[Today's promoted blog on Motion Control is from SephirothX! Make sure you write a blog on this week's topic, eSports, if you want a chance to see your own blog on the front page next week. -- JRo]
Motion control it seems is a dicey topic for gamers because, due to the wide range of opinions regarding it. Conversations will either boil down to people complaining about “gimmicks” infesting gaming and that the traditional way of gaming is the true way or people defending it proclaiming that it’s the dawn of a new age in gaming and Wii’s lifetime sales justify its place. Followed by PC gamers jumping in claiming their way is the only way.
Obviously there’s a bit of hyperbole in that previous paragraph, but it’s hard not to find someone who hasn’t been in one of those types of conversations.
Before I go any further I just want to make my stance perfectly clear: motion gaming isn’t entirely my thing. Perhaps it’s just that I’m an old timer stuck in the old ways (considering my youthful mid-20’s age, I find this ironically funny.) Since I essentially grew up with NES and SNES controllers in hand that’s the way I want it to stay and the way I think player input is most efficiently performed. If I am not waving a wand around erratically with a motion controller I tend to be doing basic movements like flinging the controller up/down/left/right in order to perform various tasks. I look at this and tend to just say “sorry, I’ll stick with the old ways” because I generally don’t get the appeal of looking like an even bigger doofus while playing my already silly games. It sometimes makes me wonder if the people who defend and preach motion gaming are just blinded by the fact that this stuff is new and different and ignore that just because something is different does not inherently make it “good,” a la the classic idea that a bent out of shape fork is different but not useful for what is needed.
Alongside this, I honestly haven’t personally seen enough implementations of motion gaming that are done in a manner that genuinely make me interested in the game itself. Most motion games, for me, are like sitting through Nicholas Cage or Michael Bay movies. I can see what’s being attempted and appreciate it but can’t ignore the fact that it’s done poorly. Then occasionally you get those moments where Nicholas Cage and Michael Bay join forces and on paper it should be a recipe for disaster yet somehow you get something that defies all logic in the cosmos resulting in something awesome like The Rock.
There are games out there that exist in this paradoxical realm of motion gaming. These types of games in my opinion stop trying to be a motion game and instead just try to be a videogame, as a result it becomes the metaphoric “that guy” that does his own thing and ends up taking the prom queen to bed.
While motion gaming isn’t my thing, I will admit that there are some areas where motion gaming is being used well or being implemented in a nice manner. Just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean I won’t give it props for being well after all … unless it’s the Chicago Cubs, of course. As I was considering ways to describe the ways motion gaming was being used properly and improperly I thought about the “big three” in console gaming right now (Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft, respectfully.) I realized there was only one efficient way to break things down. With this, allow me to switch gears a little bit and shift from one cinema reference to another.
Considering PlayStation Move didn’t fly off shelves like Kinect did or set the world on fire like the Wii did you’d probably thing I’m crazy for putting Sony in the “good” portion of my blog, and to be honest I’d understand. However, I think motion gaming is best used as a complimentary tool alongside traditional gaming that’s innocuous instead of it being a flat out replacement for buttons and joysticks. With that mindset in place, when I look at what Sony is doing with Move I genuinely think they “get it.” Move is a complimentary piece of gaming technology that accompanies the old fashioned ways and it isn’t forced onto anyone who doesn’t want it. To top that off, Move isn’t being relegated to silly party games or stuff the common gamer might consider shovel ware. Obviously your personal tastes in videogames might vary a little, but it’s hard to consider Killzone 3, SOCOM 4, or Resistance 3 shovelware and it’s also hard to deny that including Move support into these games is a good way to wrangle in some otherwise hesitant hardcore gamers.
The rallying cry against PlayStation Move is that it’s a knockoff of the Wii. So what, the Dualshock controller is essentially a knockoff of the Super Nintendo controller but I don’t remember seeing people get up in arms about that. The common complaints I tend to see from gamers regarding the Nintendo Wii are that it lacks high-definition support and doesn’t have enough good games for it. Yet, here’s a system that functions just like the Wii but has hi-def support while attempting to put out more solid games for the platform and people are still bashing it. I’m not going to let gamer hypocrisy blind me from seeing a good idea that’s trying to do things in a good way.
