Wireless controllers don’t work, they just make things worse….

Having purchased a cheap Sony MOVE controller last week, I have completed my collection of ‘motion’ controllers for all the three home consoles. And having played with all three, I have arrived at my final conclusion which is that they’re all bollocks.

The problems are many, but the principle one is that all three controllers suffer from lag between the movement of your hand and the action in the game. This is a fundamental flaw that cannot be overcome at this time due to the tech not being good enough which is basically down to the fact that it’s in its infancy. But that’s something  that will be overcome in time over the next few generations. The real problem goes deeper than that.

How many of you like to play video games standing up? I’d wager not many (other than when you’re in the zone, pissed as a newt and about to shake your arse into your friends’ face as you beat them in a cup final on FIFA). Also, how many of you can continue to wave your arms and legs around for longer than 10/20 minutes before getting tired? Again. I’d wager not many of you.

The problem is that actually using the motion controllers is uncomfortable and they are physically tiring! Also, due to the positioning of the TV in most people’s living rooms, they often don’t give you a good view of the screen. In my opinion, motion controllers are flawed from a design point of view. And this means that many of the game developed for them are also flawed.

Let me give you just a touch of my experiences from each of the three wireless controllers.

Wii
I put Skyward Sword into the drive and was anticipating a milestone in the history of this once great series. Instead, I got a 10 year old looking game (nothing to do with the controller of course) that was almost unplayable due to the control system. A part of that is because Nintendo decided to make the basic control system shit – that never helps by the way! And secondly, they put a core mechanic in there whereby you have to go into a first person mode to ‘look for’ objectives that is controlled by the Wiimote. It’s horrendous. Completely unusable. This first generation of motion controllers cannot be used in first person – they just don’t work. First of all, it was constantly losing the central point, so I had to reset it almost every time I came into this mode. Secondly, the sensitivity was so bad that I couldn’t be precise with it. And thirdly, every time you touch the sides of the screen, it moves. I don’t want it to move, I was just checking out the bit at the side!

Horrible experience. And this was from one of Nintendo’s own top brands! So you can’t even accuse a 3^rd party of being shit.

PS3
Eyepet. Ok. So this title is hardly a game aimed at me. But I have two young children who would like it. It took about 2 minutes to confuse the fuck out of the game. First - touch the floor with the Move controller so that the game can register where your floor is. Ok. No problem. Second - shake your hand to make the eyepet move towards you… Shake your hand to make the eyepet walk towards you… Shake your hand to make the eyepet… “I AM SHAKING MY FUCKING HAND YOU STUPID BASTARD GAME!! NOTHING’S HAPPENING!!”

Xbox 360
So the Kinect has one obvious difference to the other two motion controllers in that is has no controller – ‘you are the controller’ as Microsoft love to say. It’s your hands and your body that translates interactivity into the game.

Ok, so I’m not going to choose a game to show Kinect in a bad light because I don’t need one. Just the configuration program is enough to prove my point. Stand in the spot shown on your screen. I can’t. My sofa’s in the way. Oh. So I stand as close to the sofa as I can. The Kinect accepts it. Then doesn’t. Then does, then doesn’t, then does, then doesn’t…. This continues for pretty much every single Kinect game there is. It loses you and re-finds you as often as traffic lights change on a street corner. You constantly have to ‘wave’ again… and again… and again so that it can find you. Then there’s the distance problem. Most people don’t have the space between the Kinect sensor and the sofa (as I don’t) so you’re often playing with your legs pressed right up to it which is uncomfortable. I know what you’re about to say –‘buy that Nikon Kinect sensor thingy that requires less space’. Yes. I already did that. It doesn’t work either. Actually, that’s not necessarily true. It does work better, but it has one fatal flaw – you have to stand SO close to the Kinect that you’re looking right down at the screen. My children – who are obviously much smaller than me - have to pretty much stand about 1 foot away from the screen in order for the sensor to see them!

As much as the Kinect tech excites me FAR more than the other motion controllers is spoiled by the he fact it doesn’t work. None of them work! Why on earth would anyone want to use a motion controller when the current 360 and PS3 wireless controllers are SO frigging good anyway!? They are! They work brilliantly, have almost perfect sensitivity and using your thumbs on them works like they’re an extension of your arm and hand. Apart from some slight tweaking which might make them even better in the future, they’re nigh on perfect.

Dumb me down.

