Let's get down to it. Wii. Nintendo Wii. Do I like the name? No. Of course, I've never really liked any gaming name, not Playstation, not Nintendo 64, not XBox, not N.E.S. *shrug* Well, there was the Jaguar, but I DO have a black cat as a pet. Now for your opinion, do YOU like the name? Of course, that's a completely different question, one for the life of me I can't attempt to answer. For now though, let's ask another question that I can address with a perhaps little more surety:
Do I appreciate the name?
In that respect, my hat is definitely in the pro crowd. I like its difference, I like its humor, I like its versatility. I like its playfulness and I like its diminutiveness. And I like it as a console, too, and for those same reasons.
I mean, here is finally a name that breaks out of tech jargon. It isn't a Station. It isn't a Box. Heck, it isn't even a Cube! It simply isn't like any other concept of videogames that has come before: it's a revolutionary Wii. It attacks stereotypes of what games are and skips over boundaries about who plays them. It invites attention and discussion, but most of all exploration. It's an attention-getter, and a difference-definer, and I think we can all agree that it's already worked magic in those respects.
The name is playful. It sounds light and uncontrolled, not boxed in or cagey. Is it a squeal? Is it a statement? That's beside the point because the name is meant to be indefinable by conventional means. It sounds like a noun, or a pronoun, or an exclamation, and it truly can be all these things. It can be tossed around and played with, it can be inserted and joked about and punned. It's a name that's versatile and omnipresent, a name that's flexible and exuberant.
And it's a name that's shocking. It's short but stunning. It's simple but rich. It's high-brow and low-brow, or as Calvin would put it,
"A painting of a comic strip panel. Sophisticated irony. Philosophically challenging." It's like one of Shakespeare's plays: there's something for everyone. The common man can enjoy a straightforward pun, play with the childishness, and the careful observer can note its inclusive theme, its visual metaphors. In a way, the name is shocking because it holds both possibilities for the recipient, they are given the opportunity to find their own way to enjoy it and interpret it.
So we shouldn't be surprised when people are stunned or challenged by the name. They're just being asked a question they've never been asked before: What am I? They're being put in the position to define, not be dictated to. They're being put in the position to experience, not merely view. And whether that results in Wii-jokes, or exclamation, or curiousity, or resoluteness, or even puzzled introspection, these things are all just different ways that people undertake discovery.
I believe that's how the Wii is supposed to be more than just another box, another cube. It's reaches out to those who aren't stuck to one way of thinking about games, it incites interest from those who never even thought to look in its direction. It can to reach out and stun you, make you ask questions and investigate, be played with, tried on for size, and be connected with the meanings that are built through experience, growing beyond past notions.
That's why I don't think someone who merely views it as a "gamer" can appreciate it. The Wii believes that people merely shouldn't be "gamers," they can be people who play, who seek out fun and inventiveness. We should be ever-growing and ever-changing and, one would hope, ever-playing with new ideas, experiences, concepts and interactions. Gaming isn't boxes and stations and cubes, those are physical things. Gaming is experience and sensation and innovation, it is a universal experience, something that can't and shouldn't be defined so harshly and resolutely.
That's what the Wii does that I appreciate: it doesn't give us a box, it gives us an experience. It incites playfulness and curiousity, depth and/or humor, plurality in individual experiences. The Wii gives us gaming more than any concrete cube, or station, or boy ever can, it gives us back the expression of gaming, rather than the weight of it.
So, it turns out, I actually appreciate it a great deal. And even moreso when I think that I could've practically said the exact same things about the console, and not the name (go back and reread it!).
But I told you that I didn't like it as a name, that in fact I haven't really liked any console name. When I started writing this I didn't know why, but over the course of writing this article I think I've discovered the reason. I like experiences, not definitions. I like possibilities, not dictations. And I like gaming, not labels.
I don't like Wii as a name. I do like it as a console, as an experience, and as a game. And I like everything it seems to represent to me.
But do I like it on the basis of just a"W" followed by a double "i" and nothing more. Do I like it without any further ideas, or any further meanings? Do I like it removed from any experiences or thoughts or emotions? Do I like it without meaning, just as a consonant and two vowels and that against a background of white?
No. I could not like that. How could anyone like anything so sterile?
~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com 
Topic: The Name Wii: Why I Don't Like It (Read 29776 times)
