eTech - Tom Armitage
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eTech notes and images from From Paddles to Pads. Is Controller Design Killing Creativity in Video Games?
Tom Armitage is neither a game designer nor an interaction designer, he’s just been an addicted player for 20 years. So he’s speaking about the consumer perspective. The gaming industry is very big. Bigger than Hollywood as it is often said.
Gaming has many problems. One of them is that games are repetitive. The industry knows they can make big money by just selling the same game (different versions of it) again and again and again. The new Nintendo Revolution Remote doesn’t promise to change only the way we play games but also change the game itself. Those who designed the controller shown below assume that you’ve already used a joypad before. The NES pad had four direction, it is pretty simple to use even if you’re not a gamer (from 1982 till 1990). Till the SNES pad the progression has been gentle. But if you skip one generation and didn’t follow the evolution, you’ll have some difficulties to adjust to the new generation. All current pads are pretty much the same.
Now if we have a look at handheld we can see that they are roughly identical to those from the past generations. It’s fairly easy to use them. But take the Xbox pad, if you’re not a gamer it’s quite scarry. The ergonomy is OK but the pad offers so much choice and you can’t concentrate on trying to find which is the button you should to press while keeping your eyes on the screen. Two quotes by Nolan Bushnell (Atari): “Complexity lost the gamer.� “People are interface phobic.� Which doesn’t mean that people hate interface (they have to deal with interfaces all the time in the everyday life), but we just like transparent interfaces.
Image of Alex, Tom Armitage’s girlfriend (she's first intrigued,, then puzzled and finally pissed.) Alex plays Halo but there’s too much to push, to much to do, plus she has to look at what’s going on on the screen. It is the controllers that are scarring people off. Current game pads are restrictive and we shouldn’t forget that gaming isn’t limited to the screen.
- Buzz says “play with other people.� Non threatening device.
- Donkey Konga: it’s a very rewarding game because your hands come into contact not with plastic but with what really feels like a drum. Very satisfying.
All of these controllers are very familiar items. They don’t say “game� but “sing�, “quizz�, or “make music.� Now take Guitar Hero: it has five buttons. £ buttons would be great because you wouldn’t have to move your hand then and this would make the experience much more easy. 5 buttons require a lot of dexterity. However, you can start low and feel your progression. You are also invited to strike fun poses. This says “Mess around�, play with the controller, take stupid poses, etc. Steel Battalion: very complex interfaces, loads of buttons. But this again tells a lot about the universe of the game. Having many buttons to press reminds of those movies in which we see the hero facing a complicated challenge, he’s on his spaceship/battleship and has to switch a lot of buttons to save the situation.
Halo: a first person shooter game that comes with a twin stick control. A game can also communicate about its style. For example Killer 7. It’s super weird, the graphics are not conventional and even the controls are mad.
Micro Machines 2 by Sega lets you have 8 people play at the same time. You can share a game pad between two people: one would handle the part on the left and the other the part on the right. And the fun begins. The aesthetic, ethic nature of the game should be conveyed in the design of the controllers. To create new ways of interacting we have to break from archetypes.
A left-handed person might have problems to manipulate the controller. The new Nintendo controller would solve the problem. The revolution comes from the nunchuck: if you want to swap the controls, all you have to do is just swap hands. It’s sad that gaming at home is so much restrained and controlled by those controllers. When a video game is represented on television, in comics, all they have to do is show the controller, and you don’t need to see what’s happening on the screen to understand it’s a home game. But games are so much more than controllers. |
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Tom Armitage presents his eTech conference talk on games controllers tonight at InSync in London. Read More
l'E3, grand-messe de l'industrie vidéoludique, s'est tenu la semaine dernière, et voyons ce qu'on a glané comme bonnes infos sans même y aller. D'abord, que la nouvelle nouvelle nouvelle génération de consoles de jeux, inaugurée par Microsoft... Read More
Great coverage Regine ... now get back to Europe! =P Have a save trip home and yes I agree. I miss europe, but then I am everywhere.
How can complexity be scarring people off, yet the sequal to Halo (fingered as being too complex) grosses higher than a blockbuster movie on opening days?
