Be Excellent To Each Other

Right, I spoke to a few people during my first Froza night. I said I favoured game talk so I thought I would post this.

Sorry if it is a bit long and you were bored.

The question then, why is the Wii outselling the "superior" consoles?

Is it because the Wii has better games? Absolutely not I hear you cry. Quite right. The Wii has probably the most limited selection of games of any of the next gen consoles. Aside from Zelda, Resident Evil IV, U R MR GAY, Trauma Centre (in my opinion) and a couple of others there is literally nothing that could temp the average gamer. Wii sports is an interesting tech demo, its major bonus being it is effectively free. So why is there such a massive rush to get this thing? The answer......... controls.

I can hear the slow hand clap already.

My girlfriend cannot play games. I mean really not play games. A 360 controller utterly baffles her; the Guitar Hero guitar has “Too many buttons”. And yet, she likes playing games, by this I mean Monopoly, Scrabble, Draughts (not Chess though sadly). Games which require deduction, strategy or planning are well within her capabilities, but not video games. She just can’t figure out the controller and isn’t willing to give enough time to something that frustrates her to learn it.

The big exception to all this is, of course, Wii Sports. When I first got the Wii we played Wii sports for nearly an entire evening. This was the first time we had indulged in my hobby together. It felt like a huge breakthrough. I went off to buy more games. I bought Resident Evil and Trauma Centre. Both were flops with her. “I don’t like using the thumb thingy” and “I don’t like using the thumb thingy” were her reactions those games. Back to Wii sports then.

More anecdotal evidence; I took my 360 and Wii around to my parents for a family get together this summer. Guitar Hero got the biggest initial reaction but even the easy setting was too much for my non video game playing family. Next I showed them Dead Rising, everyone was impressed – no-one wanted to play. To the Wii then, and Trauma Centre. My mum is interested in pathology so I thought she might like this. However even these “simple” controls confounded everyone. It got a little embarrassing when I effortlessly finished the first level. The only game left was Wii sports. There was a huge difference right from the off. Here is a rough transcript:

My Mum: How do I play then?
Me: Point at tennis and press the front button.
(Tennis is selected)
MM: What do I do now?
Me: Swing the Wiimote when you want to hit the ball.

Much fun ensued. Everyone had a go and enjoyed themselves. Apart from with my favourite, bowling, which very few could get their heads around. We then went on to play non-video games like Pass the Bomb, Cluedo, etc equal amounts of fun were had.
Conclusion then. In my experience video games are not a niche hobby because of complexity of game-play or violence. Lot’s of people don’t get involved because they can’t figure out how to work the damn things. It’s not like a driving test where there is a final result for learning the complicated control system. These days, especially, if you try to use games as a social experience you will usually bump into a bunch of people who will show no mercy on you the first time you play and call you a fag when they beat you. And now more than ever there is confusion about what the hell console to buy:

Do I buy a Premium, Core or Elite? Do I buy a 60Gig 40Gig PS3?

There is only one Wii Console as far as I know. If someone who fancies a games console went to a shop and saw 3 different PS3’s and 3 different 360’s but one Wii most would go for the one where there were no tech specs to confuse matters. This ties back in to the fact that most people are never going to be ”gamers” but would play video games for a bit of fun. What they want is accessible simplicity. Control mechanics being the major speed-bump.

Fin.

Epilogue:

This is all a shame as video games are probably the most fantastic medium to teach people new skills or facts. But that is for another thread.

Wii games are fun.

XBox games are fun, but in a not learner friendly way.

Rabid rabbits rayman thingymadoodah is fun, as each game is about 2 minutes long, and is fun.

Dead Rising is fun, even if you just twat about smashing zombies. The interface is hard. Would Wii sports tennis been half as popular if you had to move your player around with the nunchuck?

Wii Sports is probably the best game of the generation. Tech demo my arse - it has put a bowling alley in my fucking living room.

