PaigeFTW: Miitomo: Five-Minute Fun
Nintendo’s first tentative baby steps outside of its insular gaming world comes in the form of Miitomo, a social networking app that hopes to capitalize on the company’s singular gift for making time-wasters amazingly fun and addictive.
This is the company, after all, that gave life to Animal Crossing, wherein I have spent like 20 hours of my life that I can never get back writing letters to fake animals who can’t even read them and write coherent replies.
Miitomo continues Nintendo’s attachment to its Mii avatars, giving you the ability to dress them up and socialize with friends, not unlike a mobile Tomodachi Life. You can spend time arranging elaborate and dramatic tableau of your hapless Mii (many such examples are plentiful online, though you can see here that I lack the creativity for such a task), or you can just earn coins by answering questions about yourself and listening to the answers of your friends.
“How many flowers do you see?” Miitomo asked.
“A bazillion,” said one of my two friends. (I said “87.” This should tell you something about the depth of Miitomo’s Q&A system.)
And then, well, that’s about it.
As a social network, I don’t see Miitomo having any longevity. Sure, I’ve looked at it daily since it came out, but it’s kind of like … what’s the point? It’s a novelty. Starting a new social network is always hard, but Miitomo requires a bit too much effort and maintenance to truly integrate into your routine for the long term. Make the Mii, answer some questions, take a few overdramatic photos, and then close the app and move on with your life.
It’s cute, but unless Nintendo offers greater incentives to play or ties the app more closely to its console games, the future doesn’t seem bright for Miitomo.
