"Empathy Network"
People who look at the photo at the top and see Kondo-san from Hatena1 will probably wonder what he's doing here. 1. Hatena Co., Ltd: An Internet company developing services for Hatena such as Hatena Bookmark and Hatena Diary (Hatena Blog). It was founded in 2001 and its corporate headquarters is located in Kyoto.
Yeah, probably. (laughs)
You've been working with us ever since we decided to make Miiverse. Today's "Iwata Asks" is about the producers of Miiverse. Thank you for coming.
Our pleasure.
Miiverse is an online gaming community that's integrated from the system level of Wii U. It allows people from all over the world to connect through their Mii characters*. In the plaza of their favorite games, players can share their thoughts and post hand-drawn illustrations and write comments and enjoy interacting with each other. (*Editor's note: A broadband Internet connection is required for this feature.) And in addition to being able to exchange each other's ID numbers like with the previous Friend Codes2, with Miiverse you are now able to become friends with someone more easily. Please introduce yourselves—starting with you, Kondo-san. 2. Friend Code: An ID allocated when a WiiTM, Nintendo DSTM or Nintendo 3DSTM owner connects to the Internet. By exchanging Friend Codes, players can play specially designed games together online.
I'm Kondo from Hatena. I was in charge of making the original concept for Miiverse. It's a pleasure to be here.
I'm Mizuki from Nintendo's Network Business Department. For Miiverse, I was sort of a producer or director.
You're also the one who first brought up Miiverse. Mizuki-san, would you tell us about how Miiverse began?
Sure. In all honesty, Miiverse began for me with Wii no Ma3, which ended the other day. The structure of the service is totally different, though. 3. Wii no Ma (Wii Room): One of the Wii Channels available in Japan from May 2009 to April 2012. Wii no Ma was a "living room communication channel" featuring three services: Shopping, Home Theater and Ironna Ma (Various Room). The service used to offer pay services to shop for original products only available through Wii no Ma, gourmet items, daily necessities, fashion items, and home decoration. They could also rent movies, anime and classic television programs for viewing.
At the time, you were doing work on the client side of Wii no Ma.
Yes. I'd been discussing what the Wii U's network service should be like with (Yusuke) Beppu-san4 of Wii no Ma Co., Ltd.5 It was more like chatting than actual discussion, though, and Beppu-san kept wondering if we could do something representative of Nintendo that was focused on Mii characters.
4. Yusuke Beppu: Former president of Wii no Ma Co., Ltd. Currently president of Nintendo Network Service Co., Ltd.
5. Wii no Ma Co., Ltd.: The company that operated Wii no Ma. It was co-founded by Nintendo and Dentsu. Its name has changed to Nintendo Network Service Co., Ltd.
Well, Wii no Ma in itself was a service that was unmistakably representative of Nintendo.
Yeah. What we wanted to do was surprisingly similar. With Wii no Ma, however, the operation side basically made the content and provided it to users. But that way, we couldn't update it very frequently, which is something I really regret.
We updated it every day, but depending on the users on the receiving end, sometimes they would find what we distributed to be interesting, and sometimes it wasn't. So it was very challenging to try to satisfy everyone with the limited amount of content we could produce.
Yeah. So instead of making everything ourselves for users to enjoy, we thought maybe we should set up a UGC6 service so that more people could participate. 6. UGC (user-generated content): This is a general term for all kinds of media content created by users.
Really? That's the first I've ever heard this about the relation with Wii no Ma! (laughs)
When you look at Wii no Ma and Miiverse, they hardly share anything in common except the Mii characters, but if Mizuki-san hadn't worked on Wii no Ma and hadn't experienced the difficulty of updating content every day, then Miiverse might never have come to be.
When I made the presentation for Miiverse, I think I described it as something like a "new network service using Mii characters," and was surprised when you, Iwata-san, called it a "empathy network."
When I heard what you said, I thought that if people who had experienced the same game got together and said "Yeah, yeah, I thought so, too," and connected via that kind of empathy, they would both be happy. We needed to figure out how we could design the service so that people would empathize with each other as much as possible, so I labeled it an empathy network.
At that time, the core of Miiverse was people with a certain play history interacting in an online community.
Miiverse is a service integrated with the game console, so if players can check each other's play histories, they can interact on that basis.
They have the same experiences, so it's easier to interact.
