Kick, punch, it’s all in your mind…
PaRappa the Rapper anyone? I only ask because NanaOn-Sha boss Masaya Matsuura spoke to Gamendustry.biz recently and said his company was planning a simple little “one-button” Wii title. Why the Wii? Because the PS3 is a developer’s minefield and the Xbox 360 has an AC adapter the size of my apartment (I paraphrase a tad, but he really did say the problem with the 360 is its AC adapter!).
“Wii is a very good piece of hardware. Many talented people from Nintendo make great ideas for game hardware, of course. Already I’ve been starting to think about Wii software, but it’s very hard sometimes. Because can you keep shaking the controller for hours? Players can’t spend a long time on gameplay, so this can be tough. So I respect Nintendo’s activities, but for software designers like us, it’s very hard.” However, Matsuura said he is currently in the planning stages of developing a game for Wii – with work set to officially begin “soon, maybe”.
I said it yesterday, but this is how the Trojan horse effect might work for the Wii. Take one developer (Matsuura), add in a preconceived notion that the Wiimote is all there is to the Wii (“can you keep shaking the controller for hours?”) and then get them developing a simple game to start (one-button title). Then, and here’s where the system really needs to shine, a developer begins to think outside of mere control interfaces and starts designing a game without hardware or budgetary constraint.
Matsuura's remark points to another interesting characteristic about developing for Wii hardware: developers are asked to go outside their "comfort zone", the known and tried moves in traditional controllers that they already tested to death and that they don't even need to think about when calculating if a move is too repetitive for carpal fatigue, for example… With Wii controllers, you have to start from scratch and test first if controlling, say, jumping or steering with your arm or wrist movements is going to be comfortable enough the thousandth time you have to do it within two hours!
If you don't test it and design it right, the experience might go from "fun" to "frustrating and painful" by miscalculating one degree of required movement…
nintendo has always proved that people can wave for long periods. warioware levels can last longer then a typical song if your good, and the style of movement changes alot.
but how much waving does he want us to do anyways? its not hard to program a reliabe rhythm game, again wario ware proved it.
invisibleman is always being pessimistic about the wii potential, but its actually not that hard, its just subjective, see ssx blur. i am optimistic though, because so fari have been happy, and even hearing from some gamers that they love wii spiderman 3 controls despite glitches of graphics and such.
he was playing the ps3 version and saying he liked wii version better.