Speaking of the Xbox 360, Microsoft announced today something called “Project Natal” (no, you see, it’s not pronounced like a “neonatal” baby, but like the name “Natalia” without the “ia,” and it’s totally not a terrible name, and I’m not a bad marketer, don’t fire me Mr. Ballmer, please). It uses a camera-based motion capture system and voice recognition to allow people to play games without any controller whatsoever.
I mentioned on Twitter what I think the problem is, but because 140 characters isn’t enough to fully explain what I mean, I’ll now do so. In case some technological something-or-other is preventing you from watching the video, it features a series of people playing hypothetical games, including a fighting game where you (as in, you, the physical person) throw real punches and kicks, a racing game where you turn an imaginary steering wheel, a skateboarding game where you ride an imaginary skateboard, and other such marvels of techno-wowity.
Some of these demos look very interesting. I like the trivia game, where you pound your hand as if it’s a game show buzzer, and the gesture and voice-based interfaces are nice. I also like the ability to scan images you hold up to the camera (I don’t see how the camera could have scanned through that kid’s hand on the back of the skateboard, but it’s a proof-of-concept movie, so whatev). Everything else, though, is terribly misguided. Let’s ignore skepticism that the motion sensing works perfectly, because I’m never one to doubt what technology is capable of. Let’s also assume every Xbox 360 owner has enough space and lack of coffee table in front of their TV. Let’s talk about the inherent problem with the idea in general.
Do you have a small object next to you? Let’s say a pen. Don’t touch that pen. Instead, imagine there’s another pen about five feet away from it. An invisible pen made of air. Put your fingers around it and pick it up. Hold it in your fingers. Write with it. Now do the same thing with the real pen.
Notice how picking up and writing with the real pen caused your fingers to behave completely differently than picking up the imaginary one. You know why? Because there was nothing in between your fingers. It didn’t even feel like there was anything between your fingers. In fact, wasn’t it a little difficult to keep your fingers from moving closer or further away from one another because nothing was in between them?
We’ve already seen what this causes on the Nintendo Wii. Have you ever played Mario Kart Wii? You know, the one where you hold a remote control as if it’s a steering wheel? How about this, have you tried driving a car? You know how it becomes slightly harder to turn the steering wheel when it becomes more difficult for the actual car wheels to turn? You see, the thing about pretending a remote control is a steering wheel is that you don’t get that tightening of the steering wheel. Not even when you put the remote in a plastic steering-wheel enclosure does it feel like it’s attached to an actual steering column. This literal sense of detachment makes driving feel awkward, and I can only imagine it would be worse when you’re holding absolutely nothing.
This is a problem for just about every one of those hypothetical games. Especially that skateboarding demo; it’s laughable how many problems it would have.
Project Natal is, in all ways, Microsoft’s answer to the Nintendo Wii. It has a stupid sounding name which will totally not be stupid in a year if they keep saying it, it’s being marketed to people who have never considered playing a game before, and it has a wide variety of problems related to its lack of haptic feedback. With Natal, Microsoft has improved upon everything the Wii does right and fixed none of its problems. To be fair, I’m not sure at the moment how one would fix these problems in a Natal-like system with currently available technology. Regardless, its mere existence in this form makes it feel like it was conceived by a bunch of really stupid marketers. Which, judging by the name, is probably true.
Second Thoughts: Natal Has Great Potential For Both Awesomeness and Shovelware
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.