Remember earlier how I mentioned that I think motion gaming should be a complimentary tool to traditional gaming instead of a flat out replacement for it? I think Microsoft essentially read my mind and decided to do everything in their power to be the opposite of that. I’m not sure if its Kinect’s limited potential or Microsoft’s adamant rambling about Kinect being the future has turned me off to the device. Anybody remember the Sega Activator? It was an octagon type thing you placed on the ground which used infrared beams to emulate what a typical controller could do. It was eventually dismissed because of its price point, twitchy responsiveness, and because simple stuff such as ceiling fans or a slanted ceiling could throw off the device (simple stuff in your room hampering your motion gaming, sound familiar?)
I would say that Kinect is the Sega Activator except with potential but even that might be a stretch because at least the Activator had the foresight to include methods of character movement into it. Something that Kinect already seems to be having an issue with. This is a form of motion gaming I dislike because not only does it force me to be a complete doofus in my living room but also ends up taking away from my gaming experience and limiting what I can and cannot do.
There are some areas of Kinect that do try to be more complimentary to normal gaming, such as Child of Eden which uses Kinect as an alternative to the traditional controller or the Mass Effect 3 demo we saw at E3 2011 that showed off voice commands. The only issue I have with Mass Effect 3's use of it is that Tom Clancy’s EndWar exists and is a pre-Kinect game that can let you play the entire game via voice commands. Thus, I have to call into question just how necessary Kinect is for stuff such as this when it’s been proven that some areas of Kinect’s abilities have been fully implemented without it. Overall it seems like the best area for potential with Kinect comes from PC use, which seems (to me) like a bad foreshadow of Kinect when people in their own homes can find better uses for it instead of its intended purpose.
Finally we get to Nintendo, the reason motion gaming is popular at all right now. Nintendo has found some good uses for motion gaming and it has bared some fruits so I can’t throw the Wii into the realm of bad. Yet when you look at the Wii’s library and look at the lack of good Wii games beyond Nintendo’s first party lineup it’s hard to call it anything but ugly. For every Twilight Princess or No More Heroes there seems to be more Wii Musics or Game Party 2s right beside them. Then tied into this is the fact that Nintendo had to release another peripheral item just to increase the accuracy of the device, forcing gamers to doll up more cash just to make the device work better. Oh, and that new item doesn’t even get fully supported by games that come out after its release.
Then there’s the 3DS which also uses a different version of motion control. Anybody who’s played Face Raiders or Ocarina of Time 3DS is well aware of this. To be honest, I’ll admit that I actually enjoy the motion control of the 3DS as I think it helps Ocarina and it makes for some interesting handheld gameplay. The ugly issue with this motion control is that I think developers forgot that in order for the 3D effect to work you need to have your head and system at a precise distance & angle for it to work. When you have to move or look around with the 3DS you tend to throw off your viewing angle just enough to get annoying double-vision on your screen that ruins the 3D effect. The only reasonable solution for this requires you to keep yourself fairly rigid and pivot your body around, a task that can get annoying if I just wanted to save Hyrule from the comfort of my leather recliner.
I just feel that motion gaming works best when it compliments traditional gaming instead of replacing it, a la a mistake of the Power Glove. Think of traditional gaming as a nice juicy steak and motion control is a nice spice or flavoring you apply to the steak. Yes you can eat nothing but the spice flavoring if you really want to, but you know it works better when it’s with your nice steak. Look at games like No More Heroes, New Super Mario Brothers Wii, Twilight Princess, or Killzone 3 as great examples of the two working together in unity. I just hope that the success of the Nintendo Wii hasn’t polluted developers with the idea that “the traditional ways are old now.” PC gamers have been using keyboards and mice for seemingly forever now (not totally true, but you get the point) and those gamers would crucify anybody who suggests ditching them. Why should the good old fashioned dual analog controller be any different?
Gaming's had cyclical trends in the past. Side-scrollers had their glory days in the Super Mario era, RPGs had their glory days in the 16-bit era, and we’re currently in an era that’s heavy with first-person shooters. If I, a simple observant consumer, had to make any guesses on the future of motion gaming I’d probably categorize it in the same place as 3D movies were in their early stages. Yes 3D movies are the “thing” right now, but people tend to forget that 3D movies have gone in and out of vogue dating all the way back to the 1950’s (look at the eyewear on Biff’s goonie in Back to the Future.) If recent sales of the Wii and Move are any indication of the future it’s possible that motion gaming could already be fading out of the picture in terms of general interest. In fact if you look at the Wii-U, Vita, or any of Apple’s iProducts, it looks like touch screen technology is becoming the new “in” thing for gaming (furthering Star Trek styled tech infiltrating real life in sweet ways.)
