Motion controls and immersion.

[bluestarultor]

For those of you who aren't clinically bored at night, Yahtzee, aside from videos, also writes a column at The Escapist. One of his recent ones was on motion control and immersion:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/arti...ayStation-Move

In a nutshell, he sees it as a hinderance to immersion.


Personally, I disagree. Give me a top-of-the-line shooter and a controller and I will suck royally, struggle with aiming for a while, put it down, and go make my own games. Give me Duck Hunt and a light gun, and I will remain entertained. The difference is a form of very loose motion control. I have something in my hand I need to aim at a target and fire. In this sense, Duck Hunt, for me, is more immersive than anything from modern times.

Yahtzee's opinion boils down to simple math:
Immersion = 1 / (delay between thought and game reaction)
(delay for button press) < (delay for motion control)

I find this fundamentally flawed. Isn't the very performance of the action a means in which immersion can be established? Look at older, archaic forms of immersion. In the DOS era, games were packaged with everything ranging from maps to fake newspaper clippings. The developers had so little to immerse the player that they brought objects from the game world directly to them. Arcade shooters have light guns for the same reason. By making the player move, not only do you physically involve him, but in many cases, you actually DO decrease the latency, such as with aiming.

I think why the Wii ended up lacking in both his and my opinion isn't because motion isn't a form of immersion so much as the hardware just sucks and there are very few examples of games that applied it well. The Wii-mote is a remote, and unless you have Motion Plus, it's not a good example of actual motion control as much as a fancy light gun. Not that light guns are a bad thing, but when you promised motion controls, you just plain lied. Aside from that, it likes to spaz out, so it's not a very GOOD light gun. But when it's used as a light gun is where it generally shines, and Yahtzee admits as much in a spot or two.

On the other hand, Move and Kinect offer calculations in real 3D space. Rather than just motion, you have position, which means that your every move is, in fact, registered. You can point and click to fire a gun. You can also swing a sword and slice a foe, then parry his counter in the same motion. You can draw, but then you can also form a 3D shape. I think there's a lot of power in that. By allowing the player to directly manipulate the world, you allow him a greater window into it. The more realistic that manipulation is, the greater the immersion.




What does everyone else think? I've said my piece, but I'm interested to know how everyone else feels.