My OperaInvisible Walls
Tuesday, November 25, 2008 12:36:25 AM
The issue of new and casual gamers is one I've regularly come back to on God Mode On. I'm not entirely sure why that is but I suspect it's because I've become deeper involved in games as a pastime, almost accidentally, while many of my friends have remained passive. It's put me in a peculiar position of looking at the so called 'hardcore' and 'casual' from the outside despite being one of them. I'm not the only one, as television begins to lose its grip, film and music having to find new distribution avenues, gaming is becoming more accepted, creating a more zealous inner-inner circle leaving many gamers in a half-way house between the two camps. But that is a topic for another, more pretentious, day.
I was back at my parents Friday night. My friends, that are still in the country (and not in Japan, the jammy gets!) had made plans it was too late to change, so I settled in for a night in front of the telly with my parents and a takeaway. My dad soon got tired of my mums soaps and celebrity watching and went in the other room, me and my mum got talking about the Wii they'd recently bought. I'd brought a couple of games back with me for her to try and as there was nothing on I suggested we stick them on.
First things first, I had to set up the second remote. My parents had bought it the day they got the Wii (with Wii Play naturally), but couldn't connect it. They had no idea how, and decided to just give up trying. I also had to sort out the sensor bars range, again they had no idea how to do it, or that there was anything really wrong (there was, the pointer was all over the place). We also got talking about the channels, she liked the idea of the news and weather channels (and the internet channel, but they have to pay for that so it's a no go), the problem is that they have to sort out the wireless connection, easy enough if you know how, but they don't know the password for their router (understandably enough) and so I couldn't set it up for them.
Which actually brings me to a nice Little Big Planet tangent. LBP is often touted as being Sony's in for the casual market, I'd argue they've already got that with Buzz and Singstar, probably not console sellers on their own I guess. Little Big Planet though is not as casual as some think, ignoring the difficulty as it's not exactly Megaman, level creation is hugely in depth, and to access the fan made content you need to be online. Connecting an ethernet cable is easy enough but I can't see my parents doing that, and we've already established that they aren't about to set the PS3 up wirelessly.
Back on topic, once everything was set up I popped in Mario Galaxy and handed my mum the controllers. I've never seen anyone struggle so much in my life. When I first got my Dreamcast my mum fancied a go on Sonic Adventure, I happily obliged and handed her the controller, my prevailing memory of the next 5 minutes is of Sonic running in ever decreasing circles to the soundtrack of my mums helpless laughter.
Well history set about repeating itself, Mario swerved like a drunkard, falling into the quite avoidable black-hole of the second training level, wandering into enemies and leaping into the air every 3 seconds. My mums arms flailed around like an excitable Kermit, no matter how many times I tried to calm her down and get her to just use her thumb rather than the left side of her body to move. She doesn't understand analogue control, it's as simple as that. Frankly I've never understood why analogue control is regarded as such a massive leap over digital, there really aren't that many games that make the most of it.
House of the Dead was marginally more successful. It may seem a strange game to get your mother to play, but it involves nothing more than pointing at the screen and pressing the button. Actually that's not true, while her coordination was much better, the concept of reloading wasn't. I know HOTD2 pretty well from its Dreamcast days and really made the most of that knowledge. Without being unkind I was working extra hard to keep us alive, and I didn't mind that nor am I complaining, I expected it and was willing. I was trying to make things as easy as possible for my mum to engage with the game after all. It was tough going though, at one point seeing that there was only one slow moving zombie left I held back, leaving it for my mum to deal with. "Rererererererererererererererererererererererererereload" I ended up dealing with the zombie, whilst we both laughed (me and my mum, not the zombie).
The point of all this, casual gamers may look at games like Mario and Little Big Planet and really want to play them. My mum has complained about being bored of the various brain tests she's invested in on the DS, but enabling them to make the step up is going to be difficult. How to you teach someone analogue control, twitch reflexes, and the patience to overcome deficits in skill?
That is what the games industry is going to have to overcome if it really wants to expand is 'core' user-base
I was back at my parents Friday night. My friends, that are still in the country (and not in Japan, the jammy gets!) had made plans it was too late to change, so I settled in for a night in front of the telly with my parents and a takeaway. My dad soon got tired of my mums soaps and celebrity watching and went in the other room, me and my mum got talking about the Wii they'd recently bought. I'd brought a couple of games back with me for her to try and as there was nothing on I suggested we stick them on.
First things first, I had to set up the second remote. My parents had bought it the day they got the Wii (with Wii Play naturally), but couldn't connect it. They had no idea how, and decided to just give up trying. I also had to sort out the sensor bars range, again they had no idea how to do it, or that there was anything really wrong (there was, the pointer was all over the place). We also got talking about the channels, she liked the idea of the news and weather channels (and the internet channel, but they have to pay for that so it's a no go), the problem is that they have to sort out the wireless connection, easy enough if you know how, but they don't know the password for their router (understandably enough) and so I couldn't set it up for them.
Which actually brings me to a nice Little Big Planet tangent. LBP is often touted as being Sony's in for the casual market, I'd argue they've already got that with Buzz and Singstar, probably not console sellers on their own I guess. Little Big Planet though is not as casual as some think, ignoring the difficulty as it's not exactly Megaman, level creation is hugely in depth, and to access the fan made content you need to be online. Connecting an ethernet cable is easy enough but I can't see my parents doing that, and we've already established that they aren't about to set the PS3 up wirelessly.
Back on topic, once everything was set up I popped in Mario Galaxy and handed my mum the controllers. I've never seen anyone struggle so much in my life. When I first got my Dreamcast my mum fancied a go on Sonic Adventure, I happily obliged and handed her the controller, my prevailing memory of the next 5 minutes is of Sonic running in ever decreasing circles to the soundtrack of my mums helpless laughter.
Well history set about repeating itself, Mario swerved like a drunkard, falling into the quite avoidable black-hole of the second training level, wandering into enemies and leaping into the air every 3 seconds. My mums arms flailed around like an excitable Kermit, no matter how many times I tried to calm her down and get her to just use her thumb rather than the left side of her body to move. She doesn't understand analogue control, it's as simple as that. Frankly I've never understood why analogue control is regarded as such a massive leap over digital, there really aren't that many games that make the most of it.
House of the Dead was marginally more successful. It may seem a strange game to get your mother to play, but it involves nothing more than pointing at the screen and pressing the button. Actually that's not true, while her coordination was much better, the concept of reloading wasn't. I know HOTD2 pretty well from its Dreamcast days and really made the most of that knowledge. Without being unkind I was working extra hard to keep us alive, and I didn't mind that nor am I complaining, I expected it and was willing. I was trying to make things as easy as possible for my mum to engage with the game after all. It was tough going though, at one point seeing that there was only one slow moving zombie left I held back, leaving it for my mum to deal with. "Rererererererererererererererererererererererererereload" I ended up dealing with the zombie, whilst we both laughed (me and my mum, not the zombie).
The point of all this, casual gamers may look at games like Mario and Little Big Planet and really want to play them. My mum has complained about being bored of the various brain tests she's invested in on the DS, but enabling them to make the step up is going to be difficult. How to you teach someone analogue control, twitch reflexes, and the patience to overcome deficits in skill?
That is what the games industry is going to have to overcome if it really wants to expand is 'core' user-base
