Looking for a reason behind Nintendo's abrupt shutdown of the Swapnote service
Last night, Nintendo abruptly shut down the Internet component1 of Swapnote, a free app for the Nintendo 3DS system that allows users to exchange drawings they make themselves using the system’s touch screen and stylus; and, as of this past April, photos taken with the system’s cameras.
Nintendo’s explanation was that users (i.e., children) were using the service in ‘inappropriate’ ways, but the service has been running since the 3DS first launched, about two and a half years ago. Why now; what changed?
Games news sites have been collectively scratching their heads over this. But my friend pointed me to this comment by Ars Technica forum user ‘Ladnil’:
Not defending Nintendo here, but the timing of this makes sense, given the recent release of Pokemon X and Y.
Those games have a feature at the end called the ‘Friend Safari’ where there are lots of powerful and rare Pokemon available, and the varieties available are dependent on who’s on your friends list. As a result, message boards have popped up left and right where people are exchanging codes with total strangers just to get access to more kinds of pocket monsters.
This isn’t a case of a child already actively communicating online with someone, and they exchange friend codes after actually being friends, and continue their communication using the 3DS. It’s a case of the game design encouraging them to add as many random strangers as they possibly can to their friends list without any expectation of further communication beyond that 12 digit exchange.
Normally, you can only communicate with someone else on the 3DS if you each register each other’s friend code–a long, randomly-generated number which is unique to each 3DS system. One important facet is that the registration must be mutual; unless both users enter each other’s numbers, neither can talk to the other.
Previously, there was little or no motivation to exchange friend codes with someone you don’t actually know. In most games, you could still freely play with strangers on the internet without becoming friends with them–you just wouldn’t be able to communicate with them unless you were friends. However, Pokémon seems to have created a strong incentive for the users to use the system in a way it wasn’t intended for. It seems that the massive popularity of Pokémon, combined with the typically young age of its players, was enough to tip the scales and bring the entire platform down.
There is a lesson in here about creating incentives in software design…
Several other possibly relevant facts:
- The earlier Nintendo DS, the first Nintendo system to have online connectivity, had a unique and separate friend code, not per hardware unit, but per software title. This would have prevented the current 3DS situation, since there was no cross-pollination at all between different software titles. However, this system was much more annoying, and people complained about it endlessly. (The Wii worked pretty much the same way as the DS.)
- The Wii U, Nintendo’s newest platform, uses a system which is more like the 3DS, in which there is a single ID per person rather than per software title. However, the Wii U takes it one logical step further: instead of a randomly-generated code, users are allowed to pick their own usernames, for the first time on a Nintendo platform. Despite the fact that this particular convenience seems irrelevant to the 3DS incident, I can’t help but worry that it will cause all Nintendo platforms to regress. We’ll see.
- Technically, the app still retains some of its functionality, but now only if it is in close physical proximity with another 3DS unit, using the system’s non-Internet local wireless feature. ↩︎