On and the Wii made my GF play (and complete) these games in this order:

Wii Sports -> Wii Play -> Guitar Hero -> Mario and Sonic at the Olympics -> Mario Kart Wii -> Assassins Creed -> CoD4

So it's a very good introduction to more controller complex games.

My brother and his GF have a Wii, neither of them are into games at all but they had a go on one round at his mate's house. They played on it quite a bit for a couple of weeks and now it mostly just gathers dust. Essentially they bought a £180 game - Wii Sports. I reckon this is far from unusual.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. If Rock band is worth £180 then Wii Sports is.

That wasn't really my point, they haven't moaned about it but I'm just not sure that sales of the Wii are this significant breakthrough to the masses that everyone makes out. We've been here before with dance mats and before that arcade games with gun, horse, car or skateboard shaped controllers.

Wii sports is not a finished product. However, I agree with you in that it is one of the best games ever in terms of how it got me and my family to participate the video gaming. As game that you intend to sell to the public it is as shallow as anything. Maybe not to my mum who's last recollection of a video game was pong. Which brings me onto a good point when I was a kid we had some pong style games machine that had two simple twisty knob controllers. I remember playing this with my dad when I was 4 or 5. We bloody loved it. A year or two later when my dad purchased an Acorn Electron I tried to get him to play games with me and he couldn't get the hang of the fact there were 5 or 6 different keys you had to press to play a game. The game was Citadel.

edited for spelling incompetence

My parents always complained about how they struggled to relate controls (be it a joypad or a keyboard) to, say, a driving game. To quote my father: "You don't drive with BUTTONS!" Likewise, with modern controllers having four face buttons, four triggers and three direction inputs... you can't blame people being a bit confused. My mother attempting to play anything on the original Playstation (that wasn't Bust-a-Move) involved her spending more time looking down at the controller to see which button she was about to push and less actually noticing she was crashing/being shot/kicked in. And in the game!

Likewise, she struggled to keep track of all the concepts and needing to remember them all in fast-paced games like Mario and Sonic, but stuff like Tetris and such was fine.

The Wii (and the DS) provide far simpler input - something you move around (which is obvious) and a button or two, and that's it. The criticism I'd make is that having made actually playing the game easy enough, they haven't kept the quality of the games up. The wave of poorly designed, populist nonsense that clogs the shelves in most game shops (the 360 and PS3 pushed often into a pair of cramped shelves while entire walls are dedicated to Wii accessories) as opposed to keeping games challenging, intelligent and thoughtful to properly engage the huge numbers of people who are name able to focus on the game and not on how to control it.

I think some people will just never be into games beyond ones of an incredibly simple nature regardless of how they are controlled. Pointing to a Christmas novelty like Wii Sports and saying "look this is what we should be doing" is wrong-headed. Some people might prefer playing golf for the day if the holes were the size of dustbins but I'm not sure it would do anything for the enduring appeal of the game.

Fundamentally, categorically wrong.

Metal Angel: I agree with the simplicity over quality thing. Another aspect of making games more accessible is that those games will sell more copies, almost forcing other developers to try to cash in on the craze and put a shallow waggle fest.

I am not joking when I say I have the horrible feeling that there maybe a gardening game:

Waggle left and right to open a hole in the ground.
Waggle up and down to plant seeds.
Waggle left and right again to cover seeds.
Move nunchuck stick left to select watering can.
Tilt wiimote down to pour water.
Move nunchuck stick up-right to select tomato seeds.
Hold A and move wiimote to select new area of ground.
Waggle left and right to open a hole in the ground.
Waggle up and down to plant seeds.
Waggle left and right again to cover seeds.


Fuck me I think I have a best seller.

