Wiifit

As you’ve probably noticed, this week has seen the high-profile UK release of two of this year’s biggest games – Grand Theft Auto IV and Wii Fit, the video gaming equivalent of Hollywood summer blockbusters.

The run up to their release has seen both Nintendo and Rockstar (with a little help from Microsoft) spend a fortune on television advertising. I saw the commercials for both products in the same ad break a week or so ago, and I found the differences between them fascinating.

The advert for GTA IV, with its funky soundtrack and editing, is one of the best video game trailers I’ve ever seen, while the pale, rather dainty Nintendo offering is arguably one of the worst.

The GTA IV commercial introduces new protagonist Niko, who trudges into the camera grim-facedly as a series of vignettes from the game play behind him. The advert’s masterstroke is its subtlety; its trendy, swaggering nature almost fools you into thinking it isn’t selling you anything, while in fact it establishes, in just thirty seconds and without the distraction of a voice-over, some of the game’s new mechanics and set-pieces. It demonstrates the use of mobile phones, the shoot-outs, the next-gen re-imagining of Liberty City, and at its conclusion, the more detailed and realistic theft of cars. The music – a key factor in all GTA games – is retro, arrogant and cool, the aural equivalent of both Niko’s character and the series as a whole.

Wii Fit’s UK commercial seems almost quaint by comparison. After the usual Wii ‘water droplet’ ident, we’re presented with the product (an unprepossessing looking flat plastic thing), and then told of its benefits by a soothing TV Doctor-style voice. ‘This is the Wii board. It can help you and your family… keep fit,’ it says, prosaically.

A male model (who, it should be pointed out, isn’t even remotely fat) is then shown standing on the board and is told by the console that he’s overweight.

It’s an absurdly simple, almost 1950s mode of advertising, but I must reluctantly admit that it works – my local game retail outlet was in meltdown last Saturday as several dozen people all clamoured to get their hands on Nintendo’s latest wonder-gadget.

For all the commercials’ cosmetic dissimilarities, the GTA and Wii Fit campaigns do have something in common. Like all advertising, they sell a ‘dream’, or at least an idea. GTA IV is all about the freedom its digital world provides – the freedom to explore, to steal and kill.

The Wii Fit, meanwhile, sells the idea of the video game as a lifestyle solution. If, three years ago, a focus group had been asked whether they thought a video game could improve your memory or help you to lose weight, the answer would have probably been a rather bemused ‘no.’ Before Wii Fit, the idea of a fat-burning video game was an idea as outlandishly utopian as slimming beer or a carpet that reverses ageing.

But like it or not, Nintendo have pulled off an impressive marketing trick – they’ve convinced an entire untapped audience to buy their product, though it remains to be seen whether the nation’s waistlines will improve as a result.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t dislike Wii Fit as a concept at all; indeed, I’ll probably end up buying it myself eventually (and God knows I need the exercise). What startles me is Nintendo’s marketing approach – it almost doesn’t feel like a video game commercial at all. Its mood is strangely serene and austere, like an advert for an expensive kettle or a foot spa.

The adverts for these two games, released within mere days of each other, show just how broad and diverse the video game demographic has become; GTA IV’s offering is macho, truculent and aimed squarely at the hardcore gamer, while Wii Fit’s zen-like approach is gentle and unapologetically softcore.

As you’ve probably gathered, I hated Wii Fit’s style of advertising and loved the GTA IV’s, but my mother would certainly think the reverse – she’d hate GTA’s wanton violence, but think that standing on one foot in front of the television was a pretty good notion.

Proof, if any were needed, of video gaming’s increasingly diverse audience, one that will continue to grow and evolve long after our fitness boards have been resigned to the cupboard.

via : denofgeek.com

In 2005, when the then-Revolution was unveiled, the hearts of Nintendo fans everywhere swelled with hope, but it took a Ph.D. candidate at Carnegie Mellon to begin to actually fulfill some of the crazier dreams the console first inspired. Johnny Lee’s Wii remote projects have widened our perceptions of what’s possible with the technology sitting in our living rooms, and even broadened our ideas of what gaming could — and maybe should — be. Lee is a magician, and we’re not the only ones who think so; he recently blew the lids off smarter brains than ours at the TED conference with his cost-effective Wiimote whiteboard and head tracking demos.

But if you ask him, Lee insists he’s just this guy, you know? And we did ask; in fact, we recently sat down for a talk with the Wiimote genius, and he dished up some pretty interesting tidbits on everything from the future of head tracking to his own recent job search. Before you ask, no, he’s not going to Nintendo, but he may be headed back to YouTube soon for a few more project videos.