Speculating whether motion gaming will be a constant future presence or the flash in the pan is exactly that, speculation. Only time will tell on whether this will be continuously accepted or discarded for the next cool thing. My opinion on the topic is as shown above and if I had to make any summarization of the topic of motion gaming as it presently is, it would probably go like the following sentence. Motion gaming is a very interesting idea that has only touched upon how it can be properly used yet when something rises to prominence as fast as motion gaming did with the Wii it tends to fall and fade into the background just as fast. Because of this I don’t think we will see a completely proper application of motion gaming for a long while.
Contest:
7:30 PM on 08.03.2011 | 
To be fair, though, I think the only reason we haven't seen an influx of shovelware on the Move is because it simply didn't sell well enough to warrant the ports. Sure, Killzone, Resistance and SOCOM are cool, but I have no doubt at all that if Move had sold as many units as Kinect, the Wii shovelware makers would have ported ALL their games to it...
I disagree with you, because I really think that, given enough time, motion controls could expand in their own way to be unique experiences which use the controls forced upon the player to craft a unique experience. Fruit Ninja Kinect, for example, has me EAGER to buy a Kinect game just to try it out. It looks like a simple example of how a game could be done well with just solo gameplay in mind.
I mean, developmentally speaking, motion control is in its infancy. Whereas traditional gameplay has had years to grow alongside the controller, developers have only had a few years to try to figure out what works. I'm hoping that they can craft compelling gameplay experiences that do not require a controller, since that means they've finally really understood the way it changes gaming for players and have developed something that people can enjoy using just this new technology.
But mostly, I want the next iteration of Kinect or Move or Wii to let me have 1:1 scale lightsaber battles against my friends, footwork included. If they can do that, they'll accomplish something far more awesome than controllers could ever capture.
i think all three companies could use a good kick in the butt to get their heads back in the present. all are trying so hard to be the "future" of gaming, they seem to be overlooking their current consumers and just guessing at what we want. i'm not counting the wii, they got that right (it was basically a step backwards (or sideways) as far as software and game types). but the wii u... idk about that one.
I still need to pick up Move. Lots of games I want are starting to support it.
If more companies take advantage of things like that...more power to 'em.
Motion controls have been around for years just like 3D but now we have the technology to perfect it. A lot of people see them as gimmicks (I don't mind them but don't want to be forced to use it like Lair). I do think a good developer could make some epic out of it but I wouldn't call motion controls the future of gaming.
Motion control is far less precise, far harder to implement, and seems to work best for most developers when integrated as a shaking motion. A good developer can make it do amazing things, but it requires much more calibration than buttons, analogs, or mice.
And the kinect expanding (rather being better than the intended use) other than games is not a bad foreshadow, it's evolution. Seeing the hacks overstepping boundaries <i>without the company going apeshit throwing lawsuits at the consumer</i> is a good sign of times that we can modify our own products to our wills and not of the instruction booklet. Having the ability to cheaply control a student-made robot with a camera in another room sparks new possibilities and creates a game of itself outside of a screen.
However, I don't think Sony is doing motion control right by keeping it as an alternative. Both the Wii and the Kinect have shown that motion control only succeeds when a game is built that way from the ground up.
It's tough to categorize the companies as Good, Bad and Ugly with regards to motion control. I think it would've been better to categorize different aspects of motion control as the GB&U.
Good blog post. I'm sure it will spur much discussion.
@basstomouth guess you havnt used the move with the sharpshooter playing killzone, mag or socom? While using the controller is always the best route, its kind of hard going back to using it when the sharpshooter adds SO much more to the experience. (Especially with the over saturation of them.)
I'd have to say Nintendo has proven themselves the best at this point, probably because their motion control has been around the longest. But I'd also argue that it's because with most of their "better" games, motion control is essentially another button on the controller.
Now whether Kinect does that successfully or not is a matter of opinion, but I believe given time, some creative person will bring out something that will blow our minds.
I don't understand what's wrong with having motion controls as optional as in the Move's case. If they were tacked on and added nothing, sure berate them. In most cases though they're providing a responsive and engaging experience so I really don't see how that's a bad thing. Developers don't have to gamble on making a game for a peripheral while more gamers who aren't comfortable with standard dual-analog controls don't have to miss out on the blockbuster shooters. Win-win. Honestly, the more options we have, the better.
Good Sony
sony is good because they tackled on Move controls into their core games, really?!
