High Voltage's The Grinder has effectively been labeled as "Left 4 Dead on the Wii," focusing as it does on co-op undead shooting action. High Voltage definitely wants to bring that kind of game to the white waggle box, but when we asked the Left 4 Dead developer how it felt about The Grinder, we were met with what can best be described as hopeful skepticism.
"I'm very interested in social gaming. Left 4 Dead is social gaming," explains writer Chet Faliszek. "One of the reasons why we're on Steam and Xbox Live is because those platforms deliver that, they deliver hooking up with your friends. I have no idea how you'd do that on the Wii. I mean, I can be sitting there, watching Netflix on my 360, I see a popup saying that someone online who I know is playing Left 4 Dead, and I can go join them. How am I doing that on the Wii?
"Left 4 Dead couldn't have existed ten years ago without the technology to hook you up with your friends as easily as we do now. Even QuakeWorld, when that first came out it was this huge thing because you could hook up with any stranger, but it still didn't let you connect to your friends and there was a lot of work on that and on Steam, we had a lot of iterations of friends lists because it's not an easy problem to solve, there are a lot of things to want to do right.
"I don't know if those other platforms are doing that yet, so when I see a game coming out like that on the Wii, I just wonder, 'how's that gonna work?' Best of luck to them, that's totally cool and if it's a cool game I'll definitely buy it and figure it out, but I don't know how that works. I think it's hard to discount how powerful the Xbox Live community and Steam community are."
It will indeed be interesting to see how well The Grinder fares on Wii. The Wii's interface may be able to handle the gameplay aspect of a co-op shooter, but the social aspect is indeed a crucial part of Left 4 Dead, and if you can't easily hook up with friends, there won't be much point at all. We'll have to see how it goes.
Contest:
1:40 PM on 07.30.2009
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He's right about the Wii. The friend codes make it extremely difficult to be as social as you could be. I'm sure the online can handle it, High Voltage has proven they can do great online with the Conduit, however I feel like Nintendo's social system is holding them back.
I would love to use my Wii speak more often in the Conduit but I haven't made many successful additions to my friends list as none of my Wii owning friends really enjoy FPS and the Dtoiders playing don't seem terribly interested. While the random pairings are fine, I would like to be able to communicate with my teammates. I suppose I could be more proactive about it and search people out, but should I have to try so hard? Nintendo is putting up barriers.
Hopefully it will be better with the Grinder. I have no doubt it will be a good game, but the social aspects are worrying.
They shouldn't be playing that game anyway..
If someone else like High Voltage manages to get a good thing going, then it will be good to see Valve or Epic take notice for the future. It's all about working with what you got.
If the online is truly necessary, High-Voltage already has some great workarounds for friend codes on The Conduit, so I assume they'll do better for The Grinder.
Get people to commit to it a few days in advance
Connect to Skype so we can talk to each other
Exchange Friend Codes so we can play with each other
Play for a half hour or so before being disconnected from Nintendo Wi-Fi
Quit and play on the 360 or PS3
In short, he's totally right. The barriers that you have to bypass just to play a game with your friends on the Wii make it such a pain. These days, I sign onto my 360 or PS3 without even knowing what I want to play. I see what my friends are up to, and see if I can get in on their game. You just can't do that on the Wii.
But this is Nitendo, the "We don't want to bother releaseing Earthbound for the VC and we'll hide behind sample copyright to do so, here have some shit C64 game instead" Nintendo so what they'll do is have you have to input five friend codes instead.
The service might be free, but christ I'd rather pay my fiver.
I am wondering the same thing...
Yes, I've been thinking Brad Nicholson all day because of these interviews.
The friend codes would actually be quite ingenious if it were ONE per console not one per game, it would allow for you to change the nickname and people wouldn't create 10 accounts just for shit and giggles.
I wish Nintendo would realise this, maybe if in the next E3 some one would go to Miyamoto or Iwata and told them how shit their are with this, they might not care but they also have a huge ego.
Replace yourself with a moron and I won't notice a difference.
That being said, because of its design the Wii is not capable of ever having a system with an unified friend list like xbox live. But individual games can still have a competent community system. kinda.
There is absolutely no excuse for an online service to suck as much as Nintendo's does (From what I've read and heard, mostly negative stuff, even Wii owners admit it). For Nintendo to continue this shit is just straight up ignorant and negligent on their part. I want a Wii, but definitely not for it's online capabilities. However, I do commend the efforts of those developers that try to make it work on the console (Like High Voltage).
I wonder if 4 years from now the only use my Wii gets is from High Voltage games.. Lord knows Nintendo is content never releasing anything new again, but rather just sitting on their Cash Mountain™.
It took years for the company to implement a voice service, and when it came out it was essentially "broken." To this day, there are less than a handful of games that support Wii Speak.
It took years for the company to implement a "comprehensive" online-enabled game, and I am not talking about Smash Bros. I am referring to Mario Kart Wii. Though it is not perfect, it is certainly a step up from the norm.
It took years for the company to allow SDHC cards to be recognized in order to make up for the lack of on-board storage. Realistically, that should have been supported from day one.
When you combine Nintendo's molasses-like "advances" with the mind-boggling Friend Codes system, all of these factors point to the company being fiscally conservative to the point of frustration and disappointment.
Taking that a step further, Nintendo's philosophy of leaving EVERYTHING in the hands of third-parties leads to very few giving a damn. Having to develop your own back end to support online play is manpower, time and money better spent on another project or two.
The bottom line is that Nintendo is content with focusing on social gaming. Just look at the majority of products they are putting out and how they are advertised - Wii Music, Mario Kart, Wii Fit, etc. Anything beyond that, from Nintendo's point of view, is an excess "treat."