Have people found creative ways to communicate, or solicit/"bootstrap" further communications?
If you can send someone a bit, you have enough to send them your endpoint at another service to communicate. In a multiplayer game, where presumably you can see the decisions of other players, the prerequisites are met.
(I am by no means a gamer, but have witnessed how creative young humans can be at defeating the restraints imposed upon them --- and also how they can quickly learn such things from others.)
Not so much bootstrap other communications... but I remember how many penis emblems I encountered on Mario Kart DS despite Nintendo banning them very rapidly.
Nintendo hasn't done a draw-your-own-emblem since, I don't think.
In Splatoon you can "post" [1] which displays this image above your character in the lobby and the main hub of the game. Most of the time people will draw using the in-game interface and the touch screen/buttons on the switch, other times people use a well known exploit to recreate images from your computer in the game using a specific type of controller [2].
After the post is created, it typically gets published to some social media account you have linked to your Nintendo account.
These posts are usually jokes, memes, or some silly throwaway pop culture line or reference but more often than not you see individuals promoting their own discord servers, twitter accounts, twitch accounts, and other social media platforms. Unfortunately you also get a few individuals who will post about LGBT related stuff, often with a sexual angle to it. No issues posting that on Twitter but I feel it's inappropriate for what is essentially a game for children.
The good news is you can report these posts to Nintendo, the bad news is I have no idea if they are moderated or not.
[1] https://thenerdstash.com/how-to-draw-art-posts-in-splatoon-3...
[2] https://github.com/WyseNynja/Splatoon-2-Drawing/blob/master/...
It’s amazing how from the launch of the game that quick chat has pretty much only been used sarcastically.
Somebody that's tilted is going to be annoyed by a message that's mocking them regardless how innocuous the words are in the message.
> Well played!
> Well played!
(There is a mandatory delay after sending two canned messages.)
Some of us play video games online for the competition, and because human opponents are much more unpredictable and fun than programmed bots.
It definitely makes it harder to make friends in the games, but it also completely eliminates any and all potential for toxicity and other miscreant behavior. As a result, I'd have no problem letting my hypothetical children play these games online even at a young age.
This solution is obviously untenable for a cooperative and creative game like Minecraft, so it seems Microsoft is stuck in a real hard place here.