Every year Mr. Ziegler and I do a X-Mas lecture about exotic and crazy ludic interfaces. Over the years we collected a lot of interesting examples – some of them had a huge commercial success, others disappeared before anyone could recognize them. Here are some of my personal highlights of this and last years lectures:
A bloody mess: The GlucoBoy (GBA / NDS)
The GlucoBoy is a catridge for the GBA which comes with a blood glucose meter. Inserting blood samples gives the player an amount of “glucose reward points” which can be used to unlock games or which work as a currency in games to buy virtual stuff. This is serious gaming, man!
Another Wii Remote Addon… The Cooking Pro Set!
After introducing small tennis rackets, boxing gloves, wooden or plastic swords and shields, rods, guns and maracas it seems like the hardware producers don`t run out of ideas of where to put in the wii remote controller – even if the ideas lead to products like the swiss army knife-looking “cooking pro set” which comes with a tool which combines knive, fork and spatula (“Pfannenwender” in German). And, of course, you get a plastic pan. So, all Cooking Mamas and Daddies out there, enjoy your meal!
Move your ass! The ChairIO
The ChairIO was developed by the research group of Steffi Beckhaus from the University of Hamburg. The ergonomic seat can tilt in any direction, rotate and bounce and records the player motions with magnetic trackers which are integrated into the seat. One demo video shows the chair together with a gun prop as a possible setup to play Unreal Tournament. I doubt that one could play with this setup for several hours, but it looks like an appropriate control scheme and great fun to play.
Stay calm…Take a deep breath… Welcome to Wild Divine!
Wild Divine – or the “biofeedback game” as it calls itself – was already released some years ago but is still one of the most exotic game interfaces around and that`s why I put it here. Wild Divine is all about meditation and relaxing. The player “controls” the game most of the time via three thimble-like instruments which track biofeedback like the heart frequency and the skin conductance level. Needless to say, the goal is to calm down and stay with it. So, all you cheerful people – looking for a new challenge?
Ouch! Here comes the Legshocker
The LegShocker is coming from the people who brought you the famous painstation (the pong game with the really bad punishment if you miss a ball…). And yes, it is about pain again. The legshocker looks like the shin guard footballers wear but with a metallic cylinder on it. Now, imagine you are playing a football game with your friend and the other player commits a foul. The game will trigger the cylinder to move a metal stick up and down to the unguarded part of the shin, depending on the strength of the foul. With this feedback device, multiplayer games of FIFA or PES reach a whole new level…
You want more?
Boktai Solar Sensor – A GBA game with light sensor, changing the game in accordance with the day-time.
The Olfactory Cannon – Shooting different smells at your nose. Uhhh…
Novint Falcon – A very precise aim-and-shoot device which looks (and works) like professional 3D-modelling tools (e.g. Sensable Phantom).
The Buttkicker Gamer – The name tells the whole story.
The Remote-Controlled Human. People controlling people. Really scary.
You know more cool interfaces which are not listed here? Then send me a mail.
Madworld: Wii have a camera problem
Dienstag, 14. April 2009Here is my newest ‘game usability problem’: In the last days I played ‘Madworld’ which has really great production values and makes good use of the wii motion controls BUT even after some hours of play I still have problems with the camera control. You run around in a third-person perspective (which is pretty close on Jack, the protagonist) and the camera perspective tends to change sometimes depending on the combo moves and the level design. Hitting a nunchuck button will set the cam straight forward again (see video for some gameplay impressions).
But what I miss is a precise camera control or at least a quick turn-around (like Resident Evil uses) in some situations. Shortly before facing the boss of the first epsiode named ‘Little Eddie’ you encounter a smaller boss mob looking like a footballer with bull-head and a huuuge chainsaw. I faced him at a train platform which creates a long level tube you can run up and down. To get out of his chainsaw range I ran around but I had no indicator how close he was behind me. Trying to use the typical combo stuff like garbage cans at the platform, turned out to be really frustrating cause you never know when the bull is going to hit you from behind. I stopped trying to use combo stuff and ran down the train platform to its end, turning around and waited two seconds till the bull arrived to bring my own chainsaw into play. Well, you can win easily doing so, but I really missed the chance to use the whole combo stuff on him which is an important part of the game.
My first thought: Give me a 2nd analog stick to take a look around while running. But wait – there are already 3rd person games on the Wii where I had no problems with the standard cam. Mario Galaxy pulls the camera very far away from Mario, giving the player enough time to react if something appears in behind. The boost ball sequences of Metroid Prime work very well, too. But I still wonder if the lack of good 3rd person games on the Wii is in consideration of the fact that the console has not enough cpu power to show a rich world in combination with a lot of character animations OR if it is difficult to develop a proper control scheme on Wii Mote and Nunchuck…
I think the problem with the Madworld cam is a result of the combination of several design decisions:
As already mentioned, Madworld does a lot of things right but the camera really flaws some moments of the game. Not as bad as the crazy camera in some narrow levels of ‘The Force Unleashed’, but I think both issues are related. I assume that some changes in the level designs could lead to less cam problems but hey, we all know that train stations with spiked trains running through cannot be substituted.
Tags:camera, game usability, level design, madworld, nunchuck, wii, wii mote
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