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Nintendo: Wii Features

Rare Mario games

Making Of.. The LEGO Series

Feature

Inside WiiWare

17-Apr-2009 ONM investigates the new generation of WiiWare developers

6 Comments

Going to the shops can seem so archaic can't it? What about that long walk back to the car, or that heavy plastic bag containing Nintendo's latest and greatest? Going outside, frankly, can be tiring business. The internet game delivery service that is WiiWare then, alongside its retro-styled brother the Virtual Console, is a godsend.

It simply provides cheap and enjoyable games for download, many of which are of outstanding quality. The thing is though, that it isn't just a boon for Wii owners - the folks making the games are loving it too.

Whether they're already massive developers or a couple of normal guys with an intriguing game concept and mischief in mind, absolutely anyone can create a WiiWare game. This is the primary reason that it's rapidly becoming something of a creative honeypot.

"Working to put a game out on WiiWare means not having to go through a publisher, which to me means getting stuff done much faster without having to siphon through the false promises and blatant lies that you often get fed." Explains Tommy Refenes, a man who describes his previous role in life as "slowly slowly losing my soul to corporate America."

He now makes up a third of the threesome developing Super Meat Boy. Once an internet flash game, the Mega Man-esque adventures of a boy made entirely out of meat has retro stylings that are familiar to all.

In fact if you want to check out the game in its original form then simply visit kongregate.com. "It's Nintendo!" explains Refenes by way of reference. "It's like developing a game for an old friend!"

Dream Machine
Once interested parties are in touch with Nintendo, development kits are available for those who can stump up around $3,000. Quite how people get in touch with Nintendo though, seems to be a varied business. The next third of the Super Meat Boy team, Edmund McMillen - the creator of legendary PC indie game Gish, explains: "We started making games together last year when we released Grey Matter, a hectic 'anti-shooter' we made in Flash. It was around then that I posted a video online in which I showed myself trying to get hold of [American Nintendo boss] Reggie Fils-Aime with no luck. From that Nintendo expressed an interest in a few of my recent Flash games. I then had to scramble around trying to find a quick way to make £3,000 so I could get the dev kit. We threw together a Meat Boy Map Pack, got it sponsored and moved all the money we made over so we could get our hands on one."

Gravitronix

After the initial sign up, Nintendo operate a very much hands off approach, allowing original ideas to blossom. Medaverse are the developers of the forthcoming Gravitronix, a multiplayer battle game in which players skate around the edge of a circular battlefield - using gravity beams to attack areas guarded by other players by pushing objects within the circle towards their foes with the power of physics.

Medaverse started out as a review site for games and movies, yet the lure of the Wii's unique control system became too much. The company's lead designer Jesse Lowther had always wanted to make games for consoles, but before WiiWare was announced had never thought it possible.

"They gave us the tools we needed and let us run with it," he explains. "There's no creative input from Nintendo, only technical input where the game must meet certain standards to ensure it doesn't brick people's Wiis. It's just a godsend for developers who don't want their ideas compromised. Plus, if the game doesn't sell well, we can generally shrug it off and begin work on the next one."

Super Meat Boy's Edmund McMillen agrees: "Nintendo will never lose money if a game tanks on WiiWare, so they can distribute more risky and experimental games. If you publish a game in physical form and it bombs, your publisher could potentially go bankrupt".

That said, if a developer wants advice then Uncle Nintendo will happily give it. WiiWare developers are all part of a happy community called the Mario Club. Said club (that the entirety of ONM would dearly love to join - especially if you get membership cards and Mario badges) gives WiiWare developers the opportunity to get feedback on their works in progress - from which they receive advice and a thoughtful twirl of the moustache. Whether he's proffered a doleful "Oh dear" or a celebratory "Wahoo!" in their direction however, it's entirely up to them if they want to act on his opinions.

