Unless you have been living under a rock, you are most likely aware that Nintendo has revealed the Switch 2 in detail. While the Switch 2 Direct was full of exciting things, such as GameCube being added to NSO, some announcements felt a bit lackluster. One in particular is GameChat. I won’t deny that it is exciting to finally be able to talk to my friends in real time on a Nintendo console, but the implementation feels less Nintendo and more of a Discord ripoff. If Nintendo wanted to impress the fanbase and get players excited about the new chat system, it should have jumped back in time and brought back the MiiVerse.
Exploring the MiiVerse
A revolution in online
Here’s a little history lesson for everyone: Nintendo first introduced the Mii in 2006 for the original Wii console. You could customize these digital avatars and add them to the Mii Channel. Unfortunately, there was no online connectivity at this point to connect everyone’s Miis together. This idea was then modified on the Wii U and the 3DS. Thus, the MiiVerse, Nintendo’s social media platform, was born.
Before entering the MiiVerse, you are greeted by the Mii Plaza. This software section allowed you to see what friends were up to. Your Miis and the Miis of friends would wander the plaza, sharing images and giving updates. You can also see posts from various other users in the different Nintendo communities. From here, you could dive into the online world and explore.
Three main sections comprise the MiiVerse: your activity feed, communities, and messages. Messages is self-explanatory and is the location where you can read messages sent to you from friends and other players. Next up is your activity feed. This is where you can see what your friends have been up to. Finally, you get into the heart of the MiiVerse: the communities. This is where you can jump into communities, post what you have been doing, share screenshots, reply to posts, and anything else you expect from a social media site. Think of it as Facebook, but it was made by Nintendo.
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Reinventing the MiiVerse
The basics
Source: Reddit
There were some things about the GameChat feature that Nintendo revealed that didn’t quite sit right. The way it took up the screen, showing off friends’ gameplay, didn’t make the feature seem like it had good enough quality. Players who appeared on camera looked weird and choppy, and the gameplay was extremely laggy. I stand by the sentiment of reconstructing the MiiVerse, but where do we begin? Simple, look at what features were there and give them a modern spin.
Let’s start with voice chat. Creating a standard party system similar to those found on PlayStation and Xbox would elevate the Switch 2 online experience. Simply press the C button to bring up your friends list and invite them to a party, or look at parties that have already been created. You can then use standard voice chat to communicate while playing a game.
Now, let’s move on to the core of the MiiVerse, the plaza. A simple double-tap of the C button will bring you to the Mii Campus – a social hub for your Mii characters that allows them to interact with your friends’ Miis along with players who have met online. Similar to the original plaza, you will see updates from the Miis about what games your friends have been playing and if they are online.
Making MiiVerse more social
A proper way to communicate
Now that I have the basics taken care of, let’s move on to the more intricate parts of the MiiVerse, such as the communities tab. Here, I imagine players should be able to create their own community pages similar to those of Discord servers. You set your community’s rules and invite players to it via a code or the social menu. These should also have the ability to be made public, so anyone can join if they see the community on the social menu. Adding a section to the social menu for players you have met during online play will also help further community building using this method.
As the cherry on top, Nintendo can still keep the GameSharing feature. Instead of making it appear at the bottom of the screen, make it part of the party chat, where a player can choose to share their screen, and those who are interested can choose to watch.
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MiiVerse, not GameChat
The GameChat feature that Nintendo is implementing with the Switch 2 is a step in the right direction. What Nintendo doesn’t realize, however, is that it already has access to some great social features it used on past systems. Combining what they have now with the past and updating it for the future makes more sense than trying to implement a new system that looks tacky and takes up the screen in a terrible way. Nintendo used to be about community and bringing players together. That is what MiiVerse did, and that is what StreetPass did. It is time to bring back some of those features.
