We Need Miiverse

Wouldn't it be cool if we had Facebook, but only for Nintendo games? Oh, right, we already had that.

Written by Tink Edwards

Social media has been bad for a long time. I always pause for a moment and say a brief prayer before opening Twitter. There’s no telling what quagmire of insanity I’m going to wander into. It wasn’t always that way. The first instances of mass personal communication via the Internet showed the promise of technology and how it could bring a disconnected world together.

The Innocence of the Early Internet

Like-minded individuals shared emails with one another on ARPANET – the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network – and, later, Usenet newsgroups formed, allowing even more users to congregate electronically, sharing news and discussing whatever niche interests they had in common. It was a very exciting time for people to talk without having to actually talk, as God intended.

In the mid ‘90s, online services such as America Online (AOL) and CompuServe brought the newfangled Internet to the masses and paved the way for the first widely-used social networks. As a bonus, via snail mail, everyone received free coasters from those companies in the form of unsolicited demo disks. Yahoo chat rooms and IRC (Internet Relay Chat) servers popped up across the Internet. Millions of people were finding one another and discussing Pulp Fiction and the latest Mortal Kombat fatalities worldwide. The first dedicated websites created solely for online social interactivity were developed. With Friendster and LiveJournal, you could connect with friends and strangers alike, sharing personal anecdotes and diary entries – many of which should never have seen the light of day. But it was cool because you COULD share it. Then there was MySpace. And then there was Facebook. Let’s not get into Facebook right now.

With each new network, the discourse across the Internet grew. It wasn’t all bad. For the first time in world history, you could communicate instantaneously with someone on the opposite side of the planet. When that communication was positive or useful in some way, social media showed what a force for decency it could be. Remember philosoraptor and the O RLY? owl?

Good stuff. But the flip side of the social coin was darker, and the brutality of angry discourse was loud and increasingly pervasive. Living through the entirety of this development, it felt like a switch was flipped one day. The floodgates opened, and suddenly, the Internet wasn’t a magical place to be anymore. If one strayed from the confines of their particular group, thousands of angry trolls waited to pounce. It was… bleak.

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram (OK, maybe not Instagram), and even private messaging groups were flooded with anger over fabricated news, or negative movie reviews, or the fact that women were allowed to talk about video games. If you found yourself the victim of the bombardment of online harassment, what could you do? Besides deactivating social media, there weren’t many options available to free yourself from the vitriol.

Satoru Iwata Saved Us All

Then, one beautiful day in November of 2012, Nintendo launched their ill-fated follow-up to the Wii – the horrifically named Wii U. People were confused by the Wii U, with parents and enthusiasts alike asking questions. Is it an add-on to the Wii? Is it some weird portable drawing pad for children? Can you eat the Wii U?

Sales weren’t bad initially, but after the hype of a new Nintendo system launch died down, it quickly became apparent that the Wii U was going to be a flop. On the heels of the extremely successful Wii, the Wii U’s failings seemed catastrophic for Nintendo. Their competitors were poised to release new consoles of their own in 2013, and the Wii U looked downright archaic by comparison. Combined with the fact that there wasn’t a ton of premium software available, to many in the industry, it looked like the Wii U was an all-around dud.

But… the Wii U had one trick up its sleeve that felt fresh. New. Vibrant. Fun. That feature? Nintendo’s very own built-in social networking platform — Miiverse. Many people were familiar with Miis, the custom characters you made that served as your avatar on the Wii and 3DS platforms. Using your Mii as an avatar once more, you could write posts about the games you were playing, draw fan art to share with friends, and ask questions about sections of a game that stumped you. It was a fantastic innovation in the social networking space. Best of all, it wasn’t a dire wasteland of negativity and anger. For the most part.

