• 13Jul 09

  Motion Sensing

  ..or how I learned to ditch the controller and wave my hand around
  

  Since the Wii and the DS hit our shelves, the face of gaming has changed. Those changes were not totally down to Nintendo, of course; the traditional nature of home gaming, hammering away at buttons on a controller, had long been supplemented by other peripherals, from practically prehistoric NES Blaster's to Guitar Hero's plastic guitar. But with the motion-sensing abilities of the Wii Remote, something changed in the gaming landscape.

  But why have those changes come about? Why are they needed? Lets take a step back from our devoted passion and look at gaming as a whole a little more objectively. Starting with...

  The control pad

  From the earliest consoles, the controller was the foremost feature of interaction with a game. Joysticks and paddles were the order of the day, but early analogue sticks were less analogue and really just a digital direction marker with a stick to determine between eight directions. Early joysticks were typically unwieldy and unresponsive, and when the miracle of the D-pad arrived, gaming matured.

  But whilst a D-pad and two buttons were plenty in the days of the NES and Master System, games became more complex. Newer hardware demanded more control; hence the 3 button Megadrive pad and the 6 button SNES controllers were born. Since that time, controllers have grown more and more complicated, in line with the games people play.

  
  It stands to reason. How can you play a first person game or a racer when the controls are resolutely digital? Introduce analogue. Or why not go for two. But then we need more buttons to do all the extra little things thatgames could never let you do before! Hence the behemoth Dualshock pad emerged, which might seem bog-standard these days, but consider it for a moment. A D-pad. Four face buttons.

  
  Four shoulder buttons, two on each side, and we're already outnumbering the amount of buttons on any pad released before. Start and Select. And another analogue. Oh, and the analogue sticks can be 'clicked' for two more buttons, too. Thats a total of twelve buttons, two analogue sticks, and a D-pad that can at the very least double as four extra buttons. Compared to the early days, its a massive leap, and a massive hurdle to overcome for anyone new to games, and whilst controller technology has of course improved to give us more responsiveness and greater degrees of control within ourgames, it is also the biggest barrier to newcomers.
  

  The Peripheral Controller

  One way to encourage new players in is with the alternate controller. Older games used infrared guns for on-rails shooters, requiring no knowledge of how to use a d-pad, buttons, or anything; you just point and shoot. These days the idea has grown dramatically; now there are many games that sport their own, custom controller peripherals.

  Buzz was one of the most successful in this regard; the chirpy plastic buzzer accessory bundled with the game was easy enough for anyone to be able to pick up and use, since it only had 5 buttons and no directional controls to speak of. After all, Buzz was designed so that anyone could play. Likewise, Singstar gave players a microphone to sing into- nothing more complicated than that.

  Guitar Hero takes the idea a step further, with the custom guitar, and rock band further expanded the idea with drumkit. And yet, whilst these peripherals might offer a gaming experience truer to what it would be like to play an instrument for real, they present the same barriers as any other controller- they aren't always accessible enough for newcomers. The same goes for the likes of the new Tony Hawk Skateboard peripheral, though special note should be made

  of the mammoth controller for Capcom's Steel Battallion, which included its own 80-button controller and foot pedals for controlling your 'mech.

  And then came the revolution.

  Motion Sensing & Touch

  Nintendo's Wii was not the first gaming device to try its hand at motion sensing- third parties had toyed with the idea for years, with generally little success. But The Wiimote was different; with games designed specifically for use of the peripheral Nintendo were free to make the device as useful as possible. And they did. Not only does it act as a helpful lightgun-****pointer, the fact that the remote can read movement and detect its rotation was a master stroke by Nintendo. Their own Wii Sports game highlighted just some of the ways the controller could work, and thus developers scrambled to make as many games as possible for it. Most were, of course, utter pants. And a new wave of casual gaming was born.

  With the Wii Remote, Nintendo broke down one of the largest barriers to gaming: The controller. Everyone who owned a television was familiar with the concept of a remote, but not the strange, oddly-shaped creature that was the controller. Pressing directions and moving a thumbstick required some knowledge, some skill. Picking up a remote? Anyone can do that. Tapping a series of buttons in the right sequence to hit the ball in a tennis game might be beyond most newcomers, but anyone can mime the action of swinging a tennis racket.

  The same is true of the DS; anyone can tap a screen where a button is displayed. Touch and motion sensing have made gaming intuitive, and opened the floodgates to that elusive mass-market saturation point. The numerous life****bids churned out by Nintendo are sickly, but an accurate representation of the gaming scene: families are playing games together.

  But do we run the risk of diluting our own hobby and industry with weak products aimed solely at the mass markets, and at the expense of the traditional, hardcore gamer? Or is it something that needed to happen to help the gaming landscape flourish?

