This week’s blog post is going to be a talk about gaming
interfaces; the past, present, and the future. The post builds off of Dr.
Nacke’s lecture found here. So without
further ado let’s start!
Gaming interfaces have gone a long way. They are also one of
the most important components of a game as it is the fundamental way in which
we communicate with our game. Those of us who were around back in the 70s will
remember this:
(Image from Atari Museum)
That’s not to say those who weren’t around don’t know what
this is, but Pong was one of the first arcade games that had mainstream
popularity. I’d go with talking about the Computer Space arcade machine from
the 1970, but I’m not sure how familiar people are with this:
(Image from Atari Museum)
Although Pong wasn’t the first video game nor was it the
first arcade machine made available, it was however the first one to be
successful. Why? Probably because of the fact that it was 2 players and was
seen as something that would have been innovative back then. Rather than using
buttons like the Computer Space, Pong featured two dials, which users would
turn in order to move up or down.
From there, arcade games went into a golden age of sorts.
We’ve seen several innovations such as using a ball (Centipede) to joystick and
buttons. Each of these arcade machines had something new to offer: some of them
would feature color, some would allow the user to move in many directions, and
some would feature scrolling.
As Kevin Saunders and Jeannie Novak mentions in their book ‘GameInterface Design’, arcades saw many different types of interfaces; most of
these interfaces were designed for a single specific game and wouldn’t work
well with other arcade games. Although the trackball from Centipede never
really caught on, the game itself was successful partly because of the
controller. I imagine that trying to play the same game with a joystick or
dials may be a bit awkward and ruin the overall experience.
Eventually arcades started phasing out and in came consoles.
Console gaming has brought many innovations to controllers and has
fundamentally changed the way we interact with our games over the decades. However,
the question is, are we REALLY still innovating today? To provide an example,
let’s consider Nintendo’s Virtual Boy or the Famicom 3D System. The Famicom was
released in the 80s, followed by the Virtual Boy in the 90s. Both of these
systems offered 3D gaming but neither one of them was successful in the market.
3D gaming was relatively new when those consoles were released and could be
seen as innovative for its time. Why did they fail? Personally, I’m not sure. I
wasn’t around back then. However, a simple Google search did reveal that it was
heavy and used up a lot of batteries. On top of that, the technology was still
new and not yet fully developed. In the end, it was probably the high price of
the console that drove customers away from buying one to try it out. No matter
what the reason, Nintendo is at it again with its 3DS portable gaming system,
and it seems to be holding its own after a price drop.
In the past couple of years, we’ve seen a new type of
interface that has brought us a bit closer to our games: touch screens. Ever
since the introduction of Apple’s iPhone, consumers have seen an explosion in
the number of touch screen devices, and, with that, an explosion in the number
of games for these platforms. It seems as if we’re at a fork in the road these
days. On one side, we have more traditional gaming consoles like Sony’s
Playstation 3 or Microsoft’s Xbox 360. On the other, we have systems such as
Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy series of devices.
I’m not going to say that one type of interface is better
over another for many reasons. In my opinion, each interface has its own
purpose and they all have or had games that took advantage of the controller.
For example: Call of Duty would make sense with a “traditional” controller
similar to what the Sony and Microsoft currently use; at the same time, using a
controller such as Nintendo’s WiiMote can prove difficult. That’s not to say
that it has no use; as a game such as Wii Sports works really well with the
WiiMote and doesn’t work well with a Playstation or Xbox controller. I believe
that we’re at a point where we’re not exactly innovating in controller
interfaces anymore. We’re really just creating games and then controllers or
add-ons that work well with these games. For all other games, console makers
have something that works well for them, and I really don’t see them doing
anything radical in the near future. There are of course people out there who
argue that the current generation of gaming consoles may be the last. As we
move into the future, they believe we will see more cloud based solutions and
smaller and more powerful devices that can handle even resource intensive
games. As with any argument, there are always two sides. There’s always the
side that argues that there will always be people who prefer “traditional”
gaming. They want to go home after a long day at work/school, sit on the couch,
and be able to enjoy their favourite game from there; no getting up and moving
around required.
Currently, there are people and companies out there that are
experimenting with new types of controllers. We’re seeing things such as: VR
gloves, eye tracking, and even tongue controllers. As ridiculous as some of
these may sound right now, who knows what the future holds… We may see tongue
controllers being the new thing a decade from now once we start seeing games
that make use of such a controller. My point here is that we’ve done a lot of
experimenting in the past and we’re still experimenting. Sometimes we have
ideas that are simply just too far ahead of its time, as in the case with 3D
gaming. Maybe once the technology becomes cheaper and has been developed more,
we will see some of these new types of interfaces widely available on the
market.