In all honest, that's not too far off the 'gardening' in Viva Pinata. You already have to perform ridiculous controller contortions to buy seeds and plant them, so throwing in some entirely pointless controller-waving to do the digging and burying actions is not that big a step further (and will guarantee Mimi and I will have agonised arms within a week of Viva Pinata: WIII! coming out)

Something that did occur to me after writing my first response is that episode of the Simpsons where Bart and Lisa refuse to do the gardening but when they get to the carnival the first thing they do is rush off to do the virtual yardwork simulator. That's what the Wii is doing - instead of letting us experience fantastical adventures and experiences like flying fighter jets, shooting Nazis and flying space ships; it's letting us to mundane or otherwise very possible real world activities like grooming animals, cooking dinner and playing simple sports.

Now, I know you could apply some of this to real life (why bother with a motorcycle or car game when you could go out and ride/drive your real one? why play ISS when you could go to the park for a kickaround? why play Grand Theft Auto when you could just become a chav?) but it worries me a lot. I think we first saw the signs with The Sims (where folks would ignore the real families, houses and chores to spend time making their Sims do theirs) but the Wii seems to be making it far worse and far more disturbing.

Nintendo are fucking cunts who steal peoples star points.

Lave: You use Wii sports as your example of a great game. The point of my post was that Wii sports has become accessible to all.

Apparently Bejeweled is the most played game of all time measured in online hours. A game with an interface slightly less complicated than Tetris. I would go so far as to say that Wii sports must be somewhere up there in total gameplay terms. I love Wii sports as it is the only thing that has brought my family into my hobby. Would you have played it if it had been on a 360 and X had been swing raquet/racket though?

I believe it is only the controls that made everyone gravitate to the game, and the fact that when you have mates around you games get 5x better. Wii fit is gonna be huge.

Who plays the Wii online? Not many. Who breaks out Wii sports with a couple of beers and a few mates. A hell of a lot more people I'd imagine.

You said it wasn't a complete game. But it is a complete game.

In the same way that Bewjelled, Street Fighter II, Gears of War and FFXII are.

It is a complete game in the sense that you can play it to completion. The same way you can with a demo. The only thing I would ask - again - is that if this game was on the 360 and you had to hit X to swing the raquet in tennis or had to push the analogue up and down to move the bat in baseball or had to hit a button to control your swing in golf, would you think this is "the best game this generation"? I suspect that without the controller this would be considered a joke as a launch title. If the Gamecube had launched with this. Well I don't even want to think about what would have been said.

Despite the way I have titled this thread is not a Wii bashing thing. I have posted before that I want to love the Wii. It is like having one of those peripherals from the 16bit era. But good.

Why do you need to complete a video game? What's wrong with it just being a toy?

Wouldn't you be pissed off if the game stopped half way through a baseball game? By completion I meant you can finish a particular section without any interruption. Like a demo.

Good article, I agree with its major points. Although I do think the style and content of games DOES contribute to the "niche market" more than the article gives it credit for... if the Wii were full of first person shoot-em-ups with similarly intuitive controls, it wouldn't have done much business outside of those who would have bought it anyway even if it had a conventional controller. Most mums, dads and sisters aren't as ready to engage with running around shooting people as readily as they are with hitting a ball at each other. But other than that, good article and thoroughly agree.

It worries me that the OP saw fit to include a "sorry if you find this too long" warning though... if that is considered long, well...

Obviously not. I don't think a game needs dressing to be considered worthy. The controls of excellent games are what makes them excellent.

Street Fighter II will always be my favourite fighter because quarter rotation + punch is an inherently pleasing thing to do. Same for Wii Sports.

Saying Wii Sports is only good because of the controller is like saying that Seinfeld is only good because of all the jokes.

It's a refreshing bonus that Wii Sports avoided all the trappings that a 'proper' game should have in my opinion.

Oh but don't get me wrong. I agree with your general points. I;'m just being pedantic about the specifics of Wii Sports.

TheAlbinoKid: I put in the too long disclaimer because I feared I had posted a self indulgent rant. Anyway.

