Tag Archive for 'games'

On Monday, I dismissed Microsoft’s Project Natal’s possibility to be the most revolutionary thing since sliced clichés, saying it was little more than both the good and bad qualities of the Wii taken to the extreme. On reflection, I’ve come to an interesting realization: my assumption that Natal was thought up by stupid marketers was a reaction to the fact that it was stupidly marketed.

The video which played the role of Project Natal’s big reveal featured many awful, awful uses of the technology, each doomed to failure without any haptic feedback: the discomfort caused by holding an imaginary steering wheel and hovering your foot over an imaginary gas pedal would be intense; throwing punches at an imaginary man (and getting occasionally punched back) would instantly de-immerse the player when a blow connects, changing the position of their avatar’s limbs but not theirs; jumping on an imaginary skateboard will do a better job of knocking fragile objects off shelves than conveying a crucial sense of balance. While not as important when using a gamepad, you need haptic feedback, not just visual, when the controls are haptic — no edges of mirrors or clashes of zenos can compensate anymore.

Where Natal will succeed is outside of classic “action” gameplay. That trivia game concept, for instance, could work quite nicely with Natal. And Milo (featured in this article’s video) is pretty self-explanatory. The technology to feel imaginary objects and experience imaginary changes in balance doesn’t exist yet (that I’ve heard of), but it’s not important in these types of games. Games in which a player is supposed to be moving fast, holding objects that weigh anything, getting jostled around, and similar physical things are not suitable for Natal. They will be fun until the novelty factor wears off, which won’t take long.

In a way, this is a good thing; while nothing is inherently wrong with video games focused on fast action and/or violence, the market is oversaturated with them. That’s not to say 99% of recent games are twitch-actiony (and sometimes violent, because that’s a compelling reason for fast action), just 99% of recent character-driven games. There are a lot of recent games which don’t focus on the player’s reflexes, but most don’t give the player very deep control of a character; they cast the player as an invisible “controller” or, rarely, simplify the player’s control of their single character. With Natal, though, game designers can allow the player to inhabit every aspect of a character’s body. The limitations come from physical space, as walking away from (or into) the screen is impossible and long periods of manipulating imaginary objects can be awkward and uncomfortable (in case I haven’t made the latter clear, pretend you’re riding a subway train and grab onto an imaginary bar overhead for ten minutes; stop beforehand when your arm gets tired). These limitations make these action games impossible to Natalize in an enjoyable way, so the only way to take advantage of its new capabilities is with new, fresh types of games. Milo is a very good example.

That’s not to say people won’t try to make Natal-based fighting games and racing games, and that’s not to say they won’t pass the farce that is Quality Assurance and make their way to store shelves. Those games will just quickly fall into the bargain bin and get terrible reviews. Meanwhile, people with actual talent will bring us games that don’t try to fight against Natal’s limitations, and turn out to be lots of fun.

The only thing that still concerns me is that there is still a distressingly low number of Wii games that use its motion sensors well, and a distressingly high number of games that still don’t get it. This is after three years, and those good Wii games still mix in some traditional control methods. Natal has zero traditional methods of control, so everything has to be rebuilt from the ground up. The potential for miserable failure by talentless hack developers forever set in the ways of their more skilled predecessors is even higher, and even veteran designers may have some trouble coming to terms with the fact that this thing is not good for first-person shooters.

For that reason, I see Sony’s motion control effort as being more successful, at least in the next several years. While it can only track two hands and doesn’t appear to recognize facial expressions, the player still has buttons to press, and still has something physical to hold. This is a much better way of adding motion-sensing to traditional action games; it could be used mostly for positioning, with much of the long-distance movement and object manipulation — which would be awkward for Natal — being controlled by buttons and analog sticks. This is nice because there will always be a place for video games about fighting, running, and/or jumping; they’re fun, they relieve stress (which, for violent games, is synonymous with the desire to partake in their real-world equivalents), and they speak to the primal instinct that all animals — a group which humans belong to, don’t forget — have. At the same time, it may serve as a stepping stone for designers who may not have a good idea about how to make use of Natal.

But based on the current push for games to be released on the 360 and PS3 and play the same way (which is good, because distinct platforms do nothing but limit the number of people who can play a game), we’ll likely see some Natal-optimized controllers on the market.

By the way, “Project Natal” is still a terrible name, but it sounds like it’s eventually going to be changed to something more generic.