So what’s really going on with these stupid motion controllers? Why were they invented in the first place? Seeing as they’re so bad at controlling games, which is, you know, what they were created for in the first place, why did they make them? Well. My own personal conspiracy theory goes something like this:

Gaming executives don’t play games. Gaming executives can’t play games. Gaming executives understand gamers in the same way that an average Joe understands a scientist talking about Higs Boson. So when the industry started to invite all these very clever executive marketing and sales people to join their companies, they struggled. Don’t get me wrong, these were brilliant people that could sell ice to the Eskimos as they say. But they didn’t understand games or ‘gaming’ or gamers.

So one days at Nintendo HQ, one of these clever S&M type bosses said “I can’t play any of these games. Those controller thingy’s are shit. Can you create me a new type of controller that even I could use? If I can use it, then anyone can use. That means the mass demographic can use it!”. The rest, as they say, is history.

That one moment at Nintendo towers in Japan changed the course of gaming history. And as is often the case with these things – i.e. when people who don’t really understand something attempt to change the thing they don’t understand – it all goes horribly wrong. Now, be aware that ‘wrong’ in the manner in which I am using it means ‘wrong for people who love and enjoy video games’. I don’t mean ‘wrong’ in a business sense. Because the fact is that motion controllers have made Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft millions upon millions of the stuff that they all love more than their own mothers. The sales stats for all three motion controllers are fantastic – there’s no denying that. The hidden ‘cost’ however, is that it was short termism and they turned their backs on the very people that had kept them – and the entire industry – in business: Gamers. You remember them right? The ones who consistently go out and buy all those games in the first place?

That’s right, in chasing the auntie and grandma dollar, they sold everyone else down the river. Motion controllers were designed to dumb down video games specifically so that those that didn’t play them would be able to. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love the idea that auntie’s and uncles and grandma’s are playing video games. I love it! But the truth is game controllers have reached such a height of design that they are at a point where they are almost perfect. And those executives who proclaimed that the mass demographic weren’t playing games because of those controllers were talking bollocks! I recently played host to eight nine year old boys at my son’s birthday party, all of whom were using the PS3 controllers like they were born with them in their small hands. I didn’t teach my son to use a controller (other than tell him which buttons to press to perform which actions). He did it all by himself, inspired by the sheer desire to play FIFA. He badgered me and badgered me – despite trying my best not to let him play games – until I gave in. Within one hour, he’d picked up the concept of the controller and was performing basic moves. Within two hours he was more than comfortable with that controller.

Six months later, he forced me to buy WWE All stars for him. And even though I played it for five minutes – and therefore didn’t teach him how to play – he picked up the moves and control mechanics all by his lonesome. Is my son a genius? No. he’s a bright kid, but not a genius. So how come he can learn to use the controller in minutes but grown adults couldn’t? I can’t answer that for sure. Perhaps those adults didn’t have the motivation? Perhaps the fact that none of them are gamers or people who even play games meant that they just never had that desire to learn? I can only guess.

Here’s another well-worn belief that is BS in my opinion: The mass market did NOT move to play games thanks to the motion controllers! Anyone who tells you that is talking bollocks. The mass market started playing games because games changed overnight to offer them something that they wanted. Where was Wii Sports on the Gamecube? Where was Dr Kawashima on the GBC? The answer is they weren’t. So the truth is that the mass demographic came to gaming not only because of the Wii motion controller but also because the controller perpetuated the need and creation of games that would appeal to that same demographic.

So! Are there any games that work better with a motion controller than with a gamepad? Yes. Of course there are. The fact remains that any game designed specifically with a principle platform in mind, works best on that platform. So games that were designed well will work well. Wii Sports, Just Dance, Michael Jackson – these games work perfectly on them. Most games don’t however. Because most of them weren’t designed in a clever way to take advantage of the controller – the controller was shoehorned in to a game design.

So where next for motion controllers? Well, they aren’t going away if that’s what you’re thinking. No. Too much time, effort and money has been spent on them and anyway, their financial success completely overrides any lack of critical attainment. Personally, I expect them to get better in the next gen consoles. The tech will improve, our understanding of them will improve and maybe, just maybe, by the time we have a 3^rd generation of motion controllers, they’ll be as usable as current gamepad controllers. So we’ll need to have a console ship with both (or a big promotional push). By that time, their complexity will rise - as is always the way with anything like this – they can’t stay the same – they have to evolve, get better and become more usable right? So by the time we reach a 4^th or 5^th generation of motion controllers, we’ll probably not need traditional game controllers anymore because they’ll mould into one. And at that point, some big shot studio executive at Nintendo will say ‘Hey! Those controllers are so complicated. I can’t use them. If I can’t use them then that means the mass market can’t use them either. Let’s design a whole new controller so that non gamers can play games too!’

And on that day my friends, you, the general public (and me, the mid-core gamer demographic) will buy them all over again in droves!