Note: Regine's notes are much better, with pictures!
Tom Armitage
Videogame controllers
History of interface (NES, SNES, Playstation2)
Modern handhelds – simpler controls
<- less processing power – but simpler control with touchscreen
<- afford more and have lower cost of development
Opposite of Xbox
- if you’re not a gamer, it’s scary
- it’s obvious how you hold it, but there are so many choices. And you can’t look at your hands while you’re playing
“Complexity lost the casual gamer” – Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari
“People are interface-phobic”
- not afraid of interfaces, but afraid of interfaces that are opaque
desired goal: “I forgot the joypad was in my hands”
interaction design about communication of intent: if you can’t communicate your intent, you get frustrated
people aren’t afraid of play or games
- but they aren’t playing on gaming devices – they’re playing on iPod, cell phone, blackberry
Current-gen joypads are very complex
Longterm test with someone who was familiar with early consoles, but skipped lots of years – and now is coming back
- girlfriend wants to join in – photos of her frustration, puzzlement, anger
- too much to do – she had to look at her hands
Is it that controllers are scaring people off?
- console takeup in the US looks good over the past generations
- but if you map those consoles over people buying more than one on a per household basis, mapped against population – it should be accelerating away from population, but it’s actually equal to the same proportion as had them in the 8bit era
controllers assume too much of their audience
Current joypads are aesthetically uninspiring – they don’t motivate game designers to speak through the controllers – the game must feel like it’s in your hands
Controllers are weighed down by the expectations of genre
Sometimes conventions are good – but sometimes they replicate legacy ideas
Ex: Singstar (like Karaoke Revolution): people know what to do with the microphone
Karaoke: friends, beer, casualness
Ex: Buzz – a quiz game with individual controller – not about the buttons, but about everything else – nonthreatening, to be played with family.
Ex: Donkey Konga – played with drums that feel like drums
Not always familiar, not always nonthreatening – but they don’t say “game”
Ex: Guitar Hero w 5 buttons vs Konami’s version w 3 buttons – Guitar Hero has movement and expertise built in
- simplifying and approximating both interaction of guitar and rewards of learning how to play – you can feel like you’ve made real progress – challenge/reward structure
- super move: play around in the correct manner
Ex: Steel Battalion for Xbox
- absurdly complicated – but all buttons are dedicated
- and it tells a lot about the universe of the game – a big working tank in the future
- interface reinforces what we know about big machines of the future, from our knowledge of pop culture
- and there’s an eject button!
But people tend to copy Halo because the target market (gamers) can play it…but you raise the barrier to entry.
A different ex: Metroid Prime, which makes you relearn the controller – it looks like an FPS, but it’s actually an exploration game and is about being lonely.
- but as a developer, you can be very sure about the pacing – everyone is at stage 1
Ex: Killer7 – equally crazy stripped down controls
- walking is very easy, because this game is not about walking.
Ex: Micro Machines 2 cart, where you have to share joypads
But we’re mostly seeing the same idioms in next gen products
Dealing with handedness
- controllers are biased towards righties
- looking for entirely symmetrical
- Revolution “nunchuk”
Legacy interfaces mean no interface to use them well…the market is not advancing
Need to get out of making interfaces FOR GAMERS – controllers are the only limiting factor left
Games in the living room are stuck with the basic controller, but everywhere else the interface is moving on
“A videogame is something you play with controls, usually but not always using your thumbs” Tom Langston
The controller is the game – is this what we want to represent games? Generating whole new verbs for gameplay.
Think about films
This is not the end of the evolution
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