There's Nothing Casual About 'Casual Games'
This year's E3 has come and gone, and one of the overriding themes of the annual video game convention earlier this month was the use of motion controls in games to further immerse the player, but more importantly, to make games simpler, more intuitive, and less intimidating for "non-gamers." Nintendo entered this space several years ago with its monstrously popular Wii console, and both Microsoft and Sony debuted their camera-based systems last week. While each company's technology is impressive for its own reasons, the more significant trend to us is simply how physical games are becoming. For instance, Microsoft's presentation for its Project Natal motion system showed players driving cars, riding a skateboard, and painting pictures on a wall sans controller -- the player simply makes the appropriate physical movements with his or her body. Sony's presentation for its yet-unnamed motion technology was quite similar, with the same emphasis on physical movement as player input. Of course, the Nintendo Wii has been doing this for the last several years, and the company is further enhancing the Wii Remote's accuracy with 1:1 motion tracking through the use of add-on peripheral called Wii MotionPlus.
Even if we exclude all of the above technologies, though, there are games such as 'Guitar Hero' and 'Rock Band,' in which the player mimics playing musical instruments using fake guitars and drums. There's also a new skateboard-shaped controller for the upcoming 'Tony Hawk: Ride' that folks actually stand and move on to perform tricks with. And who can forget the surprising rise of fitness/workout games such as 'Wii Fit,' which has sold more copies (more than 15 million, if you're curious) than such heavy-hitters as 'Grand Theft Auto IV' and 'Halo 3' -- at a $90 price tag, to boot.
There's definitely some irony in the fact that playing video games -- an activity that's often associated with, well, being lazy -- is transforming into such a physical one. More traditional controller-based games aren't going anywhere anytime soon, and we can't wait to see what developers do with all this newfangled motion technology, but for the time being, we're pretty content sitting in our La-Z-Boys, controllers in hand.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jsams4131 said 4:39PM on 6-15-2009
I don't really see the point of the Tony Hawk skateboard if you could mimic motions with Natal
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Tom said 2:28PM on 6-16-2009
Eh. I don't consider casual games to be real games at all. Often times they lack challenge, plot, and good gameplay mechanics. Working out, sadly, is not playing a video game. It's just working out.
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