How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

re: How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

10rd Ben — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 11:11:20 GMT

Great article. Can you believe I've still never played a wii? I really want to - and not because "sUPeR kILLeR FPS #145" is on it, but because it DOES look like so much fun.

re: How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

Rabbit — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 13:44:56 GMT

Bill,

I simply could not agree with you more. I believe the success of the Wii is that it is fundamentally a different kind of platform, in the same way that German board game is a fundamentally different kind of game than Pachinko. They fall under the same umbrella due to a lack of creativity in our taxonomy, not in some psychic ethereal connection. As a father of a kid about Eli's age, I am constantly looking for ways to play with my daughter in constructive ways. While there are plenty of games for her DS that are great, they are rarely interactive -- they are rarely play.

Carnival games (which is by no means brilliant), and the native Wii titles from Nintendo, are excellent in this regard. They let me play with my kids, using the console as an intermediation, not a focus. I can actually play Skeeball with her. Or shoot the clown's mouth to blow up the balloon.

I think the insane passion some people feel for driving games and guitar hero also stems from this controller overload and lack-of-purity in the play.

Amen.

re: How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

ReyBrujo — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 14:04:33 GMT

As an open minded person, I sometimes wonder what must happen for the reviewers to realize that measuring the games with the same stick was useful before, but not anymore. The Variety article about Super Mario Galaxy (http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117935396.html?categoryid=1269&cs=1) is doing just that: picking a game in a platform and dreaming how it would be in another.

Some games are played for the story (like the Ace Attorney series). Other for the graphics. Yet others for the control. Others for the multiplayer factor (like Halo). Minigames are played for the fun. If a reviewer does not score a minigame collection depending on how much fun it is to play with others, he is missing the point, and personally I consider that review moot, not disrespecting the reviewer, but respecting the game itself.

re: How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

poppabk — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 16:03:09 GMT

Interesting post. One of the trends I have noticed in reviews is to deride the controls for being more difficult than on a regular controller. I.e. waving the remote has just replaced a button press, and pressing a button is more precise. This seems to miss the point that pressing a button to swing a tennis racket for example is a lot less intuitive than swinging the remote to mimic the racket swing. More intuitive doesn't necessarily mean easier, playing sports in real life is physically very intuitive but it is far from easy. The fact that the Wiimote can still be intimidating for non-gamers, I have seen looks of panic on peoples faces when I tell them to press the A button to start the game, shows how alienating regular controllers have become.

re: How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

xtoph — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 16:34:38 GMT

I own & adore both the PS3 and the Wii. Your count of controller "inputs" is strange.

Since you counted the PS button on the Sixaxis, then you should count both the power and home buttons on the Wiimote. And since both the Wiimote and the Nunchuck detect motion independently, that's two inputs, plus the IR pointer on the front.

So for the Wiimote/Nunchuck combo, that's: A, B, C, Z, up, down, left, right, plus, minus, 1, 2, stick, power, home, wiggle, waggle, point: 18 inputs, plus the cord connecting the two pieces, the locking wrist strap, the rubber sheath, the position of the sensor bar, the ambient lighting in the room, the question of whether the Nunchuck is needed or not, perhaps the Classic controller (17 inputs plus that button-like latch thing)...!

In my own experience, newcomers to the systems are actually pretty intimidated by being "strapped in" to the Wii experience. Compared to the PS3 experience: power cable, hdmi cable, Sixaxis, done.

Of course not every button is used in every game, or even used for gameplay at all, but that's true of both systems, and a newcomer to either must learn which buttons to ignore.

I wore out a half-dozen 2600 controllers, and couldn't get my parents to play. Now I'm a dad, and my parents still aren't interested in either the Wii or the PS3. But my daughter enjoys both.

(Oh and I suck at fighting games... way too complicated for me.)

re: How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

shauntu — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 16:36:08 GMT

Ok, reading this article caused me to register here just to comment on something I just realized...

I have a Wii. I love the controller and the potential it holds. I loved Wii Sports, and had a lot of fun with Wii Play. And yet, I kept Mario and Sonic as well as Carnival Games off my radar scope -- primarily due to the bad press they recieved from the same videogame journalists and reviewers that routinely belittle Wii Sports and Wii Play and rated them in the 70's and 50's respectively!

