Changing The Game: Why Nintendo Needs An MMO

For those of us old enough to remember, Super Smash Bros first came to the Nintendo 64 back in 1999.  At the time, it was revolutionary because it combined 12 characters from 9 different Nintendo franchises for a new fighting game experience.  It featured a great commercial with different Nintendo characters frolicking in a meadow until they started beating each other up.  This ushered in a whole new franchise for Nintendo that nowadays draws on all of their IPs and even some 3rd party IPs like Street Fighter and Metal Gear Solid.

A few years later, Square Enix and Disney would take this formula and recreate the magic by releasing the wildly popular Kingdom Hearts on the PS2.  Kingdom Hearts still lives on with a mobile game and a fourth installment of the main franchise in development.  What makes Kingdom Hearts so endearing is the same cross-pollination that makes Super Smash Bros. so successful.  With a huge catalog of Final Fantasy and Disney characters and worlds to explore, the draw of Kingdom Hearts is easy to understand.

Everyone Has An MMO

Nowadays, everyone has an MMO, including Star Trek, Star Wars, DC Comics, and Lord of the Rings, just to name a few. There has been a lot of speculation that MMOs are on the decline in recent years, but it doesn’t have to be this way.  The genre is really just one great release away from completely revitalizing MMOs as we know them.  

That’s why I think it’s time for Nintendo to pull from their bag of tricks an already tried and true method for creating something magnificent - a crossover of IPs to create an MMO that has never been tried before. Make no mistake, it would be a risky move, but it could lead to an absolutely phenomenal game in the MMO space that has never been attempted.  So, what would this look like? How could a game like this work? I’ve given some time to think about this. In fact, the idea has been living in my head rent-free for a long time.  

Nintendo already has a proven track record of making RPGs. With action RPGs like The Legend of Zelda, JRPGs like Xenoblade Chronicles, and an impressive catalog of Mario RPGs, including an upcoming remake of the Super Nintendo’s Super Mario RPG, Nintendo is no stranger to the genre.  A small leap could take all of these franchises and make them into a real gem of an MMO.

Heroes & Villains are Afoot

For this idea to really work, there would have to be a big PVP component to the MMO.  This is because when creating your character, deciding if you plan to play a hero or a villain is important. Heroes and villains would have their own stories and questlines but PVP would be an important merging point where the good and bad guys had intersecting quest lines.  

Human characters could come from any number of realms such as the Mushroom Kingdom, Pallet Town, or Onett.  Likewise, villain characters could come from the same places.  A robust character creation tool would be required so that everyone playing a goomba or a koopa, for example, wouldn’t look exactly the same.

Imagine the possibilities. Pokemon Trainers could summon pokemon as companions much the same way a Lore-Master in LOTRO can summon a bear or a raven to help along their journey. Kongs and some classes of Koopas could play as tank characters able to withstand a lot of damage.  A hunter class could include archers from Hyrule or bounty hunters trained by the Galactic Federation.  Healers would have to be magic users like Magikoopas and Lumas. 

Quest lines would have to include some pretty robust boss fights.  This is where Nintendo can pull audiences from all these franchises together.  Imagine getting a quest from Mario or Luigi to go and investigate something in the Dark Land. Upon completing the quest, you’re greeted by none other than Bowser himself.  A fight ensues, perhaps a fight that will take multiple tries to complete.  It may even be prudent to come back with reinforcements. These special guest stars to the MMO would make people long to play it more and more. Personally, I always loved it when I was playing LOTRO and had to interact with a character I recognized. Whether it was Gandalf, Aragorn, or Tom Bombadil, it felt super satisfying to meet up with a character I had read about or seen in the movies and in that way made me appreciate the quest that much more.  Nintendo has so many IPs to draw from that they could keep players coming back for a long, long time.

Of course, if Nintendo wants to make this work, they’ll have to start with their bread butter…Mario.  The main storyline for both heroes and villains will have to be centered around The Mushroom Kingdom and the Dark Lands.  That’s not to say that it should stay in the Mushroom Kingdom.  In fact, DLC opportunities to add new realms every year can give players new stories and lands to explore.  For instance, in year one, we’re in the Mushroom Kingdom but the Hyrule DLC in year two takes us to meet Link, Zelda, Ganondorf, and others.  Year three includes a Pallet Town DLC where we’ve got to help Ash Ketchum and Pikachu investigate strange things with the local pokemon.  Team Rocket is probably behind all of it!

The options for places and stories are nearly endless and that’s kinda the point.  One of Nintendo’s biggest strengths is the volume of variety they offer.  Not every game is for every player but Nintendo appeals, just in their first party titles, to a very wide player base.  An MMO that spans the collection of Nintendo IPs at their disposal could bring in so many different kind of gamers and maybe even grab some MMO fans that otherwise wouldn’t buy a Nintendo console.  

Nintendo’s Bottom Line

The model for this MMO would be very important to get right.  What I mean by that is that MMOs for a long time required a purchase plus a monthly subscription.  In an effort to bring more people in, many MMOs started offering a free-to-play option where paying for a subscription or in-game purchases would enrich the experience for super-fans but the free option was still totally playable.

Nintendo could mess things up really badly if they don’t handle this properly.  They have a propensity for charging full price for games even after a significant amount of time has passed. There have been no Nintendo Selects for the Nintendo Switch. Their first foray into mobile gaming, Super Mario Run, is still a $10 download to play more than the first 3 levels.

I don’t know for sure what the right approach is but my gut says the Nintendo MMO should be free-to-start with an option for additional quest lines and DLC for players who want more. My fear is that they would make the premium option too expensive to draw in a hardcore audience.  I also fear that making the game paid with a subscription would end up being so costly, that it would suffer from not enough people feeling like it was worth their hard earned money. That’s especially a concern because while cross pollination is a tried and true strategy, the idea of a Nintendo MMO would already have some uncertainty to it.  Making it too costly would inevitably cause people to pause and re-evaluate if taking a chance on it is worth the money required to do so.

Nintendo is sitting on a gold mine of IPs and they know it.  So many of Nintendo’s decisions that seem weird or not entirely consumer-friendly end up not harming them in the long run because there will always be an audience for the next Mario or Pokemon game.  

Making a new MMO that serves as a massive IP crossover is a chance for them to take a risk on a game with the power to endure.  Let’s face it, failure only relegates Nintendo to the weird gaming niche they’ve lived in for the last several years.  Success means ushering in a whole new era of MMOs and a whole new era of Nintendo.