In 2005, when the then-Revolution was unveiled, the hearts of Nintendo fans everywhere swelled with hope, but it took a Ph.D. candidate at Carnegie Mellon to begin to actually fulfill some of the crazier dreams the console first inspired. Johnny Lee’s Wii remote projects have widened our perceptions of what’s possible with the technology sitting in our living rooms, and even broadened our ideas of what gaming could — and maybe should — be. Lee is a magician, and we’re not the only ones who think so; he recently blew the lids off smarter brains than ours at the TED conference with his cost-effective Wiimote whiteboard and head tracking demos.

But if you ask him, Lee insists he’s just this guy, you know? And we did ask; in fact, we recently sat down for a talk with the Wiimote genius, and he dished up some pretty interesting tidbits on everything from the future of head tracking to his own recent job search. Before you ask, no, he’s not going to Nintendo, but he may be headed back to YouTube soon for a few more project videos.

NWF: Speaking of what the companies are doing and/or not doing, there was some discussion that EA was going to include your head tracking in BOOM BLOX, and then suddenly it was announced that head tracking was no longer going to be available as the discussed easter egg. We’re pretty interested in what happened there, if you can discuss it at all.

JL: I was a little disappointed to hear about that. I have been in touch with Louis Castle, who was involved in that decision, and it’s actually a pretty complicated decision, and I don’t know if I’m at liberty to explain exactly why, but I understand why they decided to take it out. Rest assured that I know EA is still interested in including it, and so are several other companies, so even if it doesn’t come out next month, it will probably be integrated into games within the next year.

NWF: So you do think we’ll see it in this generation?

JL: I think so. If Nintendo doesn’t do it, I’m fairly sure that Sony and Microsoft may be interested in doing something similar. It’s simply … the kind of visual experience that head tracking provides is simply an evolutionary step in display technology and interactive displays, and it would be foolish not to embrace that progress in technology. It’s not so much a feature, it’s just a technological step forward, similar to 3D TV, that will eventually come. Nintendo may or may not decide that this is an okay idea, but even if they don’t, it will come in some other form from some other provider.

[NWF note: Sony, in fact, has a head tracking demo of their own]

NWF: You know, that’s interesting, because there’s a lot of discussion any time we see another of your projects. Nintendo fans just blow up with excitement, because what you’re doing with the Wii remote is so much more interesting than what a lot of actual Wii games have done with the motion controls. Why do you think that is?

JL: Well, I don’t have any rules to conform to. In truth, when choosing to make something for a game console, a developer has to sign a lot of agreements and play within a very well-defined space that determines what they can and cannot do. I have been talking to some Wii game developers and they’ve said that … if a game requires too much motion or requires … they had some word for it, but essentially, if it requires too much movement on the player’s part, Nintendo asks them to pull it. There are all these internal guidelines they have to conform to that prevent them from doing anything too — I hate using the term “outside the box,” but this is a box that has been defined by Nintendo and they literally can’t step out of it. The video game industry is also extremely market data driven, which is unfortunate. The investment levels keep going up and up, and the certainty of return keeps going down, and as a result, marketing has more control over development. And if marketing says something isn’t going to sell, or if marketing has no data on it, so if something is too radical or if it’s a new IP with a new story or new characters, and it’s untested, marketing tags it as high risk. If there are safer, but more boring [laughs], the decision tends to be to make the more boring title, which is unfortunate. That’s actually why I decided not to work at any game companies specifically, like Electronic Arts or Ubisoft, because my ideas would have likely been squashed quickly by marketing.

NWF: Do you think those same marketing people, or maybe anyone at these companies, is really paying attention to the reaction your projects are getting? Obviously somebody is listening, because they’re contacting you, but do you think the reaction is enough to change some of those things you were just talking about?

JL: I think so, or at least, that’s my impression. The wonderful thing about my videos is that they’re widely available, and they’ve given marketing departments some data that they can work with. It’s put something out into the world for very low cost — because all I did was make a video in my house, so I didn’t have to invest much money — but marketing can now look at the numbers associated with the video, like the number of views, or they can send out a survey or poll games about these particular features, and then marketing can make an assessment about the risk of the feature. So, I think the main contribution these videos have had, at least to the gaming industry, is that they’ve given marketing some data that indicates this is a worthwhile feature. Getting it integrated into near-term titles is a little difficult, though, because it takes a few years to build a game. If they’re going to retrofit an existing title with these features, it adds risk to the title. If they’re going to build a new title around this feature, it’s not going to hit the shelves for at least two years or so, or a year if they do a really simple title. It’s sort of interesting … I’ve gotten exposed to the business of video games recently. It’s unfortunate that the business of the video game industry almost seems designed to squash innovation, or at least discourage it, because it’s risky.

