An interesting article popped up in the BBC this week.  It was a story about some medical centers in England using the Wii as a physical therapy and rehabilitation tool.  An earlier BBC article from last month discussed the console’s use by elderly Britons under homecare service.  I’ve seen several news stories here in the US touting the same functionality of the system.  Nintendo’s insistence on catering to the “casual gamer” has caught a lot of attention, both lauding and lamenting the trend the company is pushing to great financial success now that “next-gen” has arrived. 

Many reviewers and gaming journalists were weary of Nintendo’s insistence on forgoing cutting edge visual and processing technology in favor of motion sensitivity and reassessing controller interfaces for the gamer.  I’m not especially knowledgeable about the nuts and bolts details of technology.  But as I understand it, the Wii-mote is nothing more than an infrared camera that reads the “sensor” bar so that the Wii-mote can calculate its relative position and tell the software what action to perform in the ergodic domain.  Carnegie Mellon University PhD student Johnny Chung Lee simply reversed the use of these tools to produce some very cool tricks, hinting at the hidden abilities in Nintendo’s decision:

The ability to realize a fully three dimensional space (albeit one that is still framed) offers a vivid demonstration of Marie-Laure Ryan’s definitions of “active embodiment” and “spatiality of display” (Narrative as Virtual Reality 52-54).  These two terms are the first steps to a kind of self-virtualization with which the end user of a Virtual Reality system cannot quantifiably measure the distinction between a VR application and a “real world” scenario.  First, a user must be able to employ her physical body so that her actions are mimicked precisely and in real-time while allowing for the maximum amount of freedom of movement possible.  Second, the “world” that user inhabits must be realized as a fully three dimensional environment — not just a picture one can manipulate on a screen, but a fully fleshed environment that models the user’s inteactions with it faithfully. 

The functionality of the kind of medical applications described in the BBC articles above is apparent, and that functionality is an inherent component to this kind of virtuality.  By targeting the “casual” market for videogames, Nintendo may have renewed public interest in some version of the ideal Virtual Reality that was prophesied, denigrated, and lauded in the late 1980s and early 90s, which shouldn’t suprise us.  Nintendo has worked from this emphasis on active embodiment at different points since the heyday of the NES:  I had a Nintendo Powerglove, and yes it was as bad as any of us remember.  It really did not function very well. 

But, the Wii-mote functions brilliantly.  I’ve only spent a little time with the Wii, but the hardware’s ability to comprehend the user’s actions is extremely good.  By all accounts, the software/hardware tandem can accurately mimic the user’s actions, flaws and all.  If a gamer has a distinct slice in her golf swing, Wii Golf will do a fairly good job picking up on this little quirk and representing it in the game.  The simple abilit to track points in a three dimensional space has made the hardware fantastic.

But, if Nintendo has renewed interest in this level of human/computer interaction, they’ve also altered the public perception of it.  The Wii and its capabilities do not represent the same kind of full sensory removal that critics warned of in the early 90s — it is not The Matrix packaged in a funny looking white box.  Partially, this shift in public perception is owed to the ever evolving notion of what constitutes immersion — even more so, what constitutes worthwhile immersion.  Game developers have learned that Janet Murray’s full blown holodeck simulation described in her seminal Hamlet on the Holodeck (1997) is not precisely the type of experience most gamers are looking for, and developers generally have to develop to the tastes of their market (creating a whole other set of problems…).

I detect three major movements in mainstream gaming that owe their existence to very different causes (and this is by no means exhaustive):

