Wario Ware DIY, to give it its full name, is great! It lets you create games in a manner similar to Game Maker: draw some sprites, combine sprites with simple logic to create objects, throw in some music, set up your win/lose conditions and you’re done. The tools are about as simplified as they can be without providing a prefab library (and in some ways it even does that, since you can import assets from the ‘official’ microgames).

Currently I’m putting out three or four new microgames a week, usually while stretched out in front of the TV. Some of my ‘projects’ have taken a few days to complete – I tend to spend a long time fiddling with sprites, so animation can take a long time – but generally I can go from having an idea to shipping the game to my friends in about 90 minutes. And even that feels like quite a long time, under the circumstances.

I think anyone who is at all interested in game design or production should play this game! One of the most repeated comments about the Wario Ware Inc. series is that it dismantles the gameplay sequences of normal games (eg. jump on the koopa troopa and then dodge a fireball and then collect the coins) and spits them out as individual gameplay events (eg. GAME 1: Jump on a koopa troopa, GAME 2: Dodge a fireball, GAME 3: Collect the coins). Wario DIY basically does the same thing with regard to game design! Instead of thinking about the big picture (which I think most people tend to do), it grabs you by the collar and forces you to focus on these individual moments of gameplay and screams in your ear “IS THIS FUN?!”

Unfortunately I think this game is going to vanish from public awareness pretty quickly, and will probably end up as a sort of insider club for dedicated enthusiasts. There are two things wrong with Wario DIY.

First: FRIEND CODES! These have been the biggest speed bump on Nintendo’s online service ever since they were first implemented. It’s not too difficult to register a set of codes, but it is a pain to have unique codes for EVERY SINGLE GAME, but the real reason they screw up Wario DIY is that they SEVERELY restrict the sharing of games. Other content-sharing games (eg. Little Big Planet) have online databases that anyone can access, giving every player access to millions of man-hours worth of content. I would LOVE to be able to browse through all the random junk that other players are making, but because of Nintendo’s child-friendly online policy I can only share games with a couple of my friends. It’s so patronising to treat adult customers like fragile little children!

Second: Nintendo barely seem to be advertising the game! I only became aware of its existance after reading dessgeega’s blog post about it. Part of me thinks that they could even want to sweep it under the rug a little, since it’s such a ‘game for gamers’ – it certainly doesn’t fit into their “IF YOU LIKE PROFESSOR LAYTON THEN YOU’LL LOVE THE LEGEND OF ZELDA” advertising nonsense1. Poking around, it turns out they talked about it at E3 last year… now I’ve seen the video, I do have vague memories of getting excited about it with my friends, but in the 11 months between then and the release date I haven’t heard a peep.

I can’t very easily show off any of the games I’ve made on here (although I have seen ‘microgame management’ tools that can be used to edit roms of Wario DIY and hence trade microgames via PC), but one other thing I would like to mention is adult content.

I design my games according to a few simple principles. I’ll write more about it later someday, but basically I start with a gameplay hook, keep the graphics simple, and then throw in some special effects whenever the player does anything. My natural inclination is to keep everything family-friendly, because there’s enough sex and violence in games already. I think it’s an interesting design exercise to look at the games you are playing, identify the violent content (eg. jumping on a koopa troopa, dodging a fireball, possibly even collecting coins if you consider it forceful misappropriation) and then think of ways the gameplay could be recontextualised to remove the violence (eg. jumping on a trampoline, dodging a wedding bouquet, collecting litter… although even these could probably be construed as violent if you thought about it long enough – why are you dodging a bouquet? Will you be FORCED to get married if you catch it?).

Anyway, a few days ago I decided to throw all that out the window and try making a game that was needlessly violent and shocking. Big game companies do it all the time, so I think it was a justifiable experiment. In my game, the player is presented with a close-up view of a woman’s exposed chest, and must tap on her breasts to create a series of cuts around her nipples. When each breast has a full circle of cuts, the game is won and the player is given a ‘reward’ animation in which a hand sweeps across the screen and removes the nipples, leaving a bloody mess. EDGY!

Now that I’ve finished the game and sent it out to a select group of my friends, I have to say the whole experience has left me feeling a bit depressed. I’ve read a few reports about how some Rockstar employees felt really uncomfortable about making Manhunt, and I can sympathise with them (although obviously my game is on a totally different scale). I deliberately pushed myself to make a game about sexual violence against women because it’s pretty much the last thing I would normally want to do, and I’ve learned that… I should trust my instincts!

This kind of thing is a good example of why Wario DIY is great. It’s amazing how much insight into game design you can get from these squiggly little four-second microgames. I just wish they’d open it up to the public, so it could spark off a global ‘conversation’ about gameplay, and give people some hands-on experience of how and why games are made.

Oh, and in case you’re thinking “Clearly they need friend codes to prevent children from stumbling upon sick filth like your breast-slicing game!”, I’d like to add that it’s because of the restricted content sharing that I felt ‘safe’ to publish the game. I wouldn’t have released it it if I thought it would be widely available (which is still a possibility I suppose, in the unlikely event that it goes viral).

……

1 Seriously, compare these UK adverts for Ocarina of Time and Spirit Tracks. It’s good that they’ve progressed from denigrating female players to putting them on screen, but why pretend that it’s a casual game? Why do they never show her fighting monsters?! It’s like they still can’t admit that girls enjoy ‘hardcore’ games too. And it totally misrepresents the game, which is bad advertising in my opinion.