It wasn’t the first time a gaming platform had been developed with social aspects in mind. The first Multi User Dungeons found on ARPANET had some rudimentary message-sharing capabilities. MMOs like Everquest, World of Warcraft, and Ultima Online were hubs of shared gameplay experiences, though how much actual gameplay you experienced in those games varied. As an aside, I played hours of Ultima Online, and the only thing I accomplished was accidentally stealing some guy’s horse. I didn’t know it was yours, KidRockFan6! Anyway, Miiverse was different in that there was no specific game tied to its usage that was required, though some games, like Splatoon 2, contained some dedicated in-game version of Miiverse as a feature. At its core, it was Twitter from Nintendo. And it was a breath of the wild fresh air. *snicker*

Nintendo’s Gonna Nintendo

Content from Miiverse was heavily moderated by Nintendo, which was simultaneously good and bad. Sure, the occasional weird non-aggressive post would be taken down, and mods weren’t shy when it came to blocking discussions that came anywhere close to tarnishing the Boy Scout reputation of Nintendo, but it was worth it for the artistry and pure, innocent game discussion you’d find on your feed. Insanely beautiful drawings we didn’t know were possible on the Wii U’s rudimentary screen were plentiful. Some of the funniest memes on the web were born there. And the community was genuinely helpful to people struggling with certain games.

Smash cut to 2024, and the vast majority of popular social media options are overflowing with bots, screaming, and disinformation. I don’t mean to make it sound apocalyptic, but it certainly feels that way sometimes. I never had that feeling using Miiverse. On the contrary, if I was feeling down, sometimes all I had to do was peruse the feed, and I was sure to find something to lift my spirits – the worst Mario drawing I’d ever seen, followed by the best Mario drawing I’d ever seen… The person who loved talking about how good water looked in every game… And, of course, the hilariously innocent plea for help from Pauly… y cant metroid crawl?

Perhaps the most notable example I can think of of Miiverse being a powerful tool of positivity comes from a Satoru Iwata quote, in which he credits enthusiastic fans on Miiverse for convincing the powers that be at Nintendo to publish Shigesato Itoi’s Earthbound (known as Mother 2 in Japan) to the Wii U’s Virtual Console. It was the first time since the game’s release that it received an official release in the West, and thanks to the wonderful Miiverse platform, millions of people were introduced to the Mother series. 

yeah.

The purity of Internet social media appeared to be restored in some way. Using Miiverse, my mind flew back to the late 90s, and I remembered the good times of hopping onto mIRC (remember Internet Relay Chat from earlier? mIRC is just a fancy client that added more features) to see what new music my ska-loving friends had discovered. We learned HTML and built terrible Geocities web pages together. Someone made an Angelfire page that was supposed to be all about the Monkey Island series, but the site was just a gif of a skeleton dancing. It was the best website anyone ever made. The “anything is possible” feeling of those early Internet times permeated the feed ever-so-slightly. And then it was gone.

Goodbye, Miiverse, My Dear Friend

Wii U’s colossal failure made way for the Nintendo Switch to splash onto the scene. It was a new day for Nintendo, and we now know how important a change it was for them. The Wii U was a first-party software powerhouse with no install base. Most titles that struggled on the Wii U were resurrected as Switch ports, with one of them breaking sales records for single-platform software. (note: Wii Sports was a pack-in title, so I’m not counting it!) 

Outside of the games, Nintendo was anxious to get away from the tarnished Wii branding, so the Switch shipped with a barebones, no-frills OS that favored ease of use over features. That strategy, plus the stress and labor involved in constantly moderating a social network, meant that Miiverse was no more.

I think about it a lot, though. It shines bright in my memory, especially compared to other available offerings. Nintendo will supposedly announce the successor to the Switch this year (my bet is on a March reveal), and a part of me is clinging to a sliver of hope that they’ll come to their senses. They’ll realize they left a void in the social space that only Miiverse can fill. And we’ll get to return to that silly, frivolous, fantastical world again, and the Internet will feel a little brighter once more. Now that I’ve made myself wistful and sad, I’m going to go look through some of my favorite Miiverse posts and touch my computer monitor, like Wolverine in that meme. You know the one. (insert meme)