Thinking Outside of the Controller
So Microsoft has done their E3 press conference, and damn was there a lot of Kinect in there. Kinect games for kids. Kinect games for adults. Kinect games for Star Wars fans. And while they all showed off the power of the Kinect hardware, it seemed to me that – bar Dance Central 2 – they didn’t look all that much fun. And it showed somewhat in the increasingly muted applause.
Let’s forget the kid’s stuff, and look at the more grown-up title, the ones being targeted at a ‘hardcore audience’. I won’t deny there’s a certain pleasure to leaping around and watching the game match your actions, but – like that one game of Wii Sports too many – the physical joy of control will eventually wear off. What you’re left with then is the game itself.
It’s something like the inverse of the learning curve with a standard game controller. Instead of having to learn a complex control layout, the game responds to your every swing and gesture. Brilliant! But only brilliant for a while. As with a standard control scheme, eventually the actions will become second nature. You’ll stop thinking about them, and thus stop enjoying them. The actions themselves become irrelevant.
When the novelty of shouting your lightsaber on and off has worn thin, when 1:1 motion-tracked sword-swings are no longer fresh and exciting, what are you left with? From the impression given by those demos, you’re left with a slightly precision-lacking on-rails shooter.
This seems to be a big problem with this ‘new generation’ of motion control. The games are designed entirely around the technology; every one of those demos was basically screaming ‘look how fun it is to wave your arms about in Fable/Star War/ancient Rome.’ And it will be fun. For a while. The trouble is when the novelty has worn off in a game based entirely around novelty, you’re left with something that’s of little entertainment value.
It’s worth noting that the most successful Wii games are those that weren’t based entirely around the Wii’s new technology. They were traditionally designed videogames enhanced (or detracted, depending on personal preference) by subtle use of motion control. This is why I see a lot more mileage in stuff like Mass Effect 3 – using voice commands to control squad-mates frees up a whole button! - than I do in an endless stream of swing-the-sword games.
However gritty/fantastic/Star Wars-themed you make your Kinect title, what you end up with looks to be the equivalent of Wii sports; fun for as long as it takes the novelty to wear off, then effectively worthless.
A good test is to watch the demos and imagine them being played on a standard controller. Do they still look fun? Is that something you’d be interested in playing? If not, then developers need to start to think of ways to use Kinect to enhance the experience – and the ME3 and Ghost Recon demos could be a good place to start – rather than building the whole game around the controller itself.
If I must be the controller, then I want to be controlling something decent. Make it happen.
