Lets Talk About Miiverse

How Miiverse was Used?

There were several games that used the Miiverse in interesting ways to entice the player to get involved with the community. An example of this is the game New Super Mario Bros. U for the Wii U, which allowed users to view posts that are related to different levels on the over world map.

These posts often contained tips on difficult levels or if the level had a secret route there would be tips on how to access them, as seen in the post below where a user is suggesting going into the level with a specific power‐up in order to reach specific bonuses.

Another example of how Miiverse posts were implemented into games was from Splatoon. The walls of main lobby in Splatoon was covered in artwork that other players had posted while playing the game. This was especially prominent durring events in the game called Splatfests where players would pick a side of a debate, an example would be Rock Music vs. Pop Music, and the two teams would compeat by playing matches against each other. Posts of support for both teams would be posted all over the walls and billboards of the game. These posts helped to build up a sence of comradery among the players as they played. They encouraged players to keep playing the game because the team was counting on them to earn points and win the Splatfest for their side.

This ability to view other user's posts in the game is what made Miiverse stand out as a gaming communication platform. There are no other platforms at the moment that allows users to post directly in the game like the Miiverse did.

One criticism that the Miiverse received from users is that the service was too restrictive. Because a large number of the user base was younger children, Nintendo has implemented a list of words that would get a user banned if they used them. While this was done for the protection of the younger users, the automated algorithm that monitors users' posts banned users without looking at the context of their posts.

This over-automation lead many users to believe there should be a way to separate out communities based on age which would have been a good idea. If users were in separate age brackets with different language restrictions, then this problem would be less of an issue.

There were also some users who wanted to ban children from the service all together, but that would have been a huge mistake. It is important for younger people to develop communication skills and the Miiverse was a perfect way for them to do so in a relatively safe and monitored environment. The Miiverse also had the opportunity to introduce younger people to a more diverse community than their in-person communities could ever offer.