controllers

Emotiv Knows What You’re Thinking

  • Reading time:1 mins read

by [name redacted]

The svelte Emotiv headset uses an array of sixteen EEG sensors to detect electrical impulses in the scalp. These signals are then interpreted by a suite of tools, each with its own range of applications.

The “Expressiv” application identifies and interprets facial expressions; one of Wixson’s associates demonstrated winking, blinking, and an unnerving grin, each of which was replicated on a rough facial model. Another application, called “Affectiv”, recognizes emotional states.

The most substantial and interesting application is the most active one, “Cognitiv”, which “classifies conscious active intent”. That is to say, it interprets what the wearer wants to do, allowing a player to execute specific commands and actions through thought alone.

( Continue reading at GamaSutra )

The Wii that Wasn’t

  • Reading time:6 mins read

by [name redacted]

Originally published by Next Generation.

Market analysts call the Wii a return to form after the relative flop of the GameCube. Design analysts call it a potential return to form after the relative rut of the previous fifteen years. Whatever the spin, when people look at Nintendo’s recent misadventures, generally the Gamecube sits right on top, doe-eyed and chirping. Its failure to do more than turn a profit has made its dissection an industry-wide pastime. Everything comes under the microscope, from its dainty size and handle to its purpleness to the storage capacity of its mini-DVDs. The controller, though, has perplexed all from the start.

Touch Generations

  • Reading time:13 mins read

by [name redacted]

Originally published by Next Generation, under the title “FEATURE: A Short History of Touch”.

A few years ago, Nintendo launched the DS with a vaguely unsettling catch phrase: “Touching is Good”. Their PR team sent disembodied plastic hands to everyone on their mailing list, in the process creeping out Penny Arcade. As creepy and forward as the campaign was, it had a point. Touching historically has been good, for the game industry.

On a whole, videogames are an awfully lonely set of affairs. They paint an alluring well, then give the player rocks to throw, to see what ripples. From Spacewar! to Pong, you’re always shooting or batting or throwing some kind of projectile, to prod the environment. Even in some of the most exploration-heavy games, like Metroid, the only way to progress is to shoot every surface in sight, with multiple weapons. Little wonder art games like Rez are based on the shooter template: it’s about as basic a videogame as you can get. See things, shoot things, you win. If things touch you, you lose. Except for food or possessions, generally you can only touch by proxy; toss coins into the well; ping things, to see how they respond. To see if they break.

Gestures and Measures

  • Reading time:8 mins read

by [name redacted]

Part eleven of my ongoing culture column; originally published by Next Generation.

About a year ago NextGen published an article in which I groused about the early speculation about the Wii. The point, I said, wasn’t that we could now have real-time lightsaber duels; it was the extra layer of nuance that the Wiimote added on top of our familiar grammar – kind of the way analog control made 3D movement a hair less awkward. The point of motion control, I said, wasn’t to replace current control systems; it was to augment them, thereby to make them more flexible. A little more powerful, a little more intuitive.

Well, I was half right.

The Nintendo Syndrome

  • Reading time:12 mins read

by [name redacted]

Part two of my ongoing culture column; originally published by Next Generation.

So Nintendo’s at the top of its game again – or near enough to clap, anyway. The DS is one of the bigger success stories in recent hardware history. People are starting to buy into the Wii hype; even Sony and Microsoft’s chiefs have gone on record with how the system impresses them. Japan is mincing no words; 73% of Famitsu readers polled expect the Wii to “win” the next “console war”, whatever that means. And these people aren’t even Nintendo’s target audience.

Satoru Iwata has done a swell job, the last couple of years, taking a company that was coasting on past success, whose reputation had devolved to schoolyard snickers – that even posted a loss for the first time in its century-plus history – and making it both vital and trendy again.

So what happened to Nintendo, anyway? How is it that gaming’s superstar was such a dud, for so many years? What’s the white elephant in the room, that everyone has taken such pains to rationalize? It is, of course, the same man credited for most of Nintendo’s success: Shigeru Miyamoto.

Buttoning Down

  • Reading time:14 mins read

by [name redacted]

Originally published by Next Generation, then later BusinessWeek, under the title “Revolution Pressing the Right Buttons“.

There’s only so much you can do with a button. You press it, something happens. You don’t press it, something doesn’t. If it’s an analog button, and you press it even harder, maybe that thing will happen even more: maybe you’ll run faster, or you’ll punch with more vigilance. Maybe if you hold down a second button when you press that first one, something subtly different will happen. Instead of lashing out with a whip, say, the little man on the TV screen will throw a boomerang. Either way, he still attacks; the second button just changes how he does it. Those are more or less our options: do something, do more of something, or do a different kind of something. It’s all very straightforward. So too, then, is the history of game controllers.

