Why Gaming Sucks: Motion Controls
Ladies and gentlemen, I’m unsure if you’re aware of this, but The Future (with intended capitalization!) is finally upon us! I now have no doubt that we are mere years away from floating cities, flying cars, jetpacks, and everything else the 1950’s promised we’d have decades ago! Why am I so sure? Two words: Motion. Gaming.
But sir, you’re undoubtedly asking, what is motion gaming? How’d it come to be? To which, if I can answer properly, I must respond by going on a little history lesson. Going all the way back to the dark days of November, 2006, and the release of the Nintendo Wii. At the end of the last gaming generation, with the three-headed monster that was the Xbox, the Playstation 2, and the Gamecube all fighting each other for supremacy in the video game market, there were clear winners and losers within this struggle.
Specifically, Nintendo lost. Hard. Despite being a household name for over a decade, Nintendo’s little purple box managed to undersell both the Playstation 2 (which was, granted, a juggernaut of it’s time), but also surprisingly the Xbox, Microsoft’s out-of-left-field gambit into the video game arena. Though I can’t prove it, I’m sure much seppuku was being committed at the Nintendo head offices in Japan. They knew that, unless something drastic was done, the once great Nintendo brand would forever trail behind the new faces of gaming hardware. Well, something drastic they did in fact do. That drastic solution? Motion Gaming.
Poor Gamecube, not even a handle could save you
Fast-forward four years later, and every last asshole on the planet and their grandmother knows what the Nintendo Wii is, and likely even owns one themselves. That innocuous little white box has outsold both the Xbox 360 and the PS3, with nearly twice as many Wiis sold as either competitor. Christ. And it all started because a Nintendo engineer had the kitschy idea that “hey, what if you could move the controller around and that did something in-game!?”
So they sold the idea of motion-controlled gaming, where instead of using a myriad of buttons, you could just move the controller around as if you were actually performing the actions on screen! Which, admittedly, sounds cool. And I, like everyone else, bought into this idea.
So…is it a TV remote?
There’s only one problem: it doesn’t fucking work. At least, not in the way the masses originally envisioned. I had vivid ideas of using my controller as if it was a real sword or shield, and that every movement of the controller would be 1-to-1 a movement of the sword itself, and that I could come as close as I ever would to cutting down fools in the comfort of my own home! But you know what the reality of the situation was? You’d jiggle the remote, and an action would occur (usually, it sometimes didn’t work). To call it a letdown would be a vast fucking understatement.
These guys totally “get” motion gaming
But this hasn’t stopped the business guys over at Sony and Microsoft from seeing the insane hardware sales Nintendo’s had, and going “Holy shit we need in on this!” So let’s give a warm welcome, boys and girls, to the Playstation Move and Microsoft’s Kinect!
Let’s start the tirade with the Playstation Move. First of all, it looks more-or-less exactly like the Wii’s controller, except with the addition of an odd glow-ball on top. It’s supposed to be far more responsive and with more fidelity than the Wii, and hell with four years of technological development since it came out one should hope the technology’s improved.
What really irks me about the Move though is just how blatant Sony is with the “me too!” mentality of this product. I know video games are a business, and business guys are allowed and even encouraged to “appropriate” ideas from competitors, but…I don’t know at least slap a couple extra stickers on your controller so it doesn’t look like you just stole a Wiimote and taped a rubber ball on top of it.
Coloured balls. Speaks for itself, really
Well, that and it’s fucking price are my problems with the Move. It only costs $50!…for one controller! Even though most games ask that you use two to fully utilize the movement controls! Plus you need to buy the $40 Playstation Eye camera! Oh, and some games require a secondary controller for an additional $40-$50 dollars! So if one wants to fully enjoy the Playstation Move, they’re going to need to drop roughly two hundred dollars. Fuck.
But the Playstation Move looks like a damn work of art compared to Microsoft’s Kinect. So, what is Kinect, then? It’s the goddamn future that’s what. You place the Kinect tool in front or on top of your TV, throw your Xbox controllers out the bloody window, and prepare yourself for controller-free gaming! What the Kinect, which is essentially a system of cameras linked up to the 360, does is determine your body motions and use them as controls for the action on screen, with apparently no time-lag between your movement and the movement on screen. If you’ve ever seen Minority Report, then you get the basic idea.
I…I think it’s looking at me
Super fucking cool, right? Well, except for a few tiny details. For one, it’s going to cost $150, which for your average broke-ass student is well out of their (my) price range. There’s also the strange question that, how exactly are you supposed to swing a sword, shoot a gun, generally walk around, you know the things you do in every videogame, if you’re just standing in front of a damn camera? Microsoft’s lack of an answer for this is visibly apparent if you look at the release list for the Kinect, as everything is either a minigame collection or a dance game. Don’t get me wrong I love krumping as much as the next man, but not when I’m alone in my room. People need to witness my dancing.
Though it seems Microsoft already solved that last problem for me, by way of my third and by far largest issue with the Kinect. You need to be at least EIGHT FEET AWAY from the camera for it to fully recognize your body and hence work. Thus, if you don’t have your TV set-up in an open living room, with at least eight feet between you and the camera, than good-fucking-luck getting the Kinect to work. Man, I live in a damn basement suite, there isn’t eight feet of uninterrupted space in the whole goddamn house!
Jeez, that guy’s fake drawn room is bigger than my entire house
So, there you have it. The future of gaming! It’s going to involve either waggling around a dildo-shaped controller (either with or without a colourful ball taped to its front), or revolve around dancing eight feet away from your television. Fuck, isn’t the future grand?
