Before we get into the discourse, Bakugan: Champions of Vestroia is a Nintendo Switch exclusive and is slated for a November 3 release. It brings the world of Bakugan from the early 2000s animated series, SpinMasters toy line and trading card game to the Switch for the first time.
It’s being published through Warner Bros. Games and developed by the aforementioned WayForward.
This new action role-playing game will let players collect Bakugan–monsters from another dimension called Vestroia–assemble a team and battle others in a story mode and online.
Check out the trailer below.
Whenever Nintendo puts out a Direct or Treehouse Live, it’s great viewing for fans of the video game giant as it delivers updates, gameplay and much more about the world of Nintendo. Friday’s Treehouse Live was scheduled to give more gameplay on the upcoming Paper Mario and the Origami King game–coming out July 17–and the announcement of studio WayForward’s next game on Switch.
Immediately, Nintendo fans were excited when the announcement was made late Thursday. WayForward is a fan-favorite studio who is best known for the Shantae series, so for Nintendo to advertise a new game from them could possibly mean something big is coming.
Heck, Wario Ware began trending after the announcement because Nintendo fans began speculating what games WayForward could be working on. Popular Nintendo IPs like Metroid and Kid Icarus were thrown around until Nintendo had to step in.
Less than two hours after the announcement, to temper expectations, Nintendo followed up its tweet about the upcoming Treehouse Live with a simple clarification. The WayForward game is based on a third-party property, so don’t expect anything from its IP like Mario, Donkey Kong or many others.
Did the message get across to fans? Absolutely not. After the Paper Mario demo, it was time for the WayForward game reveal. The trailer dropped and so did fan enthusiasm.
Following the trailer and subsequent demo, Bakugan began trending on Twitter. Comments like, “Nintendo really did this to us, didn’t they. Bakugan? Really?” or “Why didn’t you just announce it randomly on twitter or something? There’s literally no reason to hype something up as lame as this especially when it’s clearly either a really bad game or just early in development.”
The trailer uploaded to Nintendo’s official YouTube account has an unusual like to dislike ratio. At the time of this writing, the Bakugan trailer has 1.5 thousand likes to 3.5 thousand dislikes. Is this indicative of fans actually not liking what is shown, or simply gamers trying to ratio the video in a similar fashion that some “review bomb” movies? I’m inclined to think the latter, but it signifies a bigger problem in regards to expectations and directing anger.
Gamers don’t have to like this new Bakugan game and they certainly don’t have to buy it, but to blame Nintendo or WayForward for misleading or not matching lofty expectations is unfair to the developers and to gamers who are actually excited for this new game.
There’s way too much going on in the world that you should direct your anger and angst at, but that’s internet culture.
See you on the next Nintendo Direct when we don’t get a Metroid Prime 4 update.
