Do you ever get sick and tired of posting inane and ironic content on Twitter? Do you want to answer questions to boring questions like “what’s your favorite food?” Nintendo has a solution for you in its new app, Miitomo. Miitomo is a social experiment and first official Nintendo iPhone / Android app. On a surface level it seems pretty shallow — however that’s what separates it from Ask.fm and other social media sites.
At its core, Miitomo is stupid. But, that stupidity makes it fun. Miitomo has horrible text-to-speech built in by default, which allows users to customize their ‘voice’. This feature combined with the auto-expression functionality makes conversations to answers incredibly charming and depending on who you follow, the features combined can be absolutely hilarious.
The base interactions on Miitomo come from its question / answer functionality. Nintendo supplies a load of built in questions that users answer and then can like and comment on. You gain coins from interacting with other users which you can use to buy new outfits in the coin shop. You can also buy coins, but the pricing model is a bit abusive. Unlike the heavily moderated Miiverse, Miimoto has shown no signs of censoring its users…yet. This may be due to the cash shop, and because users can only add people they follow on Twitter and Facebook (or are standing next to in person) and suggested mutuals — the likelihood of an innocent 10-year old running into a network of ironic and sardonic jerks is pretty low. Nintendo most likely knows that censoring this platform would cause a decrease in its userbase (as well as missed profits from the cash shop). We’ll see whether they take action against answer abuse, but two days in they haven’t, so this is a hopeful sign.
Outside of the question / answer function, there isn’t much to do other than create Mii’s and dress them up. There is a ‘drop-game’ that you can use tickets or coins to play in order to unlock limited time clothing options, but it’s not really a game. The last feature is MiiPhoto which allows users to compose fun images with up to 5 Miis, which is mostly fun.
So far, Miitomo has been an interesting experience, though its terrible notification feed and inability to set customizable statuses may force a user drop-off within a weeks time. It’s too soon to say and I’m curious to see how the app will evolve over time.
My feed is primarily full of depressed, but darkly funny ‘anons’. As I said before, user experience will differ based around who you follow. I imagine some people are taking the answering game seriously.
P.S. If you’re confused and enraged by Anime Avatar™ sense of humor or just at them in general: