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Some developers have tried to give gamers every possible control as a unique input. That resulted in the unwieldly behemoth commonly known as Steel Battalion. Other, less crazy developers moved toward context-sensitive control schemes, allowing a single button to do one of many complex interactions based on the player's position in the world, or even taking control of the character and automatically performing an action required to maintain immersion without the player's input. Today, more than ever, developers have to struggle to figure out exactly what inputs are necessary for gamers to interact with their games and have fun in the process.
Over the past console generation, we've been sold the idea that motion controls are supposed to be intuitive. And they are, to an extent—you get pretty much instantly how a given control is supposed to work. No matter how intuitive motion controls are supposed to be, though, they're terrible at providing feedback when you've reached the limits of a given input, and that feedback is critical when you want to have a control system that feels tight and responsive. Nobody likes camera controls that feel loose and unresponsive, and there's a reason why every attempt to use motion controls for camera controls has been critically panned.
Great read and great response to Tony's article! If only more of the comments in the article were like this...
*sad face*
*sad face*
There's nothing wrong with this blog, and there's nothing wrong with dual analog sticks.
But before this comment section takes off, I would like to point out that Tony's article dealt more with how camera control is too often defaulted to the second analog stick, even if there are better methods for camera control available for that particular game. The title of the article was somewhat mis-representative of the overall message of the editorial. I don't think he was saying that dual analogs are bad per se, but rather that controllers are not automatically bad just because they lack dual analogs.
Or maybe he did mean that dual-analogs are automatically bad, which then would be stupid.
But before this comment section takes off, I would like to point out that Tony's article dealt more with how camera control is too often defaulted to the second analog stick, even if there are better methods for camera control available for that particular game. The title of the article was somewhat mis-representative of the overall message of the editorial. I don't think he was saying that dual analogs are bad per se, but rather that controllers are not automatically bad just because they lack dual analogs.
Or maybe he did mean that dual-analogs are automatically bad, which then would be stupid.
@REWQ: To me, Tony seems to argue that dual-analog controls are a vestige of the early 3D era, and that modern game developers shouldn't need manual camera controls because the game should be able to handle that all for the player, or at least do it in a way that's more interesting than dual analog. And while I agree that there are other ways—other very good ways—to do camera controls, they all involve stripping the player of some degree of control within the game.
Tony even says "How would you feel if whenever you watched a movie, you had to manipulate a device in your hand to find an optimal viewing angle for every scene, all because the cinematographer thought that properly framing the shots himself was too hard?" I feel like that's almost missing the point. The ability to frame the shots of the game the way you see fit, or more accurately the sensation that you're framing the shots as you see fit, is one of the biggest strengths of video games as a medium. Valve games are a great example of this: they strive to take control of the player's viewpoint away from them as infrequently as possible, while simultaneously controlling where the player is looking via their level design instead. By leaving the player that autonomy, they feel that much more like a part of the game world, rather than feeling like an external observer.
I think my fundamental difference of opinion with Tony is that he believes developers resort to dual-analog because it's the safe and comfortable route to use, while I believe developers choose dual-analog because any other option (aside from mouselook) would be unnecessarily robbing the player of a degree of autonomy or responsiveness.
Tony even says "How would you feel if whenever you watched a movie, you had to manipulate a device in your hand to find an optimal viewing angle for every scene, all because the cinematographer thought that properly framing the shots himself was too hard?" I feel like that's almost missing the point. The ability to frame the shots of the game the way you see fit, or more accurately the sensation that you're framing the shots as you see fit, is one of the biggest strengths of video games as a medium. Valve games are a great example of this: they strive to take control of the player's viewpoint away from them as infrequently as possible, while simultaneously controlling where the player is looking via their level design instead. By leaving the player that autonomy, they feel that much more like a part of the game world, rather than feeling like an external observer.
I think my fundamental difference of opinion with Tony is that he believes developers resort to dual-analog because it's the safe and comfortable route to use, while I believe developers choose dual-analog because any other option (aside from mouselook) would be unnecessarily robbing the player of a degree of autonomy or responsiveness.
I don't have much of a chance to read this right now (though I promise to give it a proper read tomorrow), but I'm glad that at least a few people have taken my article into deeper consideration before immediately cutting me down, even if they still don't agree with me. I greatly appreciate it!
Great write up!!
I was one of those people that were in love with the idea of motion controls but was pretty let down by them at first. Developers need to build their games to the strengths of the control schemes they'll be using. I often found with the Wii, most of the motion controls devolved into "waggle" and never felt right. Then there are games like Red Steel 2 and Pro Evolution Soccer that really grasp the concept of motion controls and do a great job of immersing you into the game, providing an experience that wouldn't be as good with a dual-analog controller. In the end, developers shouldn't do things differently just because they can, they should do things differently because it'll make a better game.
I was one of those people that were in love with the idea of motion controls but was pretty let down by them at first. Developers need to build their games to the strengths of the control schemes they'll be using. I often found with the Wii, most of the motion controls devolved into "waggle" and never felt right. Then there are games like Red Steel 2 and Pro Evolution Soccer that really grasp the concept of motion controls and do a great job of immersing you into the game, providing an experience that wouldn't be as good with a dual-analog controller. In the end, developers shouldn't do things differently just because they can, they should do things differently because it'll make a better game.
I finally gave this a full read. Good job!
I'd like to pick your brain on one of the topics you brought up -- lack of feedback with motion controls. When it comes to limits of range, motion controls don't let you know where you ought to stop. One example I've heard from Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation is when you swing a sword, your arm keeps traveling even though your blade may have been deflected by a wall or something else. He says that pulls him out of the experience because there's no feedback preventing your arm from continuing down that trajectory.
But that's not a case exclusive to motion controls. For example, if you hold down the jump button, unless your character can fly, you are not going to remain in the air permanently. If there is a low ceiling preventing you from jumping, there is no feedback preventing the jump button from being depressed. Same would go for swinging a weapon with the attack button.
Why do you think it feels more experience-breaking in one case versus the other? Is it because the abstraction of a traditional controller makes it so you don't directly connect your real-world actions to those within the game world? Or could it be that, because most players have less experience with motion controls versus traditional controls, they aren't accustomed to motion controller limitations as they are to gamepad limitations, and thus carried-over flaws feel that much more pronounced?
I'd like to pick your brain on one of the topics you brought up -- lack of feedback with motion controls. When it comes to limits of range, motion controls don't let you know where you ought to stop. One example I've heard from Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation is when you swing a sword, your arm keeps traveling even though your blade may have been deflected by a wall or something else. He says that pulls him out of the experience because there's no feedback preventing your arm from continuing down that trajectory.
But that's not a case exclusive to motion controls. For example, if you hold down the jump button, unless your character can fly, you are not going to remain in the air permanently. If there is a low ceiling preventing you from jumping, there is no feedback preventing the jump button from being depressed. Same would go for swinging a weapon with the attack button.
Why do you think it feels more experience-breaking in one case versus the other? Is it because the abstraction of a traditional controller makes it so you don't directly connect your real-world actions to those within the game world? Or could it be that, because most players have less experience with motion controls versus traditional controls, they aren't accustomed to motion controller limitations as they are to gamepad limitations, and thus carried-over flaws feel that much more pronounced?
Well done.
Personally i just think it would be nice if we added a touch screen to the dual analog setup, instead of using a touch screen to accomplish the same thing and calling it innovation.
Personally i just think it would be nice if we added a touch screen to the dual analog setup, instead of using a touch screen to accomplish the same thing and calling it innovation.
@Tony: I believe there are two major feedback-related issues with motion controls.
One is due to the ambiguity of the input. When you press a button on a controller, a keyboard, or a mouse, you can *feel* that you've pressed it. You know that, barring hardware failure, you've tried to do *something* and the reason for your failure is contextual within the game rather than you failing to provide an input. Motion controls don't offer that kind of luxury—you often don't know whether you've successfully performed the action in a way that the game expects, so you're never quite sure whether your character's failure to act was due to context within the game or due to you not acting in a way the game recognizes.
Touchscreens, especially virtual keyboards, deal with a similar issue (though to a lesser extent). To provide the proper "Yes, I know you've pressed the button" feedback to the user, many cell phone manufacturers have taken to using the built-in vibration feature when it detects that the user has pressed a virtual key.
I don't think that this issue is a permanent one for motion control. Proper use of vibration and thorough recognition of gesture-based controls can go a long way toward alleviating the issue; many of the motion-control-based games that I've really enjoyed have managed to avoid these issues by keeping to very simple, generalized motions and gestures (think Super Mario Galaxy and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess) or sticking to one very simple motion at a time (think tilt-balance mechanics like Kirby Tilt'n'Tumble or WarioWare: Twisted).
The other issue, however, isn't going to go away anytime soon. When your character fails to act after you press a button, you're pretty much in the correct place to try again--your hands haven't moved off of the controller, and your finger is still in the position it needs to be to press the button. If you try to swing a sword from left to right and the game fails to respond appropriately, your arms are now desynchronized from where your avatar's are, and you have to resynchronize yourself with your avatar's position if you want to try again. It's a worse issue in some games than others, but whenever it happens, it requires a lot of thought on the part of the player, and it's the kind of thought that draws a player out of the experience and reminds them that they're playing a game. (Moreover, that they're playing a game that's not letting them do what they're trying to do, which is really frustrating.)
Also, for your button example, I think there's a slight difference between what you're suggesting the thought process is and what the thought process actually is. "Jump" is a discrete action, rather than a continuous one, and most people don't expect that pressing and holding a jump button will result in continuous upward movement--rather, when they want to jump higher/farther, they press the button really hard, which tends to result in pressing the button longer, while when they want to just barely hop, they push the button lightly and tentatively, which also results in pressing the button for a much shorter amount of time.
The short (light?) press and long (hard?) press distinctions don't always work well for a game, though. I felt like Metal Gear Solid 2 had some major control issues from using that distinction for "Fire weapon / lower weapon without firing." Part of it was just because two opposite functions were mapped to the same key, part of it was because they failed to communicate it well, and part of it was it simply not working the way you wanted it to consistantly--and it'd usually fuck you over at the worst possible moment, accidentally lowering your weapon when you really wanted to fire or accidentally firing when you REALLY didn't want to.
I think, fundamentally, it all comes down to control. Inconsistent or difficult controls can be fun if a developer is making that part of the challenge of the game, but when the game expects you to easily and consistently be able to perform a particular action, controls that are ambiguous, difficult, allow the player to unintentionally activate an ability can really diminish a player's experience.
In humans, fine motor control is largely associated with the fingers. Other parts of the body can be trained to have similar levels of finesse, but it takes a lot of practice and those body parts often get tired more quickly. There's a reason bomb-disposal units operating in Iraq use Xbox 360 controllers to control bomb-disposal robots—it's very hard to beat modern video game controller design for controls that will allow someone to operate for a long time and have a high degree of control over their actions. I don't think motion controllers are going to be challenging for that role anytime soon—would you honestly want something to risk something exploding if your motion controller didn't do what you wanted it to do?
Motion controllers have a very interesting future ahead of them. I think, outside of novelty games where the challenge of motion control is the game's gimmick, their most relevant application isn't going to be as a form of direct control but as a means of obtaining biofeedback from the player. Imagine if a game could be programmed to make that weird controller-shove thing tons of people do when trying to make a long, tricky jump in Mario actually cut you a break--not give you a huge boost on your jump, but predict if your jump would've failed and give you a little extra oomph so it succeeds instead, but not tell you about it. Or if Kinect could see when you were looking away from the screen or if someone walked in front of you, and pause the game until you were looking at what was happening again. Hell, it's not a motion controller, but imagine what the guys who made Amnesia: The Dark Descent could do with something like the Wii Vitality Sensor built into a controller. The future of motion control isn't letting us control games in a better way, but letting games observe and respond to our unintentional actions.
One is due to the ambiguity of the input. When you press a button on a controller, a keyboard, or a mouse, you can *feel* that you've pressed it. You know that, barring hardware failure, you've tried to do *something* and the reason for your failure is contextual within the game rather than you failing to provide an input. Motion controls don't offer that kind of luxury—you often don't know whether you've successfully performed the action in a way that the game expects, so you're never quite sure whether your character's failure to act was due to context within the game or due to you not acting in a way the game recognizes.
Touchscreens, especially virtual keyboards, deal with a similar issue (though to a lesser extent). To provide the proper "Yes, I know you've pressed the button" feedback to the user, many cell phone manufacturers have taken to using the built-in vibration feature when it detects that the user has pressed a virtual key.
I don't think that this issue is a permanent one for motion control. Proper use of vibration and thorough recognition of gesture-based controls can go a long way toward alleviating the issue; many of the motion-control-based games that I've really enjoyed have managed to avoid these issues by keeping to very simple, generalized motions and gestures (think Super Mario Galaxy and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess) or sticking to one very simple motion at a time (think tilt-balance mechanics like Kirby Tilt'n'Tumble or WarioWare: Twisted).
