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New Genres For The Revolution
Last week's Gamasutra question of the week dealt with the possibility of new genres for Nintendo's Revolution system. Some interesting answers from the industry, as always. From the article: "I would say the interesting part is not what new genres will come about, but how most existing genres will be transformed by this. For example, fighting games will no longer have to be about special moves and combos when you can simply put one controller in each hand and start punching and blocking like in real life (maybe strap one on a leg to kick). "
I absolutely hate fighting games that rely on memorizing combos to determine who is the better fighter. Even on the Gamecube, fighting games like Smash Brothers break this horrible standard and let everybody smash buttons and do every move with ease.
Nintendo has been creating new genres for a while.
FanFictionRecs.net
If this is done well then I can see the revolution being used for excercise as well as fun. Much like what the Eyetoy was marketed to do, minus the rootkit.
"Oh boy"
My big fear is that the Revolution is going to over-popularize shallow physical gaming such that everyone starts doing it and suddenly cooking simulators and orchestra-conducting games are going to be popping up on all formats.
So what's next? I think Simpson's nailed it!
Bart: I want to go to the Yard Work Simulator.
Marge: But when I ask you to do yard work... *sigh*
Will I have to argue with my co-worker to get them away from their "Work Simulator"?
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
For example, fighting games will no longer have to be about special moves and combos when you can simply put one controller in each hand and start punching and blocking like in real life
With our luck, we'll have the kids doing the Mighty Morphin' power rangers coreographic routines to activate the combos..
Huh (move) hah (move) hah (move) hoh!
(eew)
I believe that, best-case scenario, the Revolution's controller is going to give developers the "Permission to Think Freely," to borrow the term.
If conventional wisdom is correct, creativity in large game development studios is hampered by publishers' requirements: bring about a return on their investments by recreating past successes. (This means sequels and titles that stick closely to existing genres.) The smallest developers often follow a similar path: they want to start turning a profit so that they can actually eat lunch once in a while. So, they (the ones who are supposed to be doing all the innovating!) tend to stick to tried-and-true themes as well. Just look at all the Match 3 games out there.
Perhaps the Revolution's controller, simply by being completely nutty, is going to give larger development studios the impetus to ask what crazy things they can do with it? Publishers will not only allow this approach, but demand it. Their press releases will be filled with all the newfangled things a particular title will do with the controller.
Maybe.
I do lament the fact that, out of the Big Three, the platform that seems to court indies the most is the one that has received such a lukewarm reception. If Nintendo opened things up similarly, I'd love to be able to develop games for use with the Revolution controller.
But maybe that's just the lazy me talking. When I think about it, there's probably plenty of innovation we can pull out of the keyboard and the mouse.
We're indie. We're working on our 14th game.
We don't know exactly how it works, but we have some pretty good hints:
1. The controller is supposed to contain a gyroscopic sensor, like the one found in WarioWare Twisted. It may control more than one, since it's supposed to be able to detect pitch and yaw as well.
2. The console is supposed to come with sensors to place on the TV, so those can be used to not only figure out how large the screen is (useful in figuring out where on the screen the controller is pointed) but also distance through triangulation. That may be done with infrared or RF.
This page specifically says "[The controller] interacts with a sensor bar placed above, below, or near televisions. The bar contains two sensors that communicate with the controller using Bluetooth technology."
OTOH, i could see the warning on the packages:
I would like to see games that helps or motivates a person to train their physical fitness with controllers hand-held and/or worn on the feet with an adjustable clip. With a controller on each limb I would imagine all sports that don't involve resistance could be developed for. Consider a game in which a player competes directly against a boxer or martial artist. Consider aerobic exercise a la Dance Dance Revolution.
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-Anonymous
This was what I was thinking, in addition to the other standards (light sabers, wands, avatars):
Karate games (with pads on elbows, gloves on hands) - controller in dominant hand;
Dance games (similar);
Rave games - at first, like dance games, later it will interact with external lighting pods and change the music itself (feedback loops), and multiple players will make it behave differently - in advanced forms it will be used for online parties, dance competitions, and mini-raves for teens;
Karaoke games - the controller will have a voice mike expansion for this, and as you move it and press buttons, different karaoke effects will kick in - again, will borrow concepts from Rave games above - really annoying if you have bad singers, of course, and likely to show up on Police Blotters;
Inevitable FPS variants - Be The Cop, Be The Grunt, Be The Spy, Be The Warrior, Be The Gerbil, whatever. But more fun than the ones they crank out now
Online games like Sims 3: The Revolution where people literally interact with the game - also at home versions.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Yeah, isn't that terrible? Games that reward skill and experience! Heaven forbid! I mean, what's the point of a game where a newbie can't defeat a seasoned player by smashing the buttons really fast?