This was an eye opener! It appears I may have to reconsider how I interpret 'videogame experts' opinions... and place Mario and Sonic and Carnival Games back on my interest list for when I am done playing Fire Emblem and Super Mario Galaxy!

re: How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

SuperEffective — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 16:38:25 GMT

Great post, but I'll quibble about sports games. Sports gamers, like RPG gamers, are a niche audience that wants all kinds of control over strategy and movement. The increased input really *has* been a boon for them, because sports sims are a lot like fighters: you want depth, balance, and replay value. The dual shock went hand in hand with the era-of-Madden, and it did expand the market in a bunch of ways.

Beyond that, though, I totally agree. WiiSports is really the most important software to hit in the last 5 years. It has an aesthetic that doesn't scream 'gamer' -- the iconic mascot is you! It cleverly immerses you and disguises the shifts between 1:1 and gesture control. It's very, very impressive.

re: How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

VicViper — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 16:55:30 GMT

I recognize and agree that controller complexity is has made gaming more more daunting to many.

However I feel Street Fighter II wasn't the catalyst. If anything it was Super Famicom controller which introduced the 6-action button layout. SFII used 6 buttons, true, but MK used 5, and VF used a mere 3.

Early Super Famicom games like F-Zero employed the 6 button layout, particularly the shoulder buttons to employ a greater level of control. But if you really want to argue what really made things complicated, it was the PC. Wolfenstein, Doom, and every successor assign a different weapon call to a different button, and that's before you add in all sorts moment tweaking to a really daunting amount of keys, and RTS's can be even more dizzying. Consoles likely expanded so that such genres and games could be ported over. The second analog stick is pretty much is your mouse look on a PC.

Anyway, it's easy to see why casual and younger audiences love the Wii. It's simple and clean. And I agree a control refinement is overdue for all gaming, but I don't know if the Wii is the final solution. To date, no one has really found a way to make most genres play as well as they do on other formats. That's not to say there's some exceptions, but most Wii titles lack the robust feel you get with other controllers. Whether it the technology has or the programmers haven't evolved yet, I don't know.

Right now comparing the Wii against other controllers is kind of like comparing Super Smash Bros to Virtua Fighter. For a party atmosphere or just pick up and play, most people would prefer SSB. But if you want something you can play for months, if not years and enjoy on a deep professional level of skill you want Virtua Fighter.

re: How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

lil frisky — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 17:53:10 GMT

Great read. I do have a couple of smallish objections, however:

The fact that Sony split up the D-pad into four separate buttons (that could register eight different directions) surely shouldn't count as adding another layer of complexity? If my memory serves me right, Nintendo has the cross-shaped D-pad patent locked away and isn't likely to start sharing anytime soon (see if you can find a similar D-pad on any non-Nintendo controller) – and I can't see why Sega's or Sony's workaround solutions should count as adding complexity, when they serve exactly the same purpose albeit in a slightly different shape.

Also, I review games for a living and have yet to encounter a colleague who's baffled by the prospect of grading a game that you can't "get through". These kind of games also didn't see their advent when the Wii arrived. Reviewers certainly didn't have a hard time heaping praise over the original Mario Party for what it was: a simple but great game when you've got the right company (and a complete waste of time if you're playing alone). And as a game critic, I'm not at all familiar with the "more complexity equals more fun" mantra. If everyone followed that, how could classics like Track & Field (with sequels) ever have gotten decent review scores?

One last thing: the problem I – and many of my peers – had with Wii Sports is that while some of the mini games (tennis) work great, others (golf, boxing) don't really seem to at all reflect what you're doing with the controls, which kind of kills the concept.

re: How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

gilley — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 19:03:56 GMT

In metroid prime 3, to open a door I have to push the nunchuck in, twist it counter clockwise, then pull the nunchuck out. All just to open a freakin door! In the past in metroid, you just had to shoot it.

No sir, the Wii isn't making things better. It's making things worse.

re: How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

cyrus_zuo — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 19:43:56 GMT

Amen!

It's a great point and quite valid. NBA Live 08 Wii - horrible one player game (!!). First time I've ever been able to play a 'real' sports game with my daughters. For that I loved it.

Wii Sports is something my wife and father are interested in playing. My dad on seeing Wii Sports wanted to play, that's unprecedented since RC Pro-Am (NES). Mario Party 8, which I'd rented instead of buying after reading reviews, was a game my wife would start up to play when I wasn't home (which just DOESN'T happen in our 10 years of marriage and many consoles). We bought it for Christmas.

I appreciated your piece on Carnival Games when I first read it on your blog. It started me on using GameFly to rent a lot of multiplayer games that I had been ignoring. I've even found even Donkey Kong Barrel Blast is redeeming in a family setting (my 3 year old can play it...but he can't touch Mario Kart though he desperately wants to and tries over, and over, and over to play it). Barrel Bash is the first simple race game he can compete in (EA Playground has the second).

