The Game Mechanic – Gaming in Motion

Love it or hate it, motion gaming is quite clearly here to stay.  Is this a bad thing?  The short answer is, “no”.  The long answer is the rest of this article so PLEASE keep reading (for the sake of my self-esteem).

In recent years motion gaming has made a pretty huge comeback since Nintendo struck gold with the Nintendo Wii.  They weren’t the first to try it (see Le Stick and the Playstation EyeToy) but they were certainly the first to get it anywhere close to right.  I know the Wii picks up a lot of slack for being a system for casual gamers but what’s certain is that it played a huge part in putting the games industry where it is today with Sony and MS picking up on the motion gaming craze.  You may be asking, however, is that a good thing?

"F****ng n00b."

That’s an irritatingly broad question, reader. What is ‘good’ for the games industry?  Motion gaming has certainly brought in a lot of money since the inception of the Wii, but it’s also diluted the industry to a point with poorly made minigame collections flooding the market.  It’s also made gaming much more socially acceptable on a general level.  It’s hard for your gran to tell you you’re wasting your life on video games when she’s top of the family Dance Central leaderboards.  Then again many think this is a bad thing, as gaming has its roots in a form of escapism from everyday life for many of society’s castaways or people who simply don’t fit in.  Now it seems we feel offended at the idea of sharing our beloved hobby with the same people who mocked us and told us gaming was for children and we should grow up.  Strangely exclusionary considering the source.

I’m not here to talk about either of those types of issues, though, am I?  I’m the gaming mechanic.  I talk about game mechanic-y things and motion gaming certainly has an effect on the mechanics of a game.

I want to be positive this time, and I’m damn well going to be.  Motion gaming could be a great augmentation to the games we already love and in so many different ways.  ‘Hardcore’ games are already starting to sport optional motion controls like having your voice replace the ‘use’ button in Mass Effect 3 or swinging your arm to throw grenades in Halo Anniversary.  I simply don’t believe anyone has ever done either of those things and not, at the very least, thought, “that was cool”.  If actually speaking to your favourite Mass Effect character and having them respond didn’t make you smile then get out of my office and back to the graveyard for you are a walking corpse.

Zerg rush.

But what else could motion controls bring to console gaming?  Well for a start they make motion RTS gaming at least partially plausible.  Now that the 360 can make out individual fingers you could easily use them to select your troops and throw instructions at them and no doubt you could do the same with the PS Move.  Select with the right hand, move with the left hand.  Simple and effective.  At a stretch you could even replace hotkeys with voice commands but admittedly that’s a bit of a long shot and, as a Scotsman, you can lean on my experience of voice commands not working.

How about the ability to quickly say a teammate’s name and point to where you want them to go on the screen?  That’s a time-saver for games like Ghost Recon and slicker than using Mass Effect’s ‘time has frozen’ way of making commands less of a hassle.

What we need to NOT do is make more core games specifically built around motion devices.  In core games a lot of what’s important is immersion, and it’s difficult to create immersion when you’ve got the player standing in their living room swinging their limbs around like Mr Tickle on a night out.


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