Circumcision is child abuse.
Think of controlling...let's just say for common reference point, controlling a Macross style Veritech fighter in robot mode. You can make the robot go in any direction in any time by moving the controller in that direction. This ALONE would actually provide much more control than any other single controller that I've ever seen. Full 3-d axis control. Put on top of that the ability to change the angle of reference by pointing the controller in a different direction. It would probably be foreign for about..10 minutes? Then it would become comfortable. After a few hours, then it would become natural. After a few days of play, assuming a top-notch level of responsiveness, you'll be amazing yourself with the feats that you can perform.
Resident Evil 4 is a kiddy game that Nintendo tried to censor? Resident Evil Remake? Resident Evil Zero? Killer 7? Eternal Darkness? Metroid Prime? BMX XXX? Gun? Medal Gear Solid? Splinter Cell (and every other Tom Clancy game)? XIII? There are many other M rated games that are on the Nintendo Gamecube. And then, of course, there are the many, many T rated games. I know, I know. Don't feed the trolls.
Unfortunately, American football (or even soccer) is not violent enough teach true hand-to-hand combat that occasionally break out in European stadiums.
Not only does the controller appear to have a large number of degrees of freedom, all the ideas for having one player use multiple controllers magnifies this immensely. The genius is that it will be *intuitive* to use multiple controllers. One in each hand is the obvious bit, and the article suggested strapping one to a leg for kicking in a fighting game. One person suggested making a headset for "free-look" type uses. You could have a fighting game with one controller in each hand to punch/block, one on each leg for kicking/moving, and one on your head for ducking/dodging etc. 5 controllers all for one person might seem inane, but if they made alternate controllers that had no buttons but just the positioning detection with little velcro straps, you would no longer feel like an idiot strapping one to your ankle. Now, once you imagine this little "mini" controller sans buttons, there's all kinds of interesting new directions. I don't know how many of these can talk to the Revolution hardware simultaneously, but if you could get 12-16 going at once, you could have all kinds of fun with "home motion capture." Imagine a movie making "game" where you act out all the parts in motion capture. Imagine a totally new style of dancing game, where you *really* dance. Or imagine a dance instruction "game" for two people. You and your partner strap on ankle bracelts, wrist bracelets, and maybe something around the shoulders, and really dance. Add in a scoring mechanism for accuracy, toss in an online component for competition, and you're in a whole new world. Now you're really talking about a revolution.
.5 sec while the animation finishes. In effect, now you're just talking about mouse gestures in 3D space. If the on-screen avatar doesn't track your movements accurately, smoothly, and convincingly, then you're just memorizing gestures to trigger a move--and that would be physically tiring with not much reward, and we'll go back to pressing buttons.
However, this also illustrates the biggest challenge to be faced by Revo developers, IMHO. In all current games, your characters have canned animations to represent your moves. You press the A-button or whatever, and the sword swipe animation playes. It's pre-rendered, beginning to end. Revo games will have to do realtime skeletal animation, so that you can begin swiping your sword, check it mid-stroke, and block with your shield. If you use physical movement to trigger canned animations, it will feel surreal, and you'll quickly give it up because it won't be responsive. You'll start to swipe your sword, and the game won't respond for
In my opinion, this is a good thing. For *years* what we've needed is better physical modelling, not better graphics. Better physics and better AI are really the key to better gaming. Graphics have been mostly "good enough" for 5 years, while physics and AI have only changed marginally since 3D games became ubiquitous. AI's a tougher nut to crack, but we have to have physics to make our virtual worlds interactive. So hopefully developers will target the older demographic that Nintendo is after. They don't really give a rip about better graphics (to a point), but make the controlls unresponsive, the physical simulation overly simplistic, or otherwise make the experience jarring, and you'll lose them in 5 minutes flat, never to return. Win them over, though, and I think you'll have a license to print money.
If anybody has the guts to try something really radical, there are interesting times ahead. We shall see...
Looking at the picture in the referenced article it looks like Nintendo changed the controller a bit and it looks like that it may either be an analogue or a digital joystick. It also has two underside buttons, vs the one in the initial version. Compare:
- controller-at-a-glance-20050915061358181-000.jpgn trol.jpg
- original: http://things.wordherders.net/archives/revolution
- article: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060215/rev-co
This leads me to believe that Nintendo is still tweaking the controller and that we may see some more changes in the final version.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
So, finally, after all this time, jerking the controller frantically *will* actually help Mario jump over a pit.
Yep. To learn that kids are going to have to play hockey.