The niche market thing I mainly agree on. But having said that, my family bloody loved Links Crossbow Training. I forgot to mention it in my piece. The strange thing is though, if they had just had to point the controller at the screen, without a bit of plastic, I think they would have been less interested. The main selling point was that they put the Wiimote into a gun, so that made it something they could relate to easier. Not that my family are a bunch of snipers or anything, but I hope you know what I mean. Also they didn't get to the bits where you had to move Link with the thumb stick. This is the sort of behavoir that means plastic fucking raquet heads sell for wii controllers. I wish I had thought of it.

Oh yeah the niche thing, my family seem to love shooting stuff. But only where shooting stuff is the only thing you do. If they had to move around aswell they would probably have imploded. So you are quite right, FPS games are out. But conversely they are the most popular form of game with "gamers".

All these people who 'can't do' proper joypads seem to cope with Windows easily enough, and their mobiles.

The console with the most godawful shovelware and tat tends to be the market leader. Sony nailed that with the PS - acres of dross in the shops with regular gems, and a console which had a hook - discs and 3D (which was as big a leap as motion controls - both had been done before but weren't the basis of a console) student marketing. Then next gen we had the PS2, and its' hook - "It's a playstation, only much better, teh processor will transport you into the matrix and can simulate real emotions!!1!!" and even moar tat on the shelves, then the Wii this gen with the hook we are all familiar with, and shelves full of fucking nonsense.

I've taken the Wii from my games room and the flat screen into the lounge on my old Goodman's CRT. It is getting sed again, I had a blast on Quake tonight and the missus played Boom Blox (if it were a first-party game, it'd be better than Wii sports). The 360 loves me more than the Wii does, though. It knows what floats my boat.

Last gen, your second console was much the same as your first, with either the biggest catalogue, the most power (wel, Halo at any rate) or the Nintendo exclusives to distinguish it. For a PS360 owner, a Wii is a no-brainer if you want to flesh out your active console team. And it is crippled to such an extent that luddites aren't scared of being shit at it. For most Wii owners, no decent data storage is bliss, because things that don't exist don't need to be dealt with. I wonder when the masses wil be digital enugh to see the pluses of something like Live and the minuses of something like friend codes, though. That'l be a seismic shift and it can't be far off. When MS reboot the 360 interface in the autumn, it might be the start of something. Wii sports players will happily get into 1 vs 100 or Lips. In fact, Lips vs. Wii Music looks like an instant MS win, frankly. Look at how well Singstar did.

Lave: It looks like we are both jizzing into the face of the same nun. I don't think there are many people on this board who could say that when they played Wii sports with a couple of mates that it wasn't amazing fun.

The main point of this thread is not really Wii sports as a game but the fact that the accessability of Wii sports made everyone play it. Game controls in my humble experience are the single biggest factor in people not wanting to play games with me. Don't get me wrong I like playing online and I love playing Forza with friendly people (cheers guys). But I like being with the person I am racing.

This is why the Wii is going like hotcakes:

No subscription to play with people. Shit loads of people have a Wii now so all you do is take your controller.
Games aren't so in depth and hard that you can't do them pissed.
Some games get more fun when you're pissed.
Wii fit get's people who would have bought fitness videos but now buy "Yoga Time" or something.
There are probably more reasons.

Wii games are bright, shiny and shit ass hot fun. Controls are easily picked up and hard to master.
Wii games, you can explain to anyone in a second, and they get it, it makes a Wii perfect for multiplayer games and the like. And XBox 360, on the other hand, is a more 'serious' console, where a novice will get face raped at most games, until he puts in X hundred hours on it. A Wii game, you end up both being at a decent fun semi competitve level in inutes, so poeple have more fun. And htat is what it is meant to be about. If I want a decent story, I'll read a book, if I want bodies bouncing and falling in a relaistic manner, I'll watch CSI, if i want to play a game and am on ym own, the 360 gets booted up, if I've friends aroun, it's wii sports or rabbits everytime.

This. Particularly if you're not used to games already - my sister had a rack at dead rising last yer and utterly loved it - she used to stay up waiting for me to go to bed so she could play. But even after days of playing, she couldn't really get the hang of moving the camera with one stick and moving the bloke with another. To me, it's just become second nature, but of course, I had to learn stuff like that years back, and I'm used to games. With the wii, anyone with a limb can play at least some games. And probably even without - I'd imagine wii sports could be played with your teeth.

