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Motion Control: The Future of Gaming?
Will Motion Control Technology be the Input Device of the Future?
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My Crystal Ball is Motion Controlled "Motion Control", a phrase now so ubiquitous it has darn near lost its sexy. In the wake of the Wii's rampant success with the casual-friendly Wiimote, the compression of titles into mini-games, and a family-friendly image, motion control is a veritable poster child for gaming. Arms spread wide in welcome; motion control promises none of those terrible and complex button combinations of old and instead offers animated movements, calorie-burning, general waggling and lots of laughter. Smashing through your LCD TV and the too-serious face of gaming, is our future motion controlled?
The assertion that motion control advocates make is that where we gamers find a precision tool to achieve our goal, the average person sees control schemes as an impediment, and conventional controls are darn near vilified. Shane Kim declares, “the problem is that the controller is a barrier for some people and now with Project Natal we completely eliminate that”. Natal, Microsoft's controller-free technology touts operation by movement and spoken command only. This is motion control as a big bear hug for the casual gamer: if you think you can't handle standard controls, if they scare you, then line up here.
Motion control claims the advantage of being "intuitive", because by a young age we have all learned how to flail our arms, but perhaps never mastered true manual dexterity. A ready complement to standard controls, motion controls are as yet imprecise, there remains a sense of interpretation. If the affinity for the Wii (which has drawn customers in with only moderately successful motion controls) is any indication, non-gamers still find motion control an appealing alternative. An acceptable product for the Zuma demographic, we chide, and in its current state this imperfect product widens the rift between casual and hardcore.
Immersion, a word thrown around frequently in the motion control discussion, is touted as a natural and unquestionable benefit to the technology, but it is not immersive when you are taken out of the game with frustration at the muddy controls. This is what really gets under the hardcore skin, this is what we loathe to see - the hungry implementation of a technology that only serves to hinder the gaming experience, a technology underdeveloped and overused with games as accomplished as Twilight Princess using the controls in ways that are often imprecise, morphing combos into frantic waggling. WiiMotionPlus has improved on the preexisting motion control tech in the Wii, adding a gyroscope to the accelerometers and candle - er, sensor bar. With the dawn of WMP, games like Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 use motion control in tandem with limited button control to great success, even enhancing gameplay.
Golf, however, is a sport (or so I've been told) and we have seen motion control time and again with sports games. Truly, Tiger shows the fun of WiiMotionPlus and offers an experience more immersive than other golf games with a traditional control scheme, but it doesn't do anything to broaden the understanding of how motion controls can be practically implemented in games outside of the obvious. It is possible to force motion controls to work, to pound that square peg into the round hole until it's a mangled fit, but to what end? The question developers should be asking is not "How can I use motion control in my game?" but "Will motion control improve the experience?". Take for example, inFAMOUS. How would using solely motion controls add to the experience? They wouldn't, and I think it would be a terrible wrong for game-makers to be pushed in the direction of using impractical and ill-fitting control schemes to their titles for the sake of capitalizing on an infant technology.
In all this future-oriented hubbub, distracted by our sweaty panic, don't you think that we've been here before? I definitely recognize that tree. The idea is decades old - it seems we've always been fascinated by the possibility of immersing ourselves in a game fully - but the technology is still young. The early nineties saw the Sega VR, a virtual reality headset for the Mega Drive/Genesis. The dual LCD screens for each eye created a 3D image, with stereo headphones to more accurately feed directional sound. Enthusiasm waned when people got a chance to plop the thing on their noggins, which touted inertial sensors or, the ability control by moving your head. Reality was, jerking your head around as a control scheme made players at the very least uncomfortable, usually induced nausea, and generally caused effects undesired in recreational anything.
The Sega VR is an excellent example of a project with wonderful vision but impractical application, and application is where we are still suffering growing pains. Trouble rears its Sega VR-sporting head when the virtual reality of motion control becomes an imprecise reality. Ask the average hardcore gamer if we need motion control and the answer is "no", usually with more than a hint of fear. We are chronic early-adopters, yet in the face of motion control most of us visibly flinch. What is so threatening about motion control? Namely, sacrifice: sacrificed precision, and sacrificed content. We look to the future for 4D, graphical improvements and hardware upgrades, but we are not willing to move backwards. It is not that longtime gamers are reluctant to welcome more gamers to the fold (though we certainly to like to mock the Bejewelled crowd), we just don't want them mucking up our stuff.
Who are we, though, to stand in the way of future tech because we are disappointed with the steps required to achieve the goal, especially if the goal could lead to better products, games and new experiences. So where is motion control headed? Currently, even in Natal, you still control an avatar, a puppet of yourself. If the future holds full sims whereby the gamer is tapped entirely into the game climbing as Drake climbs, running as Link runs, well that is full-body simulation and is it really even a video game anymore? It becomes a different animal entirely, and video games are only the vessel from which it was birthed. At that point, shouldn't we all just go play laser tag?
There remains an underlying impression that the success of the Wii is pushing other console makers to include motion control tech in darn near everything. Sony has already incorporated some motion control with the Sixaxis, which has been criticized for its minimalistic implementation. Games like Uncharted use it for balancing actions, Insomniac's Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction gives players the option to steer Ratchet's flight, and the broadest implementation occurs in games like Motorstorm and Flower. Next, Sony will bring us their first 1:1 device that works in conjunction with the PlayStation Eye, a controller with a camera system as well as an accelerometer and gyroscope.
