Virtual to Physical

Virtual Games Getting Physical

There is a trend for video games getting more interactive and immersive. From the development days of the Wii (or the Nintendo Revolution as it was known back then), I got excited for the possibility of actually being to have some sort of physical control. Jump forward to 2009, Nintendo is releasing the Wii motion plus controller which is a more accurate controller for movement. Microsoft is planning a camera motion sensing device known as Project Natal. This devices allows motion control without controllers just body movements and the camera. Sony has a similar product which is an enhancement of the eye toy. It's a camera with full motion capture and items are held to simulate game items.

Now we can have virtual bowling, basketball, tennis and sword fighting. Yahoo! Doesn't that get tiring though? Games of old were done solely on buttons. The fun part of games is that we could control a character and do so many different things by just pressing a button. Slashing an enemy, throwing them up in the air and blasting them while they fall down with dual pistols are extremely fun to do in Devil May Cry. What if these controls eventually required a motion control. You'd have to make slashing motion down then up then press the button on the controller rapidly. Cool right? Not unless you have to do that to several hundred enemies. You'd get tennis elbow or carpal tunnel ten times as fast.

I never really enjoyed playing complicated realistic sports games. I always thought that playing basketball is more fun in real life than playing a game of basketball (unless it's unrealistic where your players could do half court slam dunks in old basketball games). The next step would be to add immersion by requiring motion control. Playing any of the Wii sports games require motion and real physical exertion yet the game doesn't feel like the real thing cause there is no physical resistance when you hit a virtual ball. Certain groups of people will welcome motion controls as great since it allows them to exert effort and maybe even lose weight. Yet how much weight is actually lost carrying a very light controller and swinging it around?

I'm certain that games that just require a directional pad/joystick and buttons will never go away. The only thing I can't stand is when they make a perfectly good game and try to force in motion control. It's certainly fine if the game can have normal controllers and the motion controller is a bonus. It's also fine if the game can create a good motion control that fits well with the game. The bad thing, however, is when development teams try and waste their time in making motion controls when normal controls are sufficient. That will just cost them money and time that might impact the overall quality of the main game.

Will games be fun if in the future one actually has to walk in real life to move the character? How about jumping in real life to jump? What if it was a platformer with so many jumps required? What if you get tired? Game over?