Eduardo The Samurai Toaster

Free Your Mind
You see, when you venture out and speak to the WiiWare developers, so great is the praise for Nintendo's stance that you worry you've entered a Stepford Wives convention. "There are no suits trying to control your creativity. They want developers to express themselves as freely as possible." underlines Daniel Coleman of Semnat Studios, one of the developers behind the wonderfully named Eduardo The Samurai Toaster - a Metal Slug-inspired shooter featuring a Brazilian bread-cooking appliance with a penchant for violence.

"This creative freedom is vital to the growth of the industry. It encourages experimentation and risk-taking. We are very fortunate to be developing for consoles since we're such nobodies."

In fact, in the entire spectrum of forthcoming WiiWare titles, there can be few greater risky experiments than Butterfly Garden - an insect survival game that will have you share cocoons over WiiConnect 24, dance with other butterflies, avoid predators, match pheromones and flutter over a beautifully rendered garden.

"The emergence of a viable downloadable market like WiiWare is opening the door for a creative revolution where we feel encouraged to take more creative risks and discover more creative layers within game design." explains Shane Guilano, the studio director at the aptly named Autonomous Productions.

"Our company got to where we are today with perseverance, luck and the insight to develop a relationship with Nintendo when everyone still thought it was nuts to release a game system with a controller that looks like a remote control. Nintendo reached out to independent developers before the Wii was even launched in a way that was revolutionary. The whole vision for WiiWare, as Miyamoto has said publicly, is to foster this creative independent revolution. I once sat next to [former Sony exec] Phil Harrison at a Will Wright GDC talk in 2006 and he wouldn't even give me his card."

Winds Of Change
It doesn't stop here though, there are big fish frolicking in the WiiWare pool alongside the small fry. A glance through the roster will reveal Nintendo themselves, Hudson Soft, Square-Enix... all of them creating gaming gems within the encouraged limit of a 40MB file size.

Lost Winds

One of the first companies to step up to the plate was Cambridge's Frontier Designs - the studio headed up by games development legend David Braben, the creator of the seminal PC title Elite. Frontier's LostWinds, a pioneering WiiWare title, is a platform game in which you control both the main character and gusts of wind that carry him through the level.

"The idea for LostWinds dates from the time that the Wii was first announced privately to developers, when we were brainstorming design ideas that made good use of the Wii controls," explains Braben.

"Steve Burgess, one of Frontier's designers, was watching the trees and leaves from the window on a windy day. He remembers thinking about how many ways the wind manipulates different things within the world, and if only there was some way to become the wind in a game. He then applied this train of thought to the Wii controller."

A little while later, out of the blue in late 2007, Frontier received a mysterious invitation to a meeting with Nintendo in London. As it turned out, this was a secret gathering where Nintendo could roll out their WiiWare masterplan in front of UK developers.

"We were delighted that their ideals for WiiWare were almost exactly fulfilled by the LostWinds concept that we had already within Frontier," continues Braben, "allowing developers like us to create something innovative specifically for the Wii and, most importantly, its controller."

Knowing something was up, Frontier took a copy of their LostWinds concept document along with them to the London shindig and the rest is history. "We just said 'Sounds great! And this is what we'd like to do.'" laughs Braben, before steadfastly refusing to be drawn on when we can expect a LostWinds sequel.

"We see LostWinds as a trailblazer of a possible future for us, and it's therefore important to us that it isn't a boxed retail title. We don't view the distribution mechanism as defining the effort we put into any game, or the quality that we deliver, and in LostWinds we think we demonstrated that. We view the longer-term significance of LostWinds as revolving around the fact that we've done it all ourselves, and WiiWare has been a big factor in facilitating that."

For us the gamers, for the people that make games and for Nintendo itself, it seems undisputed that the WiiWare shopping channel is an exciting place to hover your Wii Remote cursor. From the all-powerful development champions dancing on the rooftops of gaming, to the newly formed bands of nascent game design heroes lying in the gutters but staring intently at the trademark Nintendo smiley-stars, WiiWare is a hugely exciting new outing for gaming.

And the best thing? This is only the very beginning of the WiiWare revolution - there is much, much more to come...

Tom East