14 DAY TRIAL // Mario Maker is one of the most interesting video games currently in development at Nintendo, and it seems that the company is trying to find a whole new way of encouraging gamers to create their own content and then share it without the pressure of rankings and community evaluation.
Takashi Tezuka, a producer working on the game, has already said that Mario Paint is one of his inspirations and he aims to use the Miiverse social network for the Wii U to make it easy for users to offer their levels to friends and the wider community.
He tells USGamer that “If you create something and upload it somewhere, of course you want as many people as possible to see it. Naturally, the most popular courses will be seen and played by others, but those that don't have that top spot may not attract the same number of eyeballs for people looking at them.”
The developer suggests that Mario Maker will have the traditional rankings and featured levels that are used by other user-driven titles like Little Big Planet, but his team is also looking at ways of making sure that each shared level is seen by someone else.
Nintendo has traditionally been unwilling to embrace social networks, but the Miiverse has become pretty successful since it was introduced.
It will be interesting to see how the company can put together a sharing mechanic that ensures that quality levels are played by as many gamers as possible, while also reducing the amount of criticism for the low-rated ones.
Mario Maker is at the moment set to only launch on the Wii U home consoles, although Tezuka admits that he also considered creating a version of the game for the 3DS handheld.
The game will benefit from the computing power of the Nintendo home console, which allows for a lot more complexity in the level design.
Mario Maker is set to allow players to create stages using the same core tools that designers have used for the core installments in the long-running franchise.
Nintendo has promised a variety of visual styles for the game, including a classic 8 bit one and some associated with series that are now developed inside the company.
Until Mario Maker arrives in 2015, the company is hoping to boost sales of the Wii U during the rest of 2014 and make it a competitor for the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4.