Great article, solid points.

I appreciated the insight.

re: How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

The Stew — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 19:57:53 GMT

If anyone is to "blame" for the advancements in controllers, it's Nintendo. They have pioneered every major advancement in controller input save for the traditional joystick. First it was the directional pad which was first used on the Game & Watch handheld LCD games. Then it was double the amount of face buttons and the addition of shoulder buttons on the SNES. Then it was the advent of the 3D analog stick on the N64 and now motion control with the Wii.

And regardless of who pioneered them, I'd say that controller complexity would have advanced based simply on the fact that as gaming systems got more and more powerful, it allowed developers to create bigger and more involving games which require more input from players. It's a natural evolution. Is it one that is preferable to many gamers? For the hardcore crowd, no doubt. They want as involved an experience as possible. But to your average Joe Gamer who just wants to have some good times and pass a couple hours, maybe not.

re: How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

0kelvin — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 21:28:34 GMT

Great article Bill!

I disagree somewhat with the Street Fighter 2 theory, though. I think the leap in complexity in the Playstation era was influenced far more by the shift to 3D worlds. That generation only added a few new buttons, mainly the extra shoulders, but it added a ton of new directional controls (at least once the N64 and Dual Shock were released). More dimensions of navigational control were needed to control a character in 3D space. The Wii controller actually adds even more dimensions, but lets you control them an extremely intuitive fashion. The Wii remote essentially allows you to control six analog sticks simultaneously with a single hand, and still leaves your fingers free for pushing buttons.

re: How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

0kelvin — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 21:47:03 GMT

Sorry, I meant to say four analog sticks simultaneously, not six.

re: How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

TheHangdMan — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 03:42:32 GMT

Wow, where to begin, where to begin.

First off, game reviews have very little to do with game sales. Just ask Yahtzee at ZeroPunctuation about that one. Okami and Psychonauts were critically acclaimed games that went nowhere, yet it seems that the latest iteration of Madden or Mario, no matter how good or bad they are compared to the rest of the series, still sell like hotcakes (does anyone actually buy hotcakes anymore?)

Second, you're saying that reviewers don't know how to rate fun. That games without ends, you know party games ,aren't properly rated, and you cite Mario Party 8 as an example. Well lets compare that Mario Party 8, which got a 62 on MetaCritic, to some other games. Perhaps the rest of the series?

Mario Party 1: rated 79

Mario Party 3: rated 74

Mario Party 4: rated 70

Mario Party 5: rated 69

Mario Party 6: rated 71

Mario Party 7: rated 64

Mario Party 8: rated 62

Did you notice the downward trend in reviews? Perhaps it's because of a lack of innovation, maybe this series has played itself out for too long? Perhaps there are other party/mini games out there that do it better? WarioWare Inc. for the Gamecube scored a nice 76, which places it higher than any Mario Party other than #1. Also did you consider, that these are party games, which are meant to be played with several people. I hear Monopoly is pretty boring when you play it by yourself. A boring single player component leads to lower scores, I find.

Third, control. I will stop calling the Wii controller a gimmick, when it starts to recognize what I'm doing, instead of substituting remote wagging for button mashing. Lets take Wii Sports for example, since it seems that everyone loves that game. If I move my hand from right to left in tennis, my avatar will perform an overhead smash, backhand, or whatever is the most appropriate action, but not the one I'm specifically doing. If I want to smack the ball into the opposite corner of the court, I have no control over that. So please tell me where this Wiimote does anything different than a single button press does. Golf? I've learned that I can either putt at over maximum force or just under a bar, but nowhere inbetween. Baseball? Well guess what, it you want to do anything other than throw fastballs straight over the plate, you have to use those oh so unituitive buttons and d-pad to accomplish that. Oh yes, and an underhand lob gets you the same reaction from your avatar as the tomahawk chop does. Boxing................ no comment. Now the Bowling on the other hand, that's really good. My ball has a tendency to hook hard to the left towards the very end of its run (just like in real life) killing my hopes of rasing my average to above 160 in real life or in the digital world.

To me, the bowling is the only game in all of WiiSports that accurately senses my gestures and isn't just a glorified version of a button. One game out of five, now you tell me if that game deserves a 10 out of 10. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the game and have fun with it. But it's not high on my to do list. The WiiSports gets pulled out usually when guests are over and not all of them are gamers. When it's me on my own, I'm either throwing frag in 2142 or getting carpal tunnel from Guitar Hero (did I mention that I'm a cowboy? And that I ride on a steel horse?)