The other issue, however, isn't going to go away anytime soon. When your character fails to act after you press a button, you're pretty much in the correct place to try again--your hands haven't moved off of the controller, and your finger is still in the position it needs to be to press the button. If you try to swing a sword from left to right and the game fails to respond appropriately, your arms are now desynchronized from where your avatar's are, and you have to resynchronize yourself with your avatar's position if you want to try again. It's a worse issue in some games than others, but whenever it happens, it requires a lot of thought on the part of the player, and it's the kind of thought that draws a player out of the experience and reminds them that they're playing a game. (Moreover, that they're playing a game that's not letting them do what they're trying to do, which is really frustrating.)
Also, for your button example, I think there's a slight difference between what you're suggesting the thought process is and what the thought process actually is. "Jump" is a discrete action, rather than a continuous one, and most people don't expect that pressing and holding a jump button will result in continuous upward movement--rather, when they want to jump higher/farther, they press the button really hard, which tends to result in pressing the button longer, while when they want to just barely hop, they push the button lightly and tentatively, which also results in pressing the button for a much shorter amount of time.
The short (light?) press and long (hard?) press distinctions don't always work well for a game, though. I felt like Metal Gear Solid 2 had some major control issues from using that distinction for "Fire weapon / lower weapon without firing." Part of it was just because two opposite functions were mapped to the same key, part of it was because they failed to communicate it well, and part of it was it simply not working the way you wanted it to consistantly--and it'd usually fuck you over at the worst possible moment, accidentally lowering your weapon when you really wanted to fire or accidentally firing when you REALLY didn't want to.
I think, fundamentally, it all comes down to control. Inconsistent or difficult controls can be fun if a developer is making that part of the challenge of the game, but when the game expects you to easily and consistently be able to perform a particular action, controls that are ambiguous, difficult, allow the player to unintentionally activate an ability can really diminish a player's experience.
In humans, fine motor control is largely associated with the fingers. Other parts of the body can be trained to have similar levels of finesse, but it takes a lot of practice and those body parts often get tired more quickly. There's a reason bomb-disposal units operating in Iraq use Xbox 360 controllers to control bomb-disposal robots—it's very hard to beat modern video game controller design for controls that will allow someone to operate for a long time and have a high degree of control over their actions. I don't think motion controllers are going to be challenging for that role anytime soon—would you honestly want something to risk something exploding if your motion controller didn't do what you wanted it to do?
Motion controllers have a very interesting future ahead of them. I think, outside of novelty games where the challenge of motion control is the game's gimmick, their most relevant application isn't going to be as a form of direct control but as a means of obtaining biofeedback from the player. Imagine if a game could be programmed to make that weird controller-shove thing tons of people do when trying to make a long, tricky jump in Mario actually cut you a break--not give you a huge boost on your jump, but predict if your jump would've failed and give you a little extra oomph so it succeeds instead, but not tell you about it. Or if Kinect could see when you were looking away from the screen or if someone walked in front of you, and pause the game until you were looking at what was happening again. Hell, it's not a motion controller, but imagine what the guys who made Amnesia: The Dark Descent could do with something like the Wii Vitality Sensor built into a controller. The future of motion control isn't letting us control games in a better way, but letting games observe and respond to our unintentional actions.
@awa64
Your example of the "controller shove" during long jumps in a Mario game was actually implemented in New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Mario does a little twirl that gives just the tiniest extra boost. I never knew about it for the longest time because I tend to keep my hands really steady, and I noticed it one day just by chance. It's not explained in the manual, I don't believe, so it was a nice little bonus.
My disappointment in regards to motion control discussions is that rarely does anyone bring up the pointer functionality, which is greater addition I think than the gyroscopic and accelerometer. Using those latter two devices to supplement the pointer (doing correction calculations and tracking off-screen movement), can offer greater, more precise control than anything I've seen before. I wish more focus were placed on that.
Your example of the "controller shove" during long jumps in a Mario game was actually implemented in New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Mario does a little twirl that gives just the tiniest extra boost. I never knew about it for the longest time because I tend to keep my hands really steady, and I noticed it one day just by chance. It's not explained in the manual, I don't believe, so it was a nice little bonus.
My disappointment in regards to motion control discussions is that rarely does anyone bring up the pointer functionality, which is greater addition I think than the gyroscopic and accelerometer. Using those latter two devices to supplement the pointer (doing correction calculations and tracking off-screen movement), can offer greater, more precise control than anything I've seen before. I wish more focus were placed on that.
