Why do you care? Are you a Nintendo stockholder? We're part of the "arcane cult" so why should any of us give a **** about non-gamers? This isn't world peace it's just videogames. It's just consumers wanting to be satisfied.
Yeah and it's about more consumers than just you and me. That being said, I for one welcome our new gamer overlords.
This comes up a lot when discussing the Wii and I guess that should be expected since Nintendo emphasizes their business model so much. It's always "well non-gamers need this." And I should give a **** why? I supported Nintendo for 20 years. I played a role in keeping them afloat during the rocky years. I played a role in making them a successful videogame company in the first place. Meanwhile the non-gamers were avoiding videogames because they were too lazy or too scared of technology to spend five minutes learning the basic controls of a game. So now I have to fight with imprecise waggle controls to accomodate them. Why should I accept this? Every interest has some required amount of effort to get into it and if you're not willing to put in the effort, tough ****. That's why there's Major League Baseball but no Major League T-Ball. I don't think videogame controls were ever intimidating to a point that the required effort was unreasonable.
Then it's time you get a 360. Not just because it's aimed at you but because it demonstrates how bad the button overload has become. Me, I have no problem with waggle controls, in fact I find them both precise and valid (never mind that some things just don't need to be precise, especially when you're simulating imprecise actions). Not only do they increase the immersion which core gamers harp on about, they also provide additional primary inputs. I'll elaborate: I group inputs into three classes, primary (you have a finger over them and can press them instantly), secondary (you have them next to your finger and can press them with a bit of delay) and tertiary (you have to shift your grip to reach them). I consider the analog stick clicking tertiary because exacting that force usually requires a grip shift. On the Wiimote + nunchuk setup your primary inputs are: a-stick, Z, A, B, shaking the Wiimote and shaking the nunchuk (if the game only knows shaking as a general movement, more if it reacts to directions), secondary inputs are the C button and the dpad and tertiary are plus, minus, 1 and 2. On a 360 controller the primary inputs are the analog stick, A, X, LT, RT, secondary are Y, LB, RB, tertiary are B (to me that's a tertiary input because of its position), LS, RS, dpad, start, back and the analog stick. That's five primary input "buttons" on the WM+N and four on the 360, plus the Wiimote can do pointing functionality which replaces the second analog stick of the 360 in some games (which would block two of the primary input buttons and turn all face buttons into tertiary inputs when used). The WM+N input also has more secondary controls if you use the dpad for four different functions. Only the tertiary functions are more numerous on the 360 controller (8 for the directional inputs if used like that plus 5 for the buttons) than on the Wiimote (4 in total). I don't count the home, power and guide buttons because these are not available to the games.
As a videogame fan we should really see gaming as an art form. So if a company is compromising their standard controller and thus potentially compromising any games that use that controller entirely for the purposes of attracting mass market consumers we should be bothered by that. It's no different to me than censorship or dumbing down difficulty or changing the core gameplay of an established series to make it more accessible. When Metroid fans complained that Metroid Fusion was too linear there were different opinions but no one who was okay with the more linear design used the arguement that it was acceptable because it would make the game more accessible to non-fans. In the past that was not considered acceptable.
The 360 showed me that I'd rather have my games be mindless fun than art. Art has too many stupid conotations that don't work for games. Besides, the Wiimote is not compromising anything, at least not moreso than any other controller. The other controllers have no pointing functionality which is a critical part of many PC games and already requires many compromises (e.g. autoaim) and they have a fixed button count rather than the ability to get however many gestures you need out of the Wiimote and Nunchuk (and that without ever taking any finger off the main buttons!). When arguing from a blank slate the Wiimote + Nunchuk is probably even a less compromised controller than the standard ones. Of course if you use the starting controller as your base anything except that controller is going to be a compromise but I'd like to see you explain that to a PC fanboy who will probably hit you over the head with the precision and button numbers offered by his preferred input devices.
I don't think Nintendo could make one controller that works for all games. Well maybe they could. I'll admit they're more creative than I am so maybe they could do it. But there never truly has been a universal controller. Some games need a mouse/trackball or a keyboard or a lightgun or steering wheel or a paddle controller or a motion controlled remote. The old standard is just something that works with the vast majority of games, but there will always be games that need something a little more specialized. And that's fine. The Wii's problem is that the specialized controller is being shoehorned into the role of a standard controller and it's not suitable for it. But Nintendo has a perfectly good traditional controller to use as a standard. They just have to promote it as more than an optional accessory and get third parties to use it.
The old controller doesn't work for anythig that's point and click based (at least not well) which includes entire GENRES. What does the Wiimote not work for? Games with too many tertiary functions? There's a good chance you could make those functions menu driven and not even lose any inputs.
If there was an option to bind jumping to a nunchuk shake in the CvJ control scheme B I'd be able to control it entirely using ONLY primary inputs. Currently the only secondary conrtrol I have to use is the C button which I find unwieldy and thus don't jump much. With a nunchuk shake it would be quicker to reach.
Topic: The Controller Topic (Read 3977 times)