Fourth, (and last, I promise) and least importantly, more of a nitpick than anything, your input counts are way off. A classic joystick is not a single input, its four or eight, depending on the make, same thing goes for the good old nintendo crossbar. You should be counting independent switches for directions, not just the device connecting them all. If you remove the tiny layer of plastic from the center of an old Sony pad, you'd find they were connected together anyways. You also seem to forget that a lot of classic videogames on the Atari used both the joystick AND keyboard. Shoot, even the arcade classic Robotron had more inputs (16 - eight on each joystick) than SF2 did (14 total).

Finally, (sorry, I lied earlier) lots of developers have made complex games for ages, SF wasn't the first. Hell, Karateka had six different attack buttons, and I don't remember people complaining about complexity then. To close with your comment about the monkey in the movie theater, (which makes very little sense by the way) when I see all of these monkeys (non-gamers) in the theater, (gaming in general) I wonder who let all these monkeys in the theater in the first place?

Still dangling about,

The Hang'd Man

P.S. Advance apologies to any and all offended by my monkey comment, but I still stand by it.

re: How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

theorangesven — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 03:48:52 GMT

I agree w/ your point about Street Fighter adding complicated commands, but I don't think it really corresponds w/ the increase in buttons. For some arcade games, sure, but nothing for consoles. the extra buttons were already there for the super nes, and console analog sticks really were all part of the move to 3d.

And who's to say complicated games w/ crazy commands can't be fun? I derive most of my fun from exactly those sort of games. Difficult games are quite rewarding to mastered. There are diverse styles of games to provide a range of experiences. Some people may never want the challenging complicated gameplay of a fighting game, but that doesn't make those games flawed in any way. Less able to penetrate the mass market, sure, but that doesn't mean they aren't w/out their place in the gaming world.

re: How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

zhangzilong — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 14:48:49 GMT

While I agree with your logic here, I have to disagree with the spirit of the editorial.

First of all, I'd take your mention of movies and make a bit of an analogy. In the world of entertainment, there are plenty of times in which the primary consideration in creating a work is mass appeal. From a purely economic standpoint, this is a no-brainer. That is why you end up with tons of movies like Car Chases Where The Cars Explodes III. Are these movies fun? Yes. Its very easy to sit there and appreciate the special effects and have 90 minutes of mindless fun. However, they do nothing to enrich movies in any kind of artistic sense, and simply tend to spawn hundreds of iterations of the exact same thing. For that, you turn to art films and student films, generally.

Party games can be a blast- I spent countless hours playing Mario Party and many many more on Super Smash Bros. (which I'd qualify as a party game, personally). However, its very easy to see why the gaming culture, especially "hardcore" (a term I'm loathe to use) wouldn't find the prospect of an endless stream of copycat party games to be particularly exciting. It means the video game industry will progress even further in cleaving to simple economics than deep, satisfying games. For every Super Mario Galaxy there are going to be 600 almost identical copies of Mario Party.

Unfortunately, unlike the movie industry where the available budget generally has little correlation to the quality of a film, things in the video game industry aren't quite as simple. If you follow the future progression, the best case is that you will continue to see in depth titles developed for the PC, with a few of the very best being ported to Xbox Live Arcade or whatever comparable services exist. However, its not hard to see that publishers who were already trying to find that magic way to get pretty much everyone to buy their games won't be going even further in squeezing niche games and traditional genres than they already are, and that is not a good thing.

I'm honestly just tired of hearing about how mass appeal is a leap forward for gaming. It is not, it is a leap forward for economics. As far as gaming goes, it just means that the hobby will go the same way that popular movies and music have

PS I do have to agree about the method of reviewing party games. It is not really that hard to simply get four reviewers together and say "Is this game fun? Will we play it for more than a week, or does it get boring in an hour or less?" Such a method could easily determine which party games are worthwhile and which are truly crap.

re: How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

tralalu — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:46:18 GMT

As with all things, it´s not really about the amount of inputs and features available, but about how you structure it!

While the Atari 2600 joystick managed this by having very few input options, the Wiimote has a "hierarchy" in its button sizes. The "A" button just screams "Press me!", while the B button on the bottom side, big in its form and bearing a resemblance to a pistol trigger, is easily tangible.

Now look at the Dual Shock Pad: Is there any hierarchy, any structure, any intuitiveness in the button layout?