I never had or wanted a console in my life, though I'd played on dozens of them before. A christmas or two ago, I played wii sports at a friend's house, and was utterly pissing myself all night. I wanted one after that.

It's just FUN. Jumping around and waving your limbs and generally making a prat of yourself is the basis of absolutely everything that is fun. This is why children have more fun than adults - they don't care if they make a prat of themselves. Even sex is fun partly because it's so silly.

Of course, there are rubbish games, and not many great ones. But a slightly rubbish wii game will often be more FUN than a less rubbish 360/whatever game, simply because you're leaping around and your body likes that. Physical activity is only hateful when it's tedious.

Because a Wii is fun and 360/PS3 are for teh hardcore gamers who went not ploughing 100 hours into FF/Halo/MGS4 are calling each other a fucking n00b on the internet.

Because people like the idea of Wii Sports. That's all most Wiis will ever play and it's certainly all mine is ever likely to be dragged out for again.

They've hit the "Tickle me elmo - This year's hot present" market, not a gaming revolution.

But with the Wii fit they have managed to capture the "Tickle My Arsehole Elmo - Get in the ring" crowd aswell. As Metal Angel alluded to somewhere up there games on the Wii are turning into strange waggle versions of reality. Is this because people who aren't really that into games like the comfort of doing familiar things? Or is it because having play mechanics beyond gesturing at a screen are too much for the new audience? I am quite sure that there are games not even thought of yet that could massivley benefit from the Wii control system. I still await a proper sword fighting game.

However for now if I was Nintendo I would release a version of tetris where you twisted the controlller left and right to rotate the blocks and gave a sharp downward motion to drop them fast. Sell it for £15 and you'd have a killer app.

Drunk Wii Fit Yoga is one of the best things ever. It is the real hidden purpose of the Wii.

*makes notes for weekend fun*

Yup, get a 360 instead.

Just use Gaz's, I'm sure he won't mind.

Rock band is more fun than a wii.

Pretty much. Nintendo also have this habit of shoehorning waggle controls into every single game regardless of merit, which has ruined or damaged pretty much every non-Wii prefixed game on the thing.



Play will do you the middle and probably best model for £180 or so. Quick trip to Gamestation's 4 for £20 used bin with the right advice ("hi!") and you're sorted.

Actually that's just hit home, a 360 60gb is the same price as the Wii Sports Special.

Daft.

And indeed the Wii got a version of Guitar Hero 3.

In Mono only.

Last I heard they didn't even plan to patch it.

Someone confirmed on here that it had been patched ages ago. I'll buy a Wii when they're £80 - that seems a fair price point.

Ah that's something.

Still, it's tangental to the topic, but how the hell does testing not catch that a game entirely dependant on its audio is fundamentally broken and further, how does QA decide that this is not a release blocking bug (especially when the thing promises 5.1 on the label)

Maybe Japanese people can't hear in stereo.

Slitty ears.

I've tried many Wii games now and none of them interest me. I don't care for Wii Sports and none of Wii Play interests me either. I've not played U R MR GAY but I generally don't care for platform games and didn't like Mario 64. You can keep your Zelda as well. It does seem to work for people who aren't really interested in gaming though, that's for sure.

However, the Wii is the worst selling games wise on my stall. It's very rare I get rid of anything for it even with it being so popular.

Indeed, the only titles it has in the top echelons of the charts are Wii Play, Wii Fit, Mario Galaxy and Smash Bros. So all Nintendo's Triple AAAs, most of them getting on a little now and one of which is a thin excuse to sell hardware.

It's a good thing Ninty are hardware profitable.

73 bananas.

Stephen Fry's opinion. Of the Wii.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/20 ... endo.games

I love Stephen fry so much, he's so chucklesome.

Great little piece.

Bad little piece.