10-year-old girl explains why she loves Splatoon, talks voice chat, eloquently details the Nintendo bias

A portion of a FinancialPost interview with the daughter of the article's author...

FP: Right. Just wanted to clarify. And now that you’ve tried Splatoon – your first online competitive shooter – what did you think of it?

Daughter: I liked it a lot. It’s a lot of fun to play with other people. And I like how I can be sneaky and turn invisible by becoming a squid and swimming through puddles of paint. That way I can sometimes just watch the action and then get involved when it’s safer. It’s not too stressful, which is something I was worried about.

FP: There’s no voice chat, and if there were I’d have disabled it because I don’t want you chatting with strangers online. But do you think being able to talk to other players using a headset would help you do better? Especially if they were your friends?

Daughter: Yes. Because then I could make plans with my teammates, and that would help. But I can see why it’s not for everyone. When you go around the game plaza you can look at what people say in their Miiverse drawings. I saw one person say, “I’m happy there’s no voice chat because if there were people would just tell me how much I suck.” I can kind of understand that.

FP: Gotcha. Now that you’ve played an online shooter, do you think it justifies all the schoolyard hubbub?

Daughter: Yeah, I think so. I really like Splatoon a lot. But I feel like if I told the other kids that I was playing Splatoon they might not think it was all that great. Because it’s Nintendo, and they think Nintendo is for kids. And it doesn’t have blood and guts. And even if it was fun, they wouldn’t admit it. Because they want to seem more grown up. But I don’t care, because Nintendo games are adorable. And fun. Especially this one.