One of the more contentious aspects of upcoming third-person shooter Splatoon is the fact that Nintendo has not included any means to communicate with your team. Fans who are used to traditional shooters like Call of Duty and Battlefield are used to being able to talk to their teammates during rounds in order to establish strategy and yes, hurl insults about everyone’s mom. It’s precisely that last reason that Nintendo has decided that “feelings-based” communication is not needed in Splatoon because strategy communication is already available through your actions.
Producer Hisashi Nogami spoke with USGamer about the lack of communication in the game and stated that communication in these types of games is divided into two categories: strategy and feelings.
In terms of communication in games in general, there are two main types: communication about strategy, and communication about feelings you have while playing at that moment. When that point is applied to this game, one interesting aspect of Splatoon is that the actions you take shooting ink can immediately be seen in the stage you’re playing by yourself and other players, and conversely when you see the actions other players are taking shooting ink, it’s something you can interpret immediately and then base your next actions on that and judging what that means. That’s an important part of the gameplay in Splatoon.
In designing the game, we paid special attention to allowing the gameplay to cover a lot of ground for that kind of strategic communication. However we definitely understand the importance players put on that other type of communication that’s more feelings-based.
And so because we understand that desire for players to have that kind of emotional communication, we can imagine players using some way or another to achieve that extra layer of communication while playing the game.
So Nogami believes that simply inking your surroundings is enough communication of strategy while playing online and if you do want to crack wise on someone’s mother, you’ll have to find another way to communicate because Nintendo won’t be providing that once the game launches on May 29.
