Clearly, Nintendo’s success signaled significant market opportunity for that type of gaming, which perfectly explains why Microsoft, Sony and a number of developers are jumping into the market. Reserving my own skepticism on this strategy (following the money – more on that later), this influx of motion controls left me with a broader question:
With motion-based input, when do video games cease being videos games, and become a little too real?
Body movin’ body movin’
No matter whose presentation it was at E3 – console maker or developer – a big component was devoted to motion-based games.
At Microsoft, it was Kinect.
At EA, it was the EA Sports Active.
At Nintendo, it was Wii Motion Plus support.
At Sony, it was Sony Move.
As part of these presentations, a variety of live demos were done to show how the product works. A couple of them stood out in particular. First, the EA fitness titles demo highlighted a woman running in place using Kinect. Second, as part of the Sony presentation, Tiger Woods golf was demoed using Sony Move.
In both cases, the person’s actions using the peripherals were meant to approximate, as close to reality as possible, the actions taking place on screen – for the first example, it was running, and for the second example, it was swinging a golf club. It left me wondering, at what point do video game cease being games and start becoming reduced approximations of reality – and more importantly, what role does the peripheral play in this sliding scale?
This is where it starts getting real…
In the Sony demo, the presenter noted that he had trouble hitting a particular shot in real life – and with the Sony Move – he had the same difficulty. The question I would ask – is the game supposed to mimic the reality of the game player’s tendencies and limitations, or is it supposed to enable the player to do things they wouldn’t normally be capable of doing – in essence, allowing them to achieve some level of fantasy through the game?
My personal response would be that I’m not looking for a golf game to approximate how I play golf. I play golf terribly – that is why I’ll never be on the PGA tour and play PGA courses. The game allows me to achieve my fantasy, without requiring me to develop the real world skill to achieve it. As games ask us to make inputs that are closer and closer to the real thing, it begs the question, why don’t we just do the real thing instead?
Which leads me to the EA fitness demo for Kinect. In the video, a woman is seen going for a run – not a real run, but a virtual run, through a virtual world – via running in place in front of the system and television. I’m a big advocate for physical fitness and appreciate EA’s efforts, but it becomes necessary to ask: couldn’t players simply go outside and do the same thing, saving themselves the cost of the system and game? Provided, living in Canada means long winters, but the barrier to getting access to a treadmill or a gym are low – so what does the game provide that real life doesn’t?
You’re living in a fantasy world.
To be honest, this question isn’t what really piques my curiosity. It’s the broader context: the fact that the input requirements of these new peripherals and games blur the line between real and unreality so closely – that one could reasonably weigh the options between doing the action in a game and doing the action in real life. Which just leads to more questions, such as where do we split the difference?
Because I can easily approximate a golf or bat swing with a motion controller, does that mean I need to do so in a game? What about more complex inputs for sports such as hockey or football? Both sports already have motion-based games, but the movements required don’t really mirror what’s done in real life. Will they eventually, or because the movements are too complex for the motion-based controllers, are players to be left with a weird hybrid?
For my part, I prefer when games are enablers to a fantasy world – one that might contain real-world elements – but still lets me do something easily that I could not do in real life. Out of all the games showcased at the main E3 presentations, the one that offered this opportunity the most was Nintendo’s new Zelda game. Sure, it required real world inputs, but it did so in the context of a fantasy world – and even when it mimicked certain actions, it was in a completely fictional setting that a player could never actually inhabit.
What’s another world for immersion?
To me, Nintendo’s approach with Zelda demonstrates where motion controls mostly succeed. By creating more tactile inputs for gamers, developers and console makers can add new layers of immersion, while still retaining the fantastical elements that give games their escapist pleasure.
That said, there’s certainly risk for overkill on motion-based input. My experience with the first Red Steel was a sore right arm, from having to hold up “my gun” for so long as I traversed levels. And my fiancé eventually gave up on Twilight Princess. Seeing it firsthand, the path of her user experience with motion controls was pretty clear: from surprised joy, to frustration, to “I wish I could just play this on a normal controller,” to letting the game collect dust in our Wii box in the basement.
