Wii What?

Somewhere in the hype of E3 this year, a tiny little tidbit was dropped by Nintendo. And no one knows what to make of it. During their press conference, Nintendo announced the near-future release of the Wii Vitality Sensor. And the gaming world collectively said "What the...?"

Since the announcements of this device went over with a thud, a bit more information has leaked regarding the device. Basically, we're talking about a sensor that clips onto your finger and measures heart rate and, maybe, blood oxygen levels. Certainly a useful device, and certainly out of place on a console. It is hard to see what sort of use this could have in a game, but as Ars Technica points out, Nintendo has been absolutely right with odd devices in the past. I for one don't really care to bet against them.

Which leads to the question: What in the world are they going to do with this thing? Sure, there is probably a niche for one or two yoga-esque titles. Hardly the sort of the thing they would expect the gaming press at E3 to get excited about, but I'll concede a small yoga market. Now... what about the rest of us? What sort of a game could convince Joe Gamer to clip a vitality sensor to his finger before an evening of gaming?

A partial answer might already be found in some of the Wii Fit and Wii Sports titles. The vitality sensor could certainly add an element to the long distance running or fencing mini-games. I'm not sure the fun factor would be increased substantially, but there does seem to be a fit. But those games, mini-games really, are already out. An improved running in place title will hardly sell the vitality sensor.

I could see it used as a timing mechanism. By syncing some element of the game with the player's heartbeat, Nintendo could add an almost hypnotic aspect to a title. What sort of title? Excellent question. Rhythm games are the obvious choice, but I could imagine some potential in racing or RPG titles as well.

My favorite possibility is that the device may have a more passive impact on the gameplay experience. It could be that in the early levels of a game, the vitality sensor will monitor your body's response to various events. If you respond strongly to a zombie chucking headless squirrels at you, then the game will make sure that chucking zombies are found deeper in the game. Perhaps it can keep track of your reaction to certain NPCs or storylines, and adapt the story or artwork to better reflect that which draws the stronger physical responses on the reasoning that anything you like or dislike enough to affect your pulse is something you probably like or dislike enough to keep you gaming.

Or it could be that Nintendo has completely lost it and is flushing away money. There are some indications the vitality sensor will appear next year. At least we won't have long to wait.

Demo Play

In an interview with USA Today, Shigeru Miyamoto of Mario fame briefly described an interesting feature coming to New Super Mario Bros. and future Wii titles. The feature, currently called Demo Play, allows the gamer to let the game play itself. Just imagine...

So its Christmas Day, and you're kicked back in your favorite easy chair playing your brand new copy of New Super Mario Bros. And you get get stuck. You can see the next platform, way up on the edge of your screen, but you just can't quite reach it. Normally, you'd have two choices.
A. Grab your laptop and scour the internet for a solution.
B. Throw your controller through a window while inventing half a dozen new words.

Naturally, most game companies love B. They sell a pile of new controllers that way. Sometimes new TVs and consoles too. But, with children in the house, your etymological inclinations should probably be curtailed, and besides, with the recession and all, no one wants to buy more controllers.

But with the game being so new, there probably won't be a solution on the internet yet. At least, not one that you'll be able to find within a few minutes. Is this the end of your Mario for the time being?

No! You just kick the game into Demo Play mode and wander in to the kitchen for a fresh beverage while the game figures out how to get onto that platform all by itself. Your gaming continues uninterrupted, your control doesn't get flung into the raging snowstorm, and your kids think you're an absolute genius for beating the game so easily.

Meet the future of gaming. As the industry pushes harder to make all kinds of games more accessible to all kinds of people, this sort of feature should become the norm in the coming years. It is optional, so it won't affect any of us who like throwing controllers through windows. But it should greatly reduce the frustration factor of just never quite making the absolutely perfect jump.

On the other hand, this creates a whole new set of problems for developers. If they can't rely on gimmicky puzzles or shoddy geometry to keep you playing their newest sequel for hours, they might actually have to resort to good story telling and new, interesting ideas to keep your time and your gaming dollar. Wouldn't that be a shame.

Next Up: WWDC

With E3 out the door and safely on its way, we can turn our attention to the next industry event. Kicking off this morning in the Bay area is Apple's World Wide Developers Conference. Perhaps I am somewhat unorthodox for listing Apple as a company relevant in any way to gaming, but work with me. I can make you a case that what happens in NorCal this week will have a greater effect on the long term future of gaming than what happened in SoCal last week.

The one gaming sector in which Apple dominates is mobile gaming. The iPhone and the App Store have basically rewritten the rules regarding what is possible for cell phone gaming and beaten all expectations in terms of delivering those games to the player. Any numbers I put here will be outdated later today, but I have no doubt that if you pay attention to the press releases and speeches made at the WWDC, you will hear that a startlingly high percentage of App Store downloads are games. In terms of raw downloads, if Apple is not the largest digital distributor of video games, it has to be near the top.

