Everything You Need to Know About: Splatoon

So It's been about a week since Splatoon hit the store shelves, and you may or may not have noticed that it's been getting a lot of attention. For all of you who have not been on the hype train to Inkopolis for the past year here's everything you need to know:

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The Basics:

This is Nintendo's first time treading into the hostile waters of the online shooter genre and the general consensus is that they did a pretty stellar job. Online shooters are fairly straight forward, you play over the internet with other people and shoot each other, but otherwise they're not known for being the most welcoming of games to get into. That's where Splatoon comes in. 

The main mode of play is "Turf War" a 4v4, 3 minute match where the goal is to have more ground covered with your team's color of ink at the end than your opponents. This change in the players' goal means it's much easier to make a meaningful difference in the outcome of the game. On top of that the ink you're spreading has a more immediate effect. When you're standing in your team's ink you can turn into a squid and swim through it which makes you faster, harder to see, and refills your weapon ammo, while in the other team's ink you move MUCH slower and you're more vulnerable. So even if you're repeatedly killed or have very little interaction with the other players at all you can still know you're making a contribution to your team whenever you're laying down ink.

Along with the usual machine guns, rifles, and grenades there are also a few more unique weapons like the roller (literally a giant paint roller you roll along the ground) and the sprinkler (literally a lawn sprinkler that sprays ink instead of water). There's also multiple options with the sub weapons and special weapons that allow you to provide support to your team. The splash wall acts as mobile cover, the point sensor and echolocator point out the enemy's locations so it's harder for them to sneak around, and bubbler is a bubble shield that you can pass along to your nearby teammates. These just make more ways for you to lend a hand in the match even if you have terrible aim.

There is also a single player mode and a local 1v1 "Battle Dojo." I don't mean to disregard them, they are fun and well designed, but they're just the icing on the cake.

Top all this off with great level design, a killer soundtrack, and plenty of puns and you've got a new addiction on your hands.

TLDR: Splatoon is a new online shooter with interesting gameplay mechanics that people seem to like.

That's Cool, but What's All the Fuss About?:

Nintendo has made some interesting decisions throughout the game, some of which are not very popular, but if you think about them you may find that they're very smart in the long run. You probably noticed I only described one mode of play. That would be because at launch there was only one mode to play online (since then they released another, but I won't go into detail as the basic idea is very similar to the first). Also, there are also only six maps to choose from (five at launch), and online matches will only randomly pick between two of them at a time (changing those two out every 4 hours). But fear not, they plan to release new modes, maps, and weapons for free throughout the summer, and only time will tell how much content the game will eventually have. For the moment though that sounds like it would get kinda repetitive, and if you like to binge all day on one game it definitely can.

You may be wondering how those could be good decisions. I'll tell you why by pointing out another new genre that Nintendo has dipped it's toe into recently. This past February saw the release of Pokemon Shuffle, a free-to-play game on the 3DS. If you've played a lot of games on your smartphone or Facebook you're likely very familiar with these. Generally free-to-play games will have ads in them or, like in Pokemon Shuffle's case, they'll offer microtransactions. The game limits how much you can play for free in a given amount of time, but if you want you can pay a small amount to play more. But how does this relate too Splatoon? You pay up front for the game and there are no microtransactions or ads. Well the idea of the free-to-play game model is not to get people to buy a bunch of play time, play for twelve hours straight, and be done with the game forever. They are trying to get people to play the game for a little bit every day and make those microtransactions on a regular basis. There's a lot more to it, but I think that basic idea is what Nintendo is going for with Splatoon. Get the players to check in and play for a couple hours every day. If they do take a break they'll likely get drawn back in to play the new game modes and maps.

Okay, I'm probably not selling you on this game. This all sounds kind of manipulative, but that's just because… it is manipulative. But the reasons Nintendo would profit from all this are the same reasons the players will benefit. Any game focused around online multiplayer is going to have a shelf life. Without new content, eventually players will move on to something else. The fewer people playing online the harder it'll be to find people around your skill level that you'll actually have fun playing with. If people are in the habit of playing a couple hours here and there and are drawn back in every time new content is added, that will extend the shelf life of the game. Then if plenty of people are still playing in six months time, Nintendo can still be selling more copies of the game, which means more people to play with.

TLDR: Nintendo is likely trying to keep Splatoon players from getting bored with the game in the long run by spacing out the release of the game's content. This adds value to the game beyond just the new content itself because there will still be people to play with past the first month of the game existing.

Why Does All This Matter?:

This is where it all comes together. The reason the game is getting so much attention why it's such a big deal is because it's accessible to a broad range of gamers and this is very intentional on Nintendo's part. Online shooter fans tend to like it because it's a new and unique take on the genre. People that don't have as much experience with shooting games can still play keep up though. Like I mentioned earlier, the goals in this game are different. As long as you can move and hold down the fire button you can contribute to your team's win. You can even be directly helpful to your teammates without ever having to hit a target. It's a whole new game that all kinds of gamers can pickup and play. Some of the things that make it more accessible may be keeping it from being "The Best Game Ever" but they mean that more people will enjoy it.

This is a good point to bring up what is probably be biggest point of contention in the fan base. There is no chat function in the game. No voice chat, no text chat, the only communication you can make is posts to the general forum called Miiverse which for Splatoon is mostly used to make SpongeBob references. Admittedly I can see where the complaints are coming from. This means there is no way to strategize with your team and makes it very difficult to connect with someone you had a fun time playing with. More importantly though, it means that children can play without being verbally abused and women can play without having to worry about hiding their identity. Sure, if there was a voice chat there would be a mute option, but that's kind of messed up to tell a kid "if you want to use this function in your game you'll have to be okay with being called a c**t every now and then. Have fun!"

TLDR: Splatoon is awesome because people besides 16-25 year old dudes can play it.