But the fact that the Wiimote has almost as many input options as the Dual Shock shows that complex input options are available, if you as a game designer want to utilize them.

So, the Wiimote has many input functions for the complexity, but a structure/hierarchy to keep the intuitiveness of the joypads with fewer buttons.

re: How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

joeboy101 — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 16:48:50 GMT

Bill Harris FTW!

Look, I'm no Nintendo fanboy, but its obvious that this controller and concept is a whole new breed, and as much as I love my 'hardcore' or 'old skool' games, the industry is a changin'. I love the games as they are coming out, but I grew up around these controllers, so knowing them is second nature. Much like N'Gai or someone said in another thread, sculpture is as much art to a blind man as is a video game to someone who has never held a controller before. It simple can't be appreciated. And getting more than ahead of myself a little bit, you could compare hard core gamers with vinyl record buffs in a CD age. The market is raising its head and speaking and it wants something different than what we revelled in.

But as much as Nintendo has tapped into a rich new ore that demonstrates a massive install base and a new demographic and a trove of treasures, it represents a dearth of pitfalls too. This demographic has not bought a video game console EVER before or it might have been a console three to four generations ago. What is commonly accepted practices for marketing and general audience knowledge goes out the window. Everything is starting over again in that regard. Though Mario Galaxy will be huge, it is a colossus of a known and respected IP. Hell, some of these people buying the Wii last played Mario on the NES. If the third-party software does not start selling through at better rates, than Mario or not, the console will not be embrace be developers, ultimately making it a powerful, but niche product. Thus stunting any influence it would have on the gaming industry as a whole. And that's not to blame Nintendo. Developers are being taken to task for not thinking creatively in how to utilize the Wii's benefits and controls, but whether they learn or not, they are the ones who will ultimately determine its influence through how accepted it becomes.

Now, doomsaying aside, Nintendo has a ridiculously growing install base and given developers don't have to go graphics-gonzo for HD graphics, I'm betting developing is cheaper for it too. That install base is too irresistable for developers, large or small (imagine a small developer developing a mega-hit for the Wii? Entirely possible given the novelty of the controls), and they will make multiple attempts to hack at it. The porting of popular hardcore games to the Wii needs to stop, like right now. Won't work. Owner's of the Wii want a basic quick pick-up AND quick walk-away experience that they enjoy in group settings primarily, with some single player. As Bill so elegantly pointed out, today's reviewers are simply not working on that wavelength.

But keep in mind, as games matured on the Playstation, Genesis, and NES, to later consoles, so will the Wii. I don't think Nintendo can bank on radically changing the industry yet, but what is exciting is that its the first time we have seen such a possibility (and a strong one at that) pop up in a couple of decades. And as owners of the Wii get more comfortable with it, expect to see software purchases coalesce.

re: How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

MEgaBYte — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 17:26:53 GMT

I think that some people here have missed the point of this article. He is not doubting that deep games can be fun, he is saying that they have gone from a simple approach to a more complex one, and by this they are excluding a lot of casual gamers into playing. What is the bad thing about more people playing really, all people shoud have options in playing games. A lot of hardcore gamers raid about the wii, but I dont see the point, they are still getting there fix with the wii or more so with the 360 or PS3.

I am a hardcore PC gamer and love FPS games, complex sports games, RPGs, etc. I am also a graphics aficionado but you now what console I wanted to get the most, well the Wii, because of its different aproach to gaming and that I could involve my family into fun gaming.

Reviewers are harcore gamers, theres no question about it, and it is cool that they take the time to analyze the game as an expert, but seriously I really think that these kinds of games and maybe others like sports games (mostly on wii) should have 2 type of reviews. One expert review (normal review as we know it now) and a casual's player review, and why not they should even go farther than that chack how kids do with these games.

Like I said I am a harcore gamer but I certainly enjoy some mini games on the wii with my family. Would I prefer to play alone one of this games to play Crysis, obviosly not, but the whole experience of playing one of this games with my family comes as close.

re: How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

perrinbar — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 21:01:00 GMT

Well Bill, I must say I do agree that controls are far too complex for your average person these days. I've heard that complaint from my mother for years, probably why she doesn't play any games any more. While there are certainly some math issues with your determination of inputs, the complexity of games continues to increase furthering the gap of accessibility.