And yet, that may well be the side show. Also expected at WWDC are more details regarding the future development of OS X, and that means more details on how Apple will continue to leverage OpenGL. Apple is one of the companies that directs the development of this graphics standard, and they have used it to great effect in their operating system. If PC gaming is ever going to become truly platform agnostic and not perpetually tied to Microsoft's DirectX, OpenGL is the platform's best hope.

Now, I'm not expecting to see any major announcements that studios are abandoning DirectX in favor of OpenGL anytime soon. However, if this competition between OpenGL and DirectX runs in like manner to other open source vs proprietary competitions in the past, expect OpenGL to surpass DirectX in capability sometime in the near future. With the ever greater need to push graphics into new levels of realism, it is inevitable that one day OpenGL will be the graphics system of choice, not DirectX. There are just too many major players in the OpenGL camp for it to be otherwise.

So, how far away are we from Ubuntu, or any other non-Windows OS, being a major gaming platform? Far. But keep an eye on the development of OpenGL anyway. Today, it may be a minor player in the gaming space, but it won't stay that way. Long term, the development of OpenGL may have more impact on the of gaming than anything that went down at E3.

Future of Gaming? We'll See.

Project Natal. The Future of Gaming. The End of Controllers. The Biggest Revolution in Gaming Since Dice. You've seen the headlines, maybe watched the demos, and will no doubt see endless information on this system before it makes it to market.

For some genres, this system will be amazing. Wii will no longer be the unchallenged king of party games. It is possible that some sports titles will embrace it, but I am skeptical there for a number of reasons. Can it really detect the fine nuances that separate a curveball from a slider, or a good tee shot from a hook into the pond? Maybe, but it is hard to say as yet. Regardless, no doubt whole new styles of gameplay will emerge to take advantage of it.

And Natal will have no bearing on Fable 3 except, perhaps, as a way to look through menus and inventory screens.

You doubt me? Alright, lets try it out. Get a friend, one who is very familiar with Fable, fire up your XBox 360 and pop in Fable 2. Give your friend the controller and have him sit where he can see you but not the screen. You stand in front of your TV. And go play Fable. I wonder how far you'll advance your blacksmithing skill before your arm falls off. Or how badly your feet will hurt after walking in place that long.

Not a fair comparison you say? I agree. Your friend has much, much more processing capability than that whatever leftovers the XBox 360 will be able to throw at Natal. Your friend will be much better at recognizing your movements and guessing what you actually want to happen than any chunk of code that could be written. Natal cannot compare to the human brain. It isn't a fair comparison at all.

Feel free to come up with as many shortcuts and optimizations to help you play the game with the controller in your friend's hand and he unable to see the screen. Maybe you say "Walk" to walk instead of walking in place. That would certainly help the fatigue factor. Maybe you can call out the names of spells to be cast, or agree on particular hand motions for different spells. With a touch of patience, you can have your fully integrated totally motion controlled game play experience right now.

And no doubt you think I'm a lunatic of even suggesting you try something so absurd. We could improve this scenario greatly by a hybrid system. Place a small controller in one had that you can use for more onerous tasks, like walking or leveling your blacksmithing, and only use the motion capture system for stuff thats fun.

That's called a wiimote, and I know exactly 0 people who swing it like a lightsaber when playing Lego StarWars. If we don't swing our lightsabers, will we really act out changing a tire as part of a pit crew? More than once or twice anyway? I have my doubts. Who wants to play the first Natal equipped version of Madden, where you have to run in place to get down the field and jump to catch the pass? Who is sure enough they won't jump into their TV trying to block a field goal and cost themselves a couple grand in the process?

Natal is not the future of gaming. It is not the beginning of the end of the controller. It is not a revolution. It is an evolution, a logical progression, and nothing more. At the end of the day, motion capture controllers get in the way more than they add to the experience in most games. Eventually, I think all consoles and computers will have a hybrid of motion capture and controllers for gaming control. The future lies in linking them together in ways that add to games and does not distract from the very reasons we play in the first place. Because, at the end of the day, it is all about gameplay. Handing papers to virtual boy might be cool as a tech demo, but is the fun factor really all that significant for long term play? We'll see. Acting out the changing of a tire or fighting in an arena might be interesting as a tech demo, but will you choose to play that way over pressing a few buttons? We'll see.

It is much too early to draw any concrete conclusions. But, as it was with the wiimote before it, I think how we wind up using the device will turn out to be rather different than the original hype surrounding it.