"Move isn’t being relegated to silly party games or stuff the common gamer might consider shovel ware"
i'm sorry what?! name me one Move exclusive title that IS NOT a shovelware OR party game - THERE IS NONE.
i'm sorry, but the fact that the only fairly decent titles that use move are those that use it as an alternative control scheme makes a complete failure. what's the point of getting Move if all supposedly good games for it were designed for normal controller and with Move controls as an afterthought
Bad Microsoft
first, you're mentioning how Kinect doesn't work comparing it to device that failed even though it works better than Move(frankly there were some Move exclusive titles that didn't work with Move like sony's launch line-up).
"I would say that Kinect is the Sega Activator except with potential but even that might be a stretch because at least the Activator had the foresight to include methods of character movement into it"
Rise of Nightmares the First Person Brawler with FREE MOVEMENT says hi.
if you knew anything about voice commands you would know that Ubisoft had to make specific voice recognition engine to work on top of the game, record all the words,input them into an engine and finally program the game to connect the words said by player with actions performed by the game. Kinect is doing every single thing since it has build it voice recognition engine with several thousands of words programmed into it and easy tool to build voice recognition into games via Kinect in Kinect's SDK. so basically it takes months to build and program voice recognition via headset while it takes like 5 minutes to do it via Kinect.
and i'm sorry, but how Kinect fails because it's not complimentary control scheme when Kinect games that were designed for Kinect are either impossible to make for controller or would take all of the fun from the game. show me how controller would work with Dance Central or how it would be fun to play Gunstringer with controller cause there would be none. not to mention MS is building exclusive Kinect game modes and features in their core games like Forza which IS THE RIGHT WAY - create new experiences impossible to recreate on standard control scheme and add unique features to standard core titles.
Kinect being complimentary to normal controller in Child of Eden?! i'm sorry have you even played this game?
Ugly Nintendo
so much wrong i don't even.
"Yet when you look at the Wii’s library and look at the lack of good Wii games beyond Nintendo’s first party lineup it’s hard to call it anything but ugly."
Trauma Center series, light gun games(HotD, RE games), Muramasa, Silent Hill SM, Rune Factory, Tiger Woods games, Shaun White games, De Blob series, Elebits, Grand Slam Tennis, Boy and his Blob, Boom Blox series, Zack & Wiki, No More Heroes series and many more, say hi.
if you ever played Wii Music you would now it's pretty amazing music creation program - that's frankly praised by many musicians.
i'm sorry but you sound like all those idiots that bash everything related to motion games and motion gaming for being related to motion gaming without even trying those games.
plus, you bashing motion controls as bad for gaming and mentioning Apple crap as a good thing is complete fail.
How dare I insult Sofik's one true god
i think you should learn how to write good articles/blogs before.
I think you should learn what an opinion piece is before you ever talk again. How long is it going to take before you realize almost nobody on Destructoid likes you and that you're just a blatantly blind Microsoft fanboy? The depths of your predictability are utterly mind blowing.
opinion piece? i'm sorry, but you flat out lied and it is clear you're sony fanboy.
yes or no, no other text.
Nintendo is most definitely the ugly. Not only does it have 10921912039 shovelware games (as walking into any Gamestop will prove), it's got graphics that are worse than the PS2 had in the middle of the system life.
And Kinect? Let's just say that I sold mine a few months after buying it, after it sat in my room (which I don't have enough space to play it in). I cleared 6 feet of room, but I'd need to remove my bed just to fit my 6'5" of height in the view of the camera. (And that's after stacking it on top of my PS3, which is around chest height on me).
While I see your logic in putting Sony as the only good motion control, the thing is, I don't see it doing anything really different than Nintendo has done. In fact, I think they've done less. The Wii has plenty of satisfying games that use motion control, I personally have about 10 hardcore Wii games, and only one doesn't use motion control. Do they have mind-blowingly good graphics? No. Does it matter to me? No. Should it matter to all other gamers? That's a whole different topic altogether. The only thing I'll say about that is the misconception about the Wii's horsepower is annoying.
Sony hasn't done really much of anything with motion gaming. They've slapped it on a few games like KillZone 3, but that's about it. They're more in Ninty's shadow than anything else.
Not many game developers have utilized motion control as a proper way to game. That I think is unanimous.
My only problem with motion control is I find so frequently the Goddamned controls don't work. My Kinect routinely ignores my very existence, and the Wii remote is hell-bent on not registering whatever nonsensical flail the game requires.
I play games to relax and have fun, the very least they can do is respond to the actions I'm doing. I press a button, boom, action happens. Not so much luck with motion controls.