What about our more recent history, the oft-overlooked baby steps to an avalanche of peripherals. While products like the Sega VR faded into obscurity before ever reaching market we are now on the brink of a deluge of motion control devices. We are naturally expansionist, so prepare to expand your game room as we expand the gaming audience because we are in an accessory-heavy age. From GT steering wheels to the guitars and drums of rhythm games to the Tony Hawk controller it hardly occurs to us now that the star power trigger of Guitar Hero days, tilting the controller skyward, was just another step down the motion control path. The balance board of the Wii Fit represents yet another step, centered around weight detection, and each peripheral created seems to focus and quantify certain motion effects. Shigeru Miyamoto told Wired.com: “I don’t think as a creator that I could create an experience that truly feels interactive if you don’t have something to hold in your hand; if you don’t have something like force feedback that you can feel from the controller.” This shot at Project Natal holds basic truth, most motion controls do not offer resistance feedback, but I think it likely that Miyamoto's allegiance to the peripheral is also tied to some business-savvy.
Peripherals don't get to share much spotlight with games, despite their fiscal heft (earning upwards of $600 million in 2008). Sony's system is less likely to impact peripherals, and Nintendo has approved third-party versions of the Wiimote. Natal, however, uses proprietary video and audio sensors and will presumably remain exclusive, without licenses to third parties. Apparently, we buy this stuff in bulk; creating more of it doesn't seem like a bad idea for the industry.
The oft-overlooked motion control device void of peripherals: The iPhone. All multi-touch and tilt-control, the iPhone is a self-contained motion control gaming device. What it lacks in peripherals, it makes up for in gaming heft holding its own with a robust library of games. Like the Wii, the iPhone's motion controls were there from the start and have been incorporated into most games - it is simply how games on the iPhone and Wii work. To make generalizations as broad-sweeping as a Wii tennis stroke, the Wii games library tends to hit with simple game concepts, suited to experimental control schemes, the games working best with motion control are those designed with that system in mind. Where Nintendo misses is taking an existing paradigm established by their main franchise products and sinking motion controls into them, further evidence that motion controls are not a replacement.
What reason do Sony and Microsoft developers have to adopt? Surely being first in line for offerings of Natal and the Sony Motion Controller would offer payoff, but to what extent do developers of games like Gears and God of War care to incorporate the tech when their franchise is already successful on a traditional control scheme? Without games to support the technology, it will go largely untried by consumers and become blips on the fail-dar of tech. The latest in motion control immersion could well happen, but without software it is like a tree falling in a forest while we're all playing games that don't require subjecting ourselves to public scorn. Unlike the consoles, the iPhone has a plethora of small, independent developers churning out games exercising the tech; forays into motion control on the next gen systems would be wise to cultivate their own force of indie guinea pigs.
While we hope plenty of young 'uns, families and new gamers are joining our hobby, fact remains that the gaming demographic largely includes men old enough to be working a 9-to-5. I know how I feel at the end of the work day and it usually calls for sitting on the couch and playing games. Seated. We boring grown up gamers tend to side with Quantic Dream founder David Cage who declared in an interview with Kikizo that he's "not sure all people want to play jumping and running in front of the television, because I think some people just want to relax and just play, enjoy and experience." In that same interview he went on to say that he thinks Microsoft's Project Natal is an indication they want to move in the direction of Nintendo and the Wii Fit, and whether or not you think that's a justifiable leap it allows me to segue into the "gamers are fatties" argument for motion controlled gaming.
Oh, my tummy rumbles at the mere mention. I would like to leave discussion of gaming and weight problems on the sidelines, but this is a cultural factor feeding the frenzy. With our increasing awareness of the dangers of obesity, our past-time's characteristically sedentary posture has come under fire. Motion controls offer a ready counter to those that would turn a blind eye to beer drinking football game enthusiasts and launch missiles at the Madden fan, and so we can surely embrace motion controls as a shield to ward of nuts like we use the ESRB on Jack Thompson. Look here, outside world, at our self-regulation and step up on the white thing! But what about violence in games? With critics already objecting to the bloodshed, how will they feel about the evolution of WMP enabling a player to that much more realistically engage in Manhunt 3? Motion control threatens to unwittingly strip gaming of its virtual identity, and make things that were pleasantly unreal all too tangible. With motion control as our future, to excel at video game sports you must actually be an athlete; to excel at an FPS, you must actually be a sniper. Oh, how we will make casual gamers rue the day they forced motion control upon us!
Motion control tech has been consistently described as the "future of gaming", and what current motion control systems lack in next gen oomph they make up for in forward-thinking. Like magpies we flock to the shiny new thing while remaining uncharacteristically guarded against this technological intrusion. Motion control may continue to grow in market share but it isn't until the technology is moving us forward that the hardcore will extend welcome, and even then, not at the expense of already successful control schemes. Firmly in our present and most certainly in our future motion control is not a replacement for existing control schemes, and we are at the mercy of its implementation - hopefully, to the benefit of traditional gaming.
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