When we were at school, the debating team was the somewhere near the bottom of the social hierarchy, sitting just above the chess team and just below the orienteering club. Fortunately for us, PALGN is a sanctuary for opinionated and socially inept semi-humans, so we can debate all the important issues here in a wedgie-free environment. Just this week debates have raged thick and fast in the office on a number of thrilling topics such as who was the better Buffy, Kristy Swanson or Sarah Michelle Gellar, whether berets are in or out this spring, and who should get to eat the last Sunny Boy from the freezer. That was before Jeremy, our evil overlord, crawled out of his cave, snatched it away with a snarl, and dragged it back with him.
So we’ve decided that instead of wasting our time arguing with each other and not working, we’ve come up with the brilliant idea to make arguing part of our work. Hooray for nerd logic! So it gives us great pleasure to welcome you to the inaugural Us Versus Them. At the end of the debate, you – the dear reader – will be given the opportunity to vote for the winner. However, please don’t vote according to your pre-existing opinions... instead vote on who you think had the better argument, even if you don’t necessarily agree. So let’s introduce the topic.
Sony's EyePet...not at all freaky.
Motion control: a fad or the future?
Jason and Jeremy will be arguing that motion control is a fad, and Adam and Michael will be arguing that it's the future of gaming. Each writer gets just 300 words and doesn’t need to respond to the previous writer and doesn't need to make sense (we need to keep it consistent with our real-life arguments!).
Let's begin with the first speaker of the team opposing motion control.
Jason – PALGN’s cranky old fart
Remember the Nintendo Power Glove? Neither do I. The Wii, Project Natal and that creepy Sony Eye Pet will soon descend to the same part of Hell reserved for motion control fads.
Every time I think I should be exercising, I sit down and play videogames until the feeling passes. However, my right to be fat and lazy is being undermined by every bandwagon-chasing game developer who makes a game that requires some sort of physical effort to play. Now I’m all for the do-gooders fighting to crush the obesity epidemic and to encourage kiddies to get some fresh air. However, I object to them trying to make traditionally passive forms of entertainment – like videogames – feel like exercise.
When I get home from a hard day of sitting idle in front of my work computer, I want nothing more than to sit idle in front of my TV. I don’t want to dance, jump up and down on a fitness board, or wiggle my digits like a dyslectic centipede to play a game. Similarly, if I want to listen to music I shouldn’t have to run on a treadmill to make the CD spin, and I shouldn’t have to do 10 push-ups before I'm allowed to see the latest Harry Potter film. If you want to exercise, go outside like a normal person and leave me and my bed sores out of it. Don’t force me to exercise to play videogames; I might spill my beer.
Next up, the first speaker of the team for motion control.
Michael K – PALGN's visionary
I have always been in favour of the cold, hard, incontrovertible truth. Cold hard facts, the colder and harder, the better. So here it is, ladies and gentlemen:
Motion control, as an input method, is here to stay; and it’s only going to get better from here on out.
I have heard all of the complaints, and heard them loud from the unwashed throng. ‘My arms get tired,’ they say. ‘I play games to relax, not to work-out,’ they cry. My least-favourite criticism, however, is the good ol’ fashioned one: ‘Motion controls are just a gimmick, and will never be as good as a traditional controller.’
Now let’s stop and think about motion controls in their proper context. Outside of a few, long-forgotten peripherals, the current wave of gesture-based input devices began with the Wii remote. Sure, it was crude and there are only a few scant games which make good on the immersion and entertainment that motion controls promise, but these are early days, my fellow gamers. Remember the time when ‘traditional controllers’ were nothing but a single joystick protruding from a crude block?
I for one like to think of the Wii remote as prehistoric man, scratching his overhanging brow and communicating with farts and grunts. Following him along the evolutionary train-track would be the Wii remote with the Wii MotionPlus peripheral, and then perhaps Microsoft’s Project Natal and Sony’s… thing, who have all learned how to cook their food over fire are but still bludgeoning each other on the head with clubs.
My point is, gamers need to give motion controls proper time to evolve. Sure, they look a bit inbred and Cro-Magnon right now, but is there any reason not to think that they won’t one day look like the pinnacle of evolution, with bronzed pectorals and oversized brains?
Project Natal - makes you dance like MC Hammer.
Next up, the last speaker of the team against motion control (and no more talk of cavemen or pectorals, hopefully).
Jeremy – PALGN's overlord
Firstly, not everyone has enough room to swing a cat, let alone them and three of their mates to play bowling or table tennis. But then, isn’t it better to actually just go bowling? At the moment, I’ve only got enough space for a 24 inch monitor, so there is no chance on god’s green Earth that my three mistresses and I could have any fun playing Wii Sports. And none of them will pay for the extra equipment either! The PALGN cash reserves aren’t endless you know.
And another thing. Sure, it’s given us new ways to play, but have the games really played any better? Sure, they’re still experimenting with the possibilities and working out the kinks. However, in two and a half years of the Wii being available, the best games are the ones that stuck to something of a traditional set up, as well as Wii Sports, Fit and Play. While Motion Plus does a fantastic job of recreating one-to-one motion replication, I don't see how this is going to improve a JRPG or an action-adventure game. The worst thing that has come with motion control is that it has thrown a red rag in front of developers and now publishers to simply slap some waggle and toss it out there without regard for anything other than their bottom line.
Motion control is a great thing to crack out at parties, but once the dust has settled and the bodily fluids have dried, you’re going to be back playing something with a traditional controller.
Finally, the last speaker of the team for motion control.
Adam - PALGN's bad rash
I don’t think anyone truly expects standard input controllers to completely disappear anytime soon. Of course some people just want to collapse on the couch when they get home and have nothing more taxing to do than waggle their thumbs as they decapitate their closest friends in online matches. Motion control is simply presenting a different way of interacting with both our games and games consoles. It’s not necessarily going to replace traditional controllers, but rather co-exist alongside them as the technology evolves.
For instance, I believe the success of Project Natal won’t lie in sticking your arms out with a pretend steering wheel made of thin air, but in the more practical and actually non-gaming oriented applications shown, like it instantly logging your profile in as soon as you enter the room. As a multimedia system, the Xbox 360 could present owners with new and sensible ways to organise and access their media content like photos, music and videos.
In terms of gaming, devices like the Wii, its eventual and most likely identical successor, and Sony’s Glowy Ball Wand present what gamers really need which is physical feedback. You need to be holding something whether it’s a Wiimote or a crystal ball of psychic fortune on a stick.
However, beyond the technology, what matters most are the games that take advantage of them. Of course, the most popular games on the Wii are party mini-game titles, but so far the Wii has largely relied on imprecise waggle. With the MotionPlus and Sony’s Mood Ball Pole promising 1:1 tracking, it’s up to the developers to provide new spins on old genres and take our immersion in games to a whole new level. Just as it took Super Mario 64 to perfect the analogue stick, we need a revolutionary game to legitimise motion control as a viable control method.
It's time to vote! Who had the best argument?
Loading...