  • Console games have been taken over by very narrative heavy game titles:  Mass Effect, Bioshock, Call of Duty, Final Fantasy, Grand Theft Auto, Metal Gear Solid, etc.  All of these games include a blend of game genres and mechanics, generally emphasizing role-playing elements revolving around character customization that attempts to highlight the agency of the gamer and mixing it with twitch controlled action consequential to the gamer’s decisions.  The processing power of new-gen consoles allows developers to already create games with much more consequential designs.  Games like Indigo Prophecy and Shenmue tried this on older consoles, but the technology did not allow for the complex programming necessary to incorporate enough choices to provide an illusion of freedom.  Thus, gamers could make decisions about how a conversation might go, but the consequences might be that she found a piece of information at a different point in the game than she might have otherwise.  Now, she might be able to completely alter the narrative thread tying together the gameplay sequences.
  • Portable gaming has offered the reemergence of “classic” gameplay styles that rely on little narrative exposition, or none at all.  Successful titles on handheld platforms are usually puzzle games and updated versions of side-scrolling adventure games that focus primarily on the completion of a set of goals, the most obvious of which are Patapon and Brain Age.
  • Online gaming might be the one area in which the VR ideal described by Janet Murray could offer the most compelling form, primarily because MMOs and other online games can be understood as a conflation of qualities from the first two.  World of Warcraft offers only a bare minimum in narrative development, designed only to create a virtual environment in which gamers can establish their own purposes.  At their heart, games like WoW offer a mode of digital expression covered over with a context — in this case that context is a fantasy realm — and nothing more.  And most online games (at least the compelling ones) offer some kind of context like this, if only a minimal one.  Fans of online shooters have gravitated to sci-fi environments for years:  Halo, Unreal, and Quake.  Or, they’ve gravitated to realistic, but quite extraordinary military themes, like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.  The basic lesson (stretching all the way back to playing Dungeons and Dragons, or even cowboys and indians) seems to be that immersion depends on something to be immersed in.  Only a minimum narrative thread is needed (or even just an excuse to consider a narrative thread).  The other reason VR might be more successful here than elsewhere in game design is due to the processing power of computers verses that of consoles.  Sony and Microsoft have closed the gap with the PS3 and 360, but PCs have a scalability and adaptablity that consoles have never really adopted for one reason or another.  Instead, Sony and Microsoft have offered multiple SKUs, which they pass off as giving gamers “choice”. 

Gamers want to express themselves (or lose themselves, depending on your phenomenological viewpoint) in a fashion that other modes of meaning construction do not offer.  Notice the distinct emphases in these different movements.  Part of these distinctions are based on necessity.  Portable games have to be “portable” in and of themselves: their goal architecture needs to be fun and challenging, but quick to account for the often short spans of gameplay that players on-the-go can afford. 

By tapping into the “casual” market, Nintendo has almost single-handedly popularized a fourth movement.  Combining active embodiment with simple, fun gameplay has created a tool that a generation of professionals who are also digital natives has turned into a matter of utility; and they’ve offered gaming a kind of cultural legitimacy (assimilation?) that it has not enjoyed, and often eschewed.  The “casual” gamer Nintendo has found is often a digital immigrant, or the electronically disenfranchised: those alienated from digital culture for one reason or another. 

In other words, while Sony is working away at and winning the high def video war, Nintendo just might be quietly winning a kind of subtle culture war none of us has ever really understood.  For the most part, gamers have been content to simply wait out the old fuddy-duddies who preached the blasphemy of videogames.  Whether or not such is their intention, Nintendo has found a way to lure those fuddy-duddies into the electronic heresy, thus making gaming relevant to them – and culturally defining it, which is both great and troubling. 

Nintendo can certainly make its fair share of good games, but the company has labored for the last decade or so under the impression that its market was children, while Sony and Microsoft took advantage of the fact that the first generation of born-and-bred gamers are now adults.  And we often like our games violent and complicated, earning the wrath of Jack Thompson and the like.  Nintendo has made games accessible, but some gamers will argue it is at the cost of dumbing gaming down and fostering the impression of gaming as a toy instead of a serious medium of expression. 

Of course, none of this is that simple.  Complaining of the Wii’s success and its childlike impression is a bit like complaining that adults read Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, or any other “children’s tale”, or graphic novels, for that matter.  It’s dismissive and shortsighted.  The advantage that games have is that the medium already has a foothold into “serious” subject matter, even if it is slathered over with some sort of “childish” facade.  Games have reintroduced the notion of consequence and existential choice to young people, a group that, in recent years, has not cared about either of those things in any overt way.