My OperaA Shakedown in Gaming
By .edDotEd. Monday, June 20, 2011 10:06:55 PM
Cross posted from Opera News where the poll results you see were from an Opera News poll that ran during the week around E3. Be sure to check out some great comments in the original post.
It's no surprise that a healthy portion of Opera News readers play PC games, often sitting at a desk, right? So how do you feel about motion-controlled gaming being a part of everything these days but lacking on the PC?
At Opera, we like innovation. From voice input to mouse gestures, usability design to face gestures. The options for controlling Opera have always been industry leading.
Nintendo Wii received a lot of attention at launch and through the years for making motion control standard. The subsequent revolution of motion-controlled gaming that followed with Microsoft Kinect, Playstation Move, Nintendo 3DS, Playstation Vita, and devices running iOS to Android, motion control has become a core feature of all hardware.
Why then, besides the difficulty in forming a standard across computers, has there been no major motion capture implementation in pc gaming? Could a standard exist?
It sounds silly to even ask, right? Console and PC gamers rarely see eye to eye. I wanted some real answers so I asked attendees at E3 why they thought PC gamers didn't care for motion control. Here's how they responded:
- 14 people said they'd rather sit.
- 8 people said they'd knock their water/coffee/beer
over. - 6 people said that [number of] hours of [some long action, like zoning out in The Sims or raiding in World of Warcraft] should be fun, not excruciating or tiring.
- 5 people said WASD keys and mouse work fine.
- 1 person said they can't dance in front of a laptop. (Why not? I do all the time...)
- 1 person said "motion control is a casual gimmick, I'm hardcore."
A Revolution Comes Full Circle
Something is strange here: isn't a mouse capturing your hand motion and turning it into input? Doesn't that count as motion control? Hand motion, selection of objects, direct control, grab, body movement, momentum, etc. - all of this has to count. Right? Isn't a mouse standard?
So what are your thoughts? Is Nintendo going to appeal to the hardcore with the premium Wii U controller? Is Minecraft really possible with Kinect? Does mouse input constitute 'motion control' and is it the reason 'joysticks' are extinct? Or, is Augmented Reality the future? I like AR so I'm sharing a gratuitous photo of iJustine (who really seems to like Opera ) and I with an oversized Nintendo 3DS AR card. Now sound off in the comments, let's hear what you have to say!
Hey! I also want to know who's still gaming on some good older systems and rolling dice - I'm with you on that!
(43%)