  We can all bemoan the shovelware that is readily apparent on the Wii and DS, and which is bound to follow for the Xbox 360 and PS3 now both Sony and Microsoft have announced their own motion-sensing controllers in the form of Project Natal and the PlayStation Wand (or whatever it ends up being called; we're trying to avoid calling it the PSPenis as coined by several forum users). And we are largely right to- just because there are more potential gamers out there than ever before doesn't mean that you can push crap games onto them; sooner or later the consumer tends to get wise. But so long as the traditional games still exisit, are we really right to begrudge developers and publishers for seeking to fund their more expensive projects with crap games made on the cheap? If Activision did not sell bucketloads of Barbie Princess, would they be able to develop the likes of Call of Duty and Prototype? If Ubisoft did not sell hundreds of the Imagine series, could they afford to fund development of Assassin's Creed 2?

  The answer is uncertain, but at the end of the day, there are still plenty of traditional, deeper, hardcore games out there. And with the likes of No More Heroes and Metroid Other M showing that there is a market out there for high-profile, hardcore ****games that make use of motion control, we could be on the verge of a real revolution in how we play games. Perhaps, finally, the tide is turning. When books first were printed, only the priviledged had the knowledge of how to read them. Perhaps videogames have been the same for us; our passion has been a closed circle for so long, but one that is now widening. If motion sensing is the way to embrace new players- and therefore encourage new development and growth of the industry as a whole, from our own favoured more elitist games to those that appeal to the mass market- then I for one welcome it with open arms.

  Perferably with a Wii Remote in one hand, and a nunchuck in the other.

  • Posted Jul 13, 2009 2:45 am PT
  • Category: Games
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• 21Nov 07

  Oblivion Syndrome

  Oblivion Syndrome

  I've noticed, lately, that many games seem to be suffering from the dreaded 'Oblivion Syndrome'.

  No, I don't mean that the games give you a meaningless Horse Armour download. No, I don't mean that they have Sean Bean in a starring role (although that, at least, wouldn't be such a bad thing). I don't even mean that they aim slightly higher than they achieve.

  No, I'm talking about the bane of console Oblivioners lives: Dynamic encounter scaling.

  For the uninitiated, let me explain in non-medical terms. In Oblivion, the creatures in the world adapt to your level. So, when you're a neophyte adventurer taking your first steps, you might find a necromancer's apprentice lurking near some ancient ruins. If you were to visit those same ruins later in the game, the apprentice might be a fully-fledged Necromancer now, offering you more of a challenge. Go to the ruins when you're a mighty, renowned hero, and you'll find twelve Necromancers and an undead horde.

  And yes, this kind of scaling does indeed ensure that the game gives you an even challenge as you progress throughout it. No area is off-limits because its inhabitants are too difficult to defeat, and you're always going to have a good fight ahead.

  Where it doesn't make sense though, is that you end up with basic bandits with full daedric armour and oversized magical axes bearing down on you every time you leave a village, and entire cavern networks full of minotaur lords. And yes, they're a more even challenge. But they're also rather unfeasible from a logical point of view (as if logic applies to games, I hear you cry), and, moreover, they devoid you of any sense of advancement as a character.

  Call me old fashioned, or just a little sadistic, but I actually like the feeling in traditional RPGs where there are areas that you just can't really go yet because the inhabitants are too powerful for you- yet. I like going back to early areas of the game and seeing just how strong my characters have become now since I first went there. Sure, it can mean that open-ended games are a little hit-and-miss with how they present their enemies, as you could wonder into a dungeon full of liche lords that tear you to shreds. But equally, you might enter a cavern full of pathetic goblins which you can slaughter while laughing heartily. And that, for me, is some of the thrill- you never really know what you're going to face through the next door. Morrowind balanced this expertly, and you knew when you really shouldn't be going to another area by the way a frenzied Guar would suddenly tear you to shreds.

  But love it or hate it, Oblivion Syndrome is here to stay, it seems. And moreover, its spreading. Already the Syndrome has become widespread amongst certain RPGs. And it's starting to cross genre boundaries too. Could we have a nigh-impossible Syndrome epidemic on our hands? We sent Asian reporter Trisha Takanawa to find out.

  "Thanks Splinter, but I have no idea what you're talking about."

  Ok... Thanks for that, Trisha. Well, I guess that sums it up, doesn't it? She hasn't noticed it. In fact, a lot of you probably haven't noticed it. But nevertheless, its sneaking in to our gaming lives. Puzzle Quest is the first key example I can think of, but you'll also see examples of it throughout RPG titles like the Witcher and even Two Worlds, although with Two Worlds its less of an issue since most of the enemies are easy anyway. But it seems like the concept of dynamic scaling is here to stay. Perhaps it's a good thing. Perhaps it's easier for the developers to implement, rather than set out placement for creature types dependent on game world region. Perhaps.

  And yet... I'm still not convinced that I like the idea of a humble bandit stalking the outskirts of a rural village, sheltering in some abandoned ruins, leaping out at you with his shiny glass armour and glowing magical sword.

  Maybe I'm taking the whole thing too seriously. I don't know. But I know for sure that I don't like the idea of this spreading across too many games. Like I said before, I'm all for more difficult creatures popping up as you go through the game. But I want my sense of advancement back, too. And, while you're at it, how about some more games with great, emotionally involving storylines, too?

  But that's another issue, and another blog post, I fear.

  • Posted Nov 21, 2007 6:52 am PT
  • Category: Editorial
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