My main hope for the Revolution is to get as freakin far away from genre's as possible. Genre's are bullshit easy pidgeonholes for developers, marketers, and the rest to use and abuse. Many of the best games always are labeled as "genre-defying" or some such in the media. Electroplankton, Nintendogs, Katamari Damacy, Spore, Animal Crossing, and many others. These are the truly innovative titles and none fit squarely in a "genre."
Moreso than trying to apply old stale bystanders to a radically new device, try thinking outside the box and go in new paths. We've all played enough Fighters, Sports, RPG's, etc. Let's actually move in new directions and get back to the single genre: FUN.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
This first part is from memory, but I'm certian you're incorrect when you say Nintendo has "always had inferior hardware".
NES was second to the Sega Master System, this is true.
The SNES was the most powerful system durring the 16 bit era. Excluding exotic choices like the Neo-Geo. It's rivals were the Genesis which has a higher clock speed, but was nowhere near as capable, and the Turbo Grafix 16, which IIRC was an 8 Bit system with a 16 bit graphics coprocessor (or some such trickery).
The 32 Bit era, Nintendo skipped over. Unless you want to count the Virtual Boy which did indeed use a 32 Bit RISC processor. For mainstream home consoles of the say where was the 32X, which was just an add-on to the Genesis. The Saturn, which I believe was the least powerful of the "True" 32 bit, mainstream entries durring that generation. The PS1, and two odd-balls. The Jaguar, which was billed as 64 bit. This is often disputed, and I don't have background to prove or disprove the internals of Atari's last offering. The N64 was of course also 64 bit. Technically superior in most ways, save for game media. Cartridges, while much, much faster than optical media (especially back then) could not hold a candle to the sheer volume that discs can hold. But in terms of raw horsepower, I beieve that it's generally accepted that N64 lead that generation, not that it mattered.
Come around to the current (or is it now previous?) generation. The 128 Bit era. We have four contenders. The Dreamcast, which is dead and burried roughly equivelent to the PS2 from what I understand. The PS2, which is regarded as not only underpowered for this era, but a bitch to code for, the gamecube which seems to surpass the PS2 in all technical respects, save for DVD playback, and disc capacity. And the X-Box, which is generally accepted as leading this generation in technical specs. Visuals alone prove that the pecking order goes PS2GCNXBox Look at ports like Splinter Cell, or Resident Evil 4. The polygons they needed to cut from RE4 to run it on the PS2, were just... just wow.
Come to my second point. DVD playback. Are you aware that Microsoft already does (did?) this with the origional X-Box? X-Box "can not" play DVDs out of the box. You "have to" buy the remote control / DVD playback dongle pack in order to unlock this feature. The reason for this is simple. All DVD (legal, compliant) devices must be licensed by the DVD consortium. This licensing is not free. Microsoft's way of dealing with this was to rather than pass the cost of licensing each x-box and having to raise the sticker price to compensate, they took out the license fee, and took out the ability, unless you specificly went out and purchased the kit, and directly paid for it yourself. Saved money for the folks that didn't care to have their x-box play DVDs. Nintendo is probably going the same rout here. They are, after all known for keeping costs down.
Sony on the other hand had DVD playback out of the box with every PS2 they sell. I'm not sure if they're passing the costs along, simply eating the cost, or if they're exempt from the cost (Sony sits on the board of the DVD consortium, so perhaps it's possible that they don't have to pay like other companies do to license DVD rights).
The bits about Nintendo bullying it's licensees and censoring game content is correct, but ancient history. Those practices died out durring the SNES era. Nintendo was influential in founding the ESRB, and once that was done, they took the reigns off so to speak. Titles like Mortal Kombat 2, Conker's Bad Fur Day, and Geist would not be possible if they maintained censorship.
I tend to disagree with your views as to what Nintendo "should" do. Best technology? Nintendo has had the best and they've had the worst. The industry has shown multiple times that it doesn't matter. Both in terms of gameplay (how *fun* is it?) and sales (PS2 anyone?). Should they listen to their customer base? To an extent absolutly. But remember, listening t
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
Moreover, it's painfully obvious that for the bottom and side images the front was simply mirrored. You can tell from the lighting, bevels, and not to mention the lack of any way to open the battey case.
I have been playing Quake II this way years ago. However, I did so in a VR Cave, so turning around quickly was easily accomplished by just physically turning around. Let me tell you, wearing those 3D shutter glasses and seeing those badass weapons precisely attached to your hand, swiftly following its every move, is absofuckinglutely brilliant. The cost of the hardware is prohibitive though, not least because in order to set it up, you need to devote a large (and I mean large, even if you use mirrors you need plenty space behind the screens to set up the projectors) room to it. However, I hear affordable VR goggles of decent quality are just around the corner. Interesting times lie ahead!
but what do i know, i'm just a model.