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Epic Sticking With Classic Controllers For Now
Cliff Bleszinski, design director for Epic Games, said in an interview with Develop that while motion control schemes like Project Natal look interesting, Epic will probably be sticking with classic controllers "for the foreseeable future." He said, "Microsoft came down a few weeks before E3 and gave us a demo, and they're now shipping out the dev kits; I think it's great. When you start combining the motion-capture, the facial recognition, and the vocal recognition you can create some unique experiences. And of course more accessibility is always a good thing. When you build an interface like that though you need to [specifically] design a game for it. It can't just be tacked on."
As a gamer, let me say that the Wii controllers (and now Sony and MS motion controllers) SOUNDED cool. But, at the end of the day, I realized the essential flaw in them:
I'm a lazy-ass.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The WiiMote is still horribly misused. I have a Wii, and after my initial wow factor with motion controls, constantly making jerk off motions to do stuff got old. And while I used to postulate about how great motion controls would be with my friends, I never really thought about the accessibility side of things. Because of work video games are often what I do when I'm sick or something along those lines. It sucks having to move all over the place just to do what used to be doable with a standard controller. I'm not saying it doesn't have its uses, but it often does make me second guess using it.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
Most developers have given up on trying to do anything clever with the Wii-mote. Most games now use the pointer-function, and then basically map "waggle" onto a single action. If you're lucky, you might get "waggle from side to side" mapped to something different to "waggle up and down" (though the Wii-mote's now-legendary imprecision can make even this annoying). Personally, I felt that Force Unleashed was the moment it was clear that the Wii-mote's impact on gaming had been massively overhyped. People had demanded a lightsabre-fighting game on the Wii from day one and, when one finally appeared, it turned out that the secret to winning fights in it was just to waggle furiously.
The fact remains that at present, a mouse and keyboard remains the best option for precise control, while a decent, well-balanced 2-stick analogue controller is a respectable second.
All Epic is saying that the game ideas that they have and/or are planning on developing weren't designed for Natal, and that Natal games should be designed with Natal in mind. Basically, they don't want to be attributed to alot of the flops that will jump on a new gimmick controller.
But once a developer comes along and says, "Hey, I've got a great idea and Natal is the perfect tool to implement it" - it'll take off.
Epic has never done anything new. Anything in UT, GoW, whatever, its all been done before and Epic just did it better.
And Natal will be the same as the Wii controller. Would gamers consider it fail? Probably a little, it aims itself to casual games, has alot of experiences of being finicky and frustrating, and can be mastered on the couch.
But guess what - it sold, it still sells, and alot of people enjoy it, people who weren't gamers before. Mario Kart? Designed for Wiimote - done right.
Now Natal needs something like that, a first party developer for the X-box, and then we'll see Epic jump on board. I have very few doubts.