NWF: Well, that explains a lot of our Wii games!

JL: The Wii also has another complicated issue. Actually, I would say there are two. One is that the input control system is so radically different from the other two consoles that the only way to make a good game is to start from the ground up for the Wii. If you port an existing game, it’s usually not going to be very good, because the control schemes don’t map over very well. Cross-console game publishing has become a popular business model, simply because it’s a more attractive return on investment for game developers. So, for the Wii, they have to take on the risk of making a game just for the Wii instead of doing that.

Another problem … accelerometer data is actually very hard to work with, so most of the games have very simple shake recognition, sort of an analog shaking recognition, sort of like the Rayman games, where you make the person run faster by pumping faster. But really complicated gesture recognition is actually very hard to do. Some dancing games, for example, are very difficult to make trigger reliably, because you want to make sure you’re getting positive movement. You want to correctly register movement, but you don’t want to be too generous or too critical. If you’re too generous, the game is too easy, it’s not compelling, you can cheat at it …. If you’re too critical, the game doesn’t trigger properly and then you get frustration on the part of game players.

NWF: I’d also assume shaking speed and method is harder to translate in a game manual than something like “press A for action X.”

JL: Right. And game developers just don’t know how to use it yet, because it’s pretty new. It’s pretty radical, and it has a lot of its own technical issues, not only in coming up with interesting game content, but also in dealing with the control scheme. It may take another year or two before game developers are used to working with an accelerometer. They had a decade to get used to the joypad. The technology in the Wii remote is still new to developers and they aren’t necessarily using it in the best way yet, so there are a couple reasons why Wii games have at times been less than stellar, and maybe haven’t lived up to the hopes and dreams of Wii owners.

NWF: Are there any that you’ve noticed that actually do make pretty good use of the controls?

JL: Well, Nintendo has done the best, because they had the longest time to work with it. Wii Sports is fantastically done … in fact, I was talking to a Wii game developer, and apparently Wii Sports is so good that it’s a problem, because people buying the Wii almost don’t feel compelled to buy another game, so they’re having a hard time getting people to buy their games. It’s also hard to make a competitor. For example, if you’re making a baseball game, you’re essentially competing against Wii Sports, and that’s a challenge. There were some games I saw in prototype form, and I don’t think I’m allowed to talk about them, but there are some interesting things coming down the pipeline. They weren’t “WOW, AMAZING,” or world-changing, but they were much better examples of the controls than some of the things we’ve seen before.

NWF: Hey, that gives us hope! That said, I really just have one more question, and it’s probably the one you won’t answer.

JL: [laughs]

NWF: I’ve read in some other interviews that you have more projects coming. Can you give us any hint at all of what we can expect, or maybe when we’ll see them?

JL: I’ve been really busy lately… [laughs] It’s sad, because I haven’t been able to do any work since December. I’ve actually been on my job search the past few months, and dealing with my job search and dealing with the attention from the Wii remote projects has consumed my extra time. And then I’m defending my thesis — I’m graduating next week, so I’ve had to deprioritize making new videos. I do have a couple more ideas. I don’t know … it’s hard for me to tell if people are going to get excited about them. There’s also a closing window here. I don’t know how much time I can spend on publishing these videos, partially because once I start employment, I may not be able to continue openly publishing and sharing these Wiimote videos. My hope is that I can, but I don’t know. Maybe next week or the week after that, I can push out another video.

[NWF note: said graduation is now this week!]

NWF: Well, on behalf of our staff, and all of our readers, everyone wishes you the best of luck and probably thinks that, out of everybody in the world, you shouldn’t need much of that luck. I’m surprised you even had to search for a job.

JL: Well, it’s actually been a pretty easy search, and I had a lot of opportunities I didn’t even ask for. And oddly enough, Nintendo was not among them. Nintendo never contacted me.

NWF: Never contacted you at all?

JL: Nope. It’s okay. I don’t think I’d actually want to work solely at Nintendo. I have a pretty diverse set of interests, only some of which are relevant to gaming, so working at a gaming company isn’t very interesting to me.

NWF: Congratulations on graduating, and thanks for taking the time to talk to us during this busy time!

JL: No problem!

via : nintendowiifanboy.com