in its performance at best because of connections only being as strong as the weakest link. This has caused problems like random disconnects and other unfair disadvantages for players of the most fine-tuned competitive online games. Only being able to chat with friends through an official Nintendo app and not in-game through the console doesn’t bode well for players who enjoy online competitive play as a part of a team, either.
Even though Nintendo’s goal is to make a fun experience at the end of the day, a lot of people have fun through online competition, and that’s just an area that Nintendo hasn’t really mastered yet. Players best bet with Nintendo’s esports scene comes with their next-generation hardware, and hopefully larger teams of employees who can dedicate themselves and their games to competitive optimization.