Last month, Nintendo released a new Steel Diver game for the Nintendo 3DS, titled Steel Diver: Sub Wars. In a rather unusual move for Nintendo, the company released Sub Wars as a free-to-play title that can be downloaded entirely free of cost. The free version comes with a full-fledged multiplayer mode, as well as a couple of missions from the game’s singleplayer campaign.
Now, it looks like player feedback will be an important part of Steel Diver: Sub Wars’ future, judging by a Miiverse post by the game’s producer, Tadashi Sugiyama, who says that Nintendo plan to release an update for the game based on player requests.
“After this update, we should see fewer errors with the following error codes: [018-0501], [018-0502], and [018-0506],” Sugiyama writes. “Beyond this, we plan to continue improving the quality of the game’s network connectivity.”
He adds: “We are also planning to implement a number of requests we have received from players in this update. Details will follow in the near future.”
This is interesting because Nintendo appear to be approaching Steel Diver: Sub Wars the way a number of developers approach their social games and online games, which is something you rarely see from the company.
The development and maintenance of social games was best explained by Capcom’s Kazunori Sugiura, a member of the developer’s Tokyo R&D Department, two years ago. Sugiura said that he felt social games were like TV shows, in that they were constantly monitored and adjusted based on feedback, whereas console games were like movies.
“I think the similarity lies in the great importance placed on managing new games after they are released,” Sugiura shares. “In both online games and social games, continuous analysis of users’ game-playing habits enables us to perform updates that improve the game experience, as well as take the things which make those games popular and apply them to other contents.”
With Steel Diver: Sub Wars, Nintendo appear to be taking the same approach. Sugiyama, the game’s producer, also mentioned in his Miiverse post that Nintendo will be replacing the Morse code chat room feature with something else, which is another major change being made to the game since its original release.