However, I think you need to decide what game reviewers are trying to do. Who are they trying to serve? I think they are serving my needs, the needs of the hardcore gamer. I don't imagine too many of the people who keep buying Wii Sports give a damn what the writers of EGM think, or even know what EGM is for that matter. Game reviewers are much like movie reviewers. We look at them as knowledgable sources for opinions. With that knowledge must come the understanding that they might just not find games like Mario Party fun. Obviously there is a severe disconnect between Wii reviews and Wii sales. But isn't that reflected in most popular entertainment? Toni Morrisson doesn't sell nearly as well as Anne Rice. Norbitt made millions, millions!! People who just want to have fun don't tend to look towards reviews at all for informing their decisions. Those of us with *ahem* discerning tastes look for the best game we can find and often for something new and innovative.

The sidebar to that is that those of us with discerning tastes also go by a much less positive title, namely snobs. And I'll be damned if it isn't true. That's were the real issue is, reviewers are, much like us perusers of the level up blog, video game snobs. The randomness of Mario Party doesn't strike us as fun anymore, we want a challenge, we want a new experience. My girlfriend wants to punch me everytime I say something is objectively bad. She's right and she is the Wii consumer. However, I'm not changing any time soon. I like picking good things to spend my time on and not just something that will entertain me for an hour or two. The time spent after is almost worth more than the time spent playing. I love to dissect design choices and gameplay options. This is not what someone who buys Carnival Games is hoping to do. The only review score that counts at the end of the fiscal year is the one that comes in dollar signs. I think we can see where the Wii is getting the good reviews.

re: How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

Gpig — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 23:04:20 GMT

So in summary: Things weren't as complicated back in my day! We had a joystick and a button and dag nabbit that's the way we liked it. Also what's the deal with this whole third dimension I keep hearing about? We had to make do with two! And you know what? We also liked it!

The only thing it was missing was complaints about "kids today" and the Moral Fabric of America to go along with the "things are more complicated now-a-days" speech.

re: How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

JRGBruno — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 03:51:10 GMT

Interesting article--for the most part I agree with your enthusiasm for the Wii and its controller (as far as I'm concerned, the Wii also has the game of the year in Super Mario Galaxy, a masterpiece that should appeal to kids and parents alike).

However, I must take issue with your criticism of game reviews. Personally, I have many problems with the way games are reviewed today by the "hardcore press," but being too strict or "stiff" in the way they approach games certainly isn't one of them. In fact, I usually find the opposite: game reviewers are way too susceptible to industry/fanboy hype and tend to get too lenient with well-established series, making for some laughably predictable reviews (e.g., everyone new what reviewers would say about the somewhat underwhelming Halo 3; anyone can tell you most of what they'll say about Madden 2012).

Thus, the fact that Mario Party 8 (a well-established franchise) and Mario & Sonic at the Olympics (a fanboy's wet-dream) would get scores in the 60s is, for me, a somewhat encouraging sign for the future of game reviewing. Are they fun games that anyone can get into? I'm sure they are. I'm also sure that many families have enjoyed Bee Movie, and yet the film has a meager 50% rotten rating in RottenTomatoes. No one, however, is seriously saying that film critics are "out of touch" with modern cinema as a result. Why, then, should we interpret the scores given to those two games as a sign that reviewers 'don't get' the new casual audience? After all, you mentioned that the target audience for that type of Wii game is "everybody;" and a 60s score on the 1up site stands for "Average." Seems like they got the audience for those games just right....

re: How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

StealthBear — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 17:18:19 GMT

I have to disagree about the Wii. I think that the revolution (pun intended) it has caused among the casual audience is great, but it is more about flashy consumer appeal than disrupting the trends in control. Nintendo has focused on this sort of control simplicity for several generations. Look at the N64 and Gamecube: both controllers have many inputs, yes, but they are very clearly put in a hierarchy. They provide options, but rarely complexity. For example, you can play a great number of Nintendo's Gamecube titles (Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros Melee, Mario Sunshine) with 5 inputs or fewer. Sure, they may use all the buttons, but you're not forced to use all of them to have a full experience.

The Wii just continues Nintendo's philosophy. What has made it a hit is not new simplicity; it is a commitment to motion control that appears more accessible and draws in the popular media and a wider audience. I'm sure grandpas and grandmas everywhere could play Mario Kart on the Gamecube if you could get them to sit down for 5 minutes with it.

re: How the Videogame Industry Shot Itself In the Joystick--and Why the Wii Has Stopped the Bleeding

acolisa — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 18:38:19 GMT

I am a 38 year old woman who never played a video game in her life. My boyfriend bought the Wii game system last spring, and now I use it more than he does! (I bowled a 236 on the Wii Sports game last night) I am hooked!