Then I discussed it, or rather chatted about it (laughs), with all kinds of people, not just in-house development producers and directors, but also the advertising department and people involved in sales, and began filling in the specifications.
For a certain time, you spent some time going around the company chatting.
Yes. So rather than thinking of it myself, as I talked with others, what was vague gradually became clear. The WaraWara Plaza7, which we were previously calling "Mii Wara Wara", was also like that. 7. WaraWara Plaza: An exchange format by which the Wii U home menu shows game icons and the Mii characters of people playing those games when the console is turned on. The game icons may not be for games the console owner has played. Lots of Mii characters bustle around, and comments and such appear on the screen. It can be described as a home menu screen that also recommends games.
Early on, you talked about something that would have a bunch of Mii characters come out and bustle (wara wara) around.
That's right. One of the people I chatted with was (Koichi) Kawamoto-san8, who worked on StreetPass Mii Plaza.9 He said that instead of having a screen like a regular web service, he wanted something distinctive. I thought that was right, and we chatted about having the Mii characters come out and bustle around.
Later, the team making the menu for the Wii U console said, "Let's have the Mii characters come out and bustle around on the Wii U's startup screen," and they polished Mii Wara Wara up to its current form.
8. Koichi Kawamoto: Software Development & Design Department, Software Planning & Development Division. He was in charge of direction for StreetPassTM Mii PlazaTM for the Nintendo 3DS system and AR GamesTM, which made use of the included AR Cards. In the past, he has appeared in sessions of "Iwata Asks" over Brain Age Express for the Nintendo DSi system, and the Nintendo 3DS built-in software.
9. StreetPass Mii Plaza: Application built into the Nintendo 3DS system. It is a plaza where Mii characters belonging to people who pass each other on the street gather. Users may view each other's profiles and play Find Mii.
The Wii U console menu is actually coordinated by (Hisashi) Nogami-san10, director of Animal Crossing.11
10. Hisashi Nogami: Software Development Department, Entertainment Analysis & Development Division. He is director of the Animal CrossingTM series. In the past, he has appeared in sessions of "Iwata Asks" covering Animal Crossing: City Folk.
11. Animal Crossing: The first Animal Crossing was released for the Nintendo 64TM system in April 2001. The most recent game in the series is Animal Crossing: Jump Out, scheduled for release for the Nintendo 3DS system on November 8, 2012 in Japan and will be released in the US in early 2013.
(Katsuya) Eguchi-san12, general producer of Wii U, and Nogami-san, with their experience on Animal Crossing, agreed to the Miiverse concept at a pretty early stage. Thanks to Eguchi-san's efforts, games like New Super Mario Bros. U13 and Nintendo Land14 are compatible with Miiverse.
12. Katsuya Eguchi: Software Development Department, Entertainment Analysis & Development Division. He is the producer of games like the Animal Crossing series, and Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort. In the past, he has appeared in sessions of "Iwata Asks" covering Super Mario developers for the Super Mario Bros. 25th Anniversary (Volume 1), and the special edition at E3 2012 over the Wii U console .
13. New Super Mario Bros™. U: The latest game in the Super Mario™ series, scheduled for simultaneous release with the Wii U™ console on December 8, 2012 in Japan and on November 18 in the US.
14. Nintendo Land™: An interactive theme park game scheduled for simultaneous release with the Wii U console on December 8, 2012 in Japan, and on November 18 in the US.
Yeah, the moment I saw the original form of WaraWara Plaza, what we used to call Mii Wara Wara, I could tell this was serious.
That was the moment that Miiverse totally transformed.
Another reason that Eguchi-san and Nogami-san responded to Miiverse was because they regretted how there wasn't enough of a "live" feeling when they worked on that Animal Crossing official homepage project15 for sharing player comments and had to select the content for posting. They both talked about how Miiverse had to be a service that the players could use more freely. 15. Animal Crossing official homepage project: The Japanese version of the Nintendo official website for Animal Crossing had a special bulletin board called Everyone's News, where users could post play tips and comments.
In that sense, they had wanted to do that ever since Animal Crossing, but back then, the capability simply wasn't there. If the Animal Crossing people hadn't been in charge of the console menu or Eguchi-san hadn't been the overall producer, Miiverse wouldn't have received support from people like that and may have ended up in a slightly different form.