I am salivating over the Nintendo Revolution. I'm in game development, and am seriously considering grabbing a few friends, shelling out the $2k for the dev kit, and making home brew games!
Looks to be the most original thing in games since...?
I, personally, did not get into the PS1 and PS2 games because of the controllers, while the X-box controller was a better feel. Incidentally, both the Sony Dual Shock and the MS S Controller have the same amount of buttons, while the new X-Box 360 controller has the exact same layout as the Dual Shock's, except it's been redesigned. If Sony had moved the bottom two shoulder buttons further down and turned them into triggers (like the X360 controller), then I would've been playing PS games for awhile now.
Simply put, I remember playing Doom and Quake 2 on the PS1 and trying to use the Dual Shock was a chore, especially trying to acquire targets in a 3d playfield, and completely swore off FP shooters on the console. It took the X-box and it's controllers (although I played more with a similarly designed aftermarket controller by Pelican, which, looks as though the X360 is based off of) and the Halo games to reconsider FPS games on consoles again.
I don't think we're talking about scarring of current gamers, as I would assume that almost 100% of the people who bought Halo gamers. What I understood was that the gaming industry is huge, but that it could potentially be bigger if the industry was not scarring of potential customers with a complex interface which for the most part requires prior knowledge of it's workings to be anywhere near competent to be able to use.
The people playing KaraokeRevolution are not the same people playing Halo, and personally, I don't believe it's the game's content as much as it is the exclusivity of the market becuase of exactly what this article is pointing out.
Interesting - we shall see.
I've blogged this on my site at http://www.playstationteam.com
I have a comment at the fact that games make more money in their launch period. If I go to a movie, the movie sets me back about €5-8 (dunno in us, but it'll be pretty much te same I guess). When I buy a game I pay €50 (or even more for console games). Which is in worst case a price which is 10 times higher. Conclusion: there's a much bigger public for movies, because they make almost the same amout of money, with a price which is 10 time lower!
And I believe games are much more waited for. Most games are 2 to 3, maybe 4 years in development, while shooting a movie goes in under a year (I could be wrong, so don't shoot me). While lots of people know there will be a spiderman 3, almost every gamer knows Halo 3 is in development, and a majority of the gamers is waiting 2 years for this game to come out, and when it finally does, all these gamers are going to buy this game imediately.
Another thing: in 2003 the game industry made $13.9 billion and the movie industry made only $9.2 billion, but if you count $10 for a movie and $50 for a game, the movie attract 920million customers, while games only attract 278 million. I'm not debating about the price of games, which is fairly low in comparison with a 1.5 hour lasting movie, but if games are willing to be taken seriously, the market must grow, and I think, complecated controllers are a standing in its way...
@ Dave
The answer to that is simple: Halo 2 goes for $50 a pop on opening weekend, while a ticket for Spider-Man foes for $10 a pop. I'd wager that a few more than 2.38 million people went to see Spider Man when it debuted. In fact, given those numbers, it looks like roughly 4-5x more people went to see Spider Man than bought Halo 2.
I think people are missing the point with the numbers. Saying the game market is larger is a figure of market capitol not volume. If people bought 1,000 shares of stock at $2 you wouldnt say its larger than 500 shares at $50.
i dont buy the revenue thing. cinema has a much deeper source for cash. syndication. a movie can be a flop and still make tons of money, like seaworld which is still shown and making money in video and on air.
No matter what people say, I will always personally prefer a good videogame controller over a mouse and keyboard. A good controller, be it from Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, or Sega connects me more with the game than a mouse and keyboard. Good controllers, I feel, become an extension of your body almost, whereas a mouse and in particular, a keyboard doesn't have a distinct feel to it. You don't grasp a keyboard, it doesn't mold into your hands; yes, you can be very accurate with a mouse and keyboard, perhaps moreso in some genres, but the evolution of console controllers is fare more exciting in my mind. PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 will/are offering updated controllers, (and so far improved in the case of Xbox 360), and that's fine. But I'm really looking forward to Nintendo Revolution and it's controller setup; it'll be more than just a prettier GameCube, but will offer entire new ways to play games...very exciting.
Paul Gale
1up.com