Logic is a curious thing. When a selection of people are given an
identical puzzle, the chances of them all resolving it in the same way
is virtually nil. Several might not be able to get their heads around
it at all, whereas others will be working towards a solution within
seconds.
A frequently cited complaint amongst non-gamers as to why they
choose not to participate in the medium is because it seems too
complicated. Gamers retort that practice makes perfect, but this isn't
entirely true: for many people, the process of pressing buttons (let
alone combinations) on a controller to invoke specific actions from an
avatar on-screen that all of us take for granted, seems to them
unrelated and illogical. Why does one button make the character do one
thing and another something else?
This is why simpler games, which only involve inputs from one or two buttons, are often the most popular. Two-dimensional Mario games, for example, are the quintessential example of being easy to pick up but difficult to master. Members of my family who have never had much interest in gaming pick up early Mario titles without any trouble outside the first few minutes when they're still getting used to where the jump and run buttons are.
After that,
they have all the skills that I have after twenty years of gaming,
albeit with a few rough edges (timing jumps and whatnot) that
experience quickly irons out. For us regular gamers, picking up any
controller feels second nature and with a glance, we are able to move
our thumbs to the right buttons without a thought. For non-gamers who
have difficulty making the leap between button input and on-screen
action, these are all things they have to memorise and the more things
they have to remember, the more unnatural and frustrating the
experience becomes.
But remembering where the buttons are and what they do is only part
of the problem. There's also the issue of when is the right time to
press those buttons and what effect they will have on the world. If
controller difficulties can be partially resolved through memory and
training, applying those inputs to the context of the worlds on-screen
presents a whole new range of questions. Where gamers know to look for
certain visual cues from years of experience, the non-gamer will not
see them because they can only contextualise the in-game logic through
their experience of real-world logic.
How do you know when to press an
'action' button and what action it will have? Maybe I want an action
button to do one thing, yet it either ignores the input or does
something else. Even in a well-made game with clearly defined rules,
these issues which gamers feel no need to question become sources of
puzzlement for those not fluent in the lingo. I tried introducing my
grandmother to New Super Mario Bros Wii, but she found it
impossible to decypher the meaning of many of the in-game objects:
which blocks can be smashed? Which objects are enemies and which are
items? Simple as it seems to us, on an objective level there is little
to tell us to walk over the mushroom and avoid the goomba. Gamer logic
is ingrained in design and taken for granted more deeply than we can
imagine.
This isn't an argument to suggest that we should try to do away
with gamer logic. Any form of interactive play, be it a board game or
children fighting with sticks, requires a certain amount of imaginative
leaps of thinking in order to acquire and make sense of the rules.
However, I do think that if gaming is to achieve genuine recognition as
a cornerstone of expressive culture, it will need to rethink many of
the rules of design to make them more accessible to a greater number of
people.
Everyone reading this will probably have guessed that the Nintendo
Wii was going to crop up at some point. You saw 'motion controls' in
the title, the terms 'non-gamers' and 'accessible' in previous
paragraphs, and the result was obvious. But would someone not versed in
gaming culture have made that leap? There's no particularly deep point
to this little diversion, other than to reinforce how contextual and
arcane the concept of logic really is.
In fact, my train of thought on this subject was inspired by the
announcement of the Sony 'Move' controller. All reactions to it so far
have been based on price points, how responsive it is, the controllers'
aesthetic design and how the games demoed are mostly derivative of
experiences already available on the Wii. It occurred to me that none
of these things really matter in defining whether or not the device
will be embraced or not. Maybe price, but what I'm really interested in
is how people will react once the device is in their hands.
Because while most gamers have chosen to remember the Wii's lauch with a certain cynicism (in the same way the original Matrix film got 'reappraised' once the sequels were not well received), the truth is that there was quite a lot of excitement across the gaming community at the time. Messageboards were packed with people speculating about the new experiences motion controls could offer.
Most of them were
absurd, but the new control method was an idea people engaged with.
Microsoft might be the darling right now, but they and Sony were
subject to a fair bit of criticism at the time for simply offering a
tech upgrade. Time changes minds, but that's a whole other blog.
While Wii Sports is now looked back on as the demonic
destroyer of 'hardcore' (there's another term that has changed
definition several times over several console generations) gaming, it
was broadly deemed a success at launch (tennis, bowling and golf
anyway). Simple as the games were, gamers enjoyed being able to share
their hobby with their families and non-gaming friends. Reasons as to
the Wii's success veer between the unintimidating graphics to the
simplistic natures of the games on offer. Whatever the reason, it
certainly wasn't one compatible with the genres 'hardcore' gamers liked
to associate themselves with.
My feeling is that the Wii's success came because motion controls offered a means to overcome the difficulties of gaming logic. Wii Sports
is accessible because it replaced the difficulty of pressing a button
with a motion which can be logically associated with its action
on-screen. Swing the remote to swing your racket or golf club. No need
to remember where a button is, or have to overcome the question of why
one button does one thing and another elsewhere does something
different.
The only button inputs are simple enough to be no more
difficult than remembering the rules of a board game. As for their
being inapplicable to more mainstream genres, many of the minigames in Wii Play
are simplified versions of games that 'real' gamers play every day. In
a subtle way, Nintendo were training non-gamers in the basic functions
of more traditional genres: shooting range is a static FPS. Cow racing
teaches the basics of racing games. The sports games expand on what was
offered by Wii Sports. Tanks is a lesson in how to move a third-person avatar and shoot at the same time.
My theory as to the reason 'casual' games tend to succeed on the
console is because they continue Nintendo's work in providing new
gamers with a skillset that doesn't require overcoming the
complications of traditional gamer logic. In my experience, new gamers
haven't been too fussed about a game's controller not being 100%
responsive: as long as they can relate to the mechanics and the game is
fun, issues of lag or small imprecisions don't really matter, at least
at first.
Over time, many non-gamers I know have expressed a desire to try
more complex games, but the problem is that very few traditional game
developers have bothered to adapt their design to the new possibilities
and challenges of integrating motion control in an understandable way.
Even Nintendo games like Mario Galaxy have failed to utilise
the gestural aspects of its control scheme in a logical manner. When
motions do not relate to actions on-screen, they're no more help to
non-gamers than a traditional button-based controller.
I've had more success in bringing new gamers to Call of Duty on Wii because they can make more sense of aiming with the pointer and moving with the analogue stick, than having to work out the more inaccessible controls of Mario Galaxy. ExciteTruck and Mario Kart Wii work not because they're simple games, but because they build on the training non-gamers received in the racing part of Wii Play (the Wii Wheel, derided as it was, also provides them with an object that contextualises the controller so they hold it in the correct fashion).
New gamers are not
idiots who can only enjoy a game painted in primary colours and with no
more than one or two game mechanics. Their logic simply works
differently to ours and if you give them a way into a more complex
game, they will grasp it with as much enthusiasm as a traditional gamer
does with a controller.
If motion controls are to achieve their full potential, whether
made by Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft, developers will have to put
greater thought into what they want to achieve in integrating gestures
into their games and the changes in the way games are designed that
will inevitably come about as a result. Motion controls can offer
non-gamers a logical entry point into more complex genres without
alienating traditional gamers, who can benefit from the greater sense
of immersion that well-integrated gestures can offer: having recently
returned at a friend's house to twin analogue stick FPS controls for
the first time since swapping them for Wii pointer aiming, I was
shocked at how imprecise and clunky they felt.
As the technology improves, gamers will be more receptive to trying out these new experiences. Developers should also seize this opportunity to look at the way the content in their game is designed: puzzles that can be solved using logic independent of the gaming mindset not only broadens the potential audience, but also means that players can be left to devise solutions on their own without immersion-breaking signposting, creating a more self-sustaining and confident experience.
There is no reason to continue thinking about 'casual' and 'hardcore' gamers and games as independent of one another, when each has design lessons to teach the other that can lead to more accessible, immersive and enjoyable experiences for all, with motion controls bridging the divide.