Manos: The Hands of Fate

  • Reading time:9 mins read

by [name redacted]

Originally published by Next Generation, under a title that I no longer remember.

Generally speaking, the controller sold with a console can be read as a microcosm of the console itself. (You might call it a rule of thumb – though I would not advise this.) That the Odyssey2 came with a right-handed stick and a single button for the left hand tells you that its games are simple, that movement is the central mechanism, and that if there is any secondary function its importance is minimal. That the NES replaces this template with a cross-shaped D-pad for the left thumb and two buttons for the right, labeled from the outside of the controller in the order that your hand meets them, says mountains of Nintendo’s idea of videogames, circa 1985.

Fingers

  • Reading time:6 mins read

Despite the propoganda you may have read, the Xbox 360 has one of the least comfortable controllers I’ve held. It tries to be ergonomic, and is molded to hands that aren’t my shape. My knuckles bang. My fingers are cramped. Of course, my hands are irregular. And I hate every ergonomic input device I’ve ever encountered. This is like the split keyboard of game controllers.

For those unfamiliar with the changes, the 360 controller is basically a remolded Controller-S with the “white” and “black” buttons moved to the shoulders and turned into triggers, with a big “ON” button in the center, and (usually) without a cord. I’m not even going to get into the cordless issue, as far as typical controllers go; this is just about the corded version.

Now. Controllers are probably one of the major things holding back videogames. I hate them, as a whole. You’d think, with controllers being the most direct interface people have with videogames, people would put more thought into their design. There aren’t any good standard controllers right now; the GameCube one is clever, though it has too many compromises to do what it really wants to. And I can’t even think of many positive examples, historically. The only “good” ones I come up with are simply practical and competent, like the Genesis six-button and the (Japanese/version 2) Saturn pad. The S more or less falls into this category. Unambitious, but solid and distinctive.

As for the next generation, well. The Revolution should be interesting, at least. Other than that, ick. You can trace the mentality behind the systems by looking at their interfaces. Sony’s desperately trying to make the PS3 seem different, but not too different, by making the controller exactly the same except shaped like a batarang.

Similarly, Microsoft has decided to take the Controller-S and mangle it without any particular direction. The “on” button is… sort of interesting, I guess. It feels misplaced on a traditional controller. The thing that distinctly bothers me, though, if it’s possible to get over the ergonomic issues, is the button arrangement.

The white and black buttons (and indeed the start and select ones) get a lot of flack for their uncommon placement on the S. People aren’t really thinking this through, though. They do work, and work well, because they’re used for uncommon functions and because they’re placed in an out-of-the-way corner of the pad. If you need to access them, they’re at hand; yet otherwise there’s no confusing them.*

Anyway. Shoulder buttons are primarily useful for state changes; things you need to hold down while you access the face buttons. Four shoulder buttons is overkill in this regard. I see no purpose for them, especially since I have yet to encounter a person who is not constantly pressing the wrong shoulder button in PS2 games. (Notice this! Did a bell not ring?) They’re hidden, too similar, and secondary in your attention, and therefore easy to confuse.

Iif those extra two triggers are used at all, they’re usually for toggle functions or other things more suited to an out-of-the-way face button, like “select” in NES and SNES games. So, you know. In most cases, that’s the wrong place for them. Leave the shoulders uncluttered for things that actually need the placement.

Since removing the face buttons unbalances the start and select (OOPS, I MEAN “BACK”) buttons, they’ve been moved to the center where, whoops, suddenly they’re ripe to be hit accidentally again — never a problem on the S. Yes indeed.

The other thing that bothers me is, the original Xbox isn’t that bad a system. Yes, it’s big, not too imaginative, and it’s too firmly positioned as the tits-and-beer console. It’s really well-made, though, and there are some good ideas in its device and execution. And for a while, Microsoft was doing a good job patching the holes (fixing the controller, starting up Live). There was real potential for the 360 to be its own beast, and use past success as a foundation for something neat, as far as mainstream consoles go. Something with personality, and with balls (to go with its testosterone).

What we’re ending up with is a timid, sterile system designed by focus testing. And the pad’s an example of that.

I don’t think I need to explain how much Sony’s controllers now and have always sucked. And yet the PlayStation line is one of the biggest commercial successes in the history of videogames — so clearly Sony must know what’s going on! They’ve got four shoulder buttons on their pad, so let’s put four on ours! We didn’t really know what to do with those face buttons anyway.

Again, nobody’s thinking. The only reason there are four triggers on the PS2 pad is because the PS2 pad is the same as the Dual Shock, which is the same as the original PlayStation pad except with two analog sticks. Why two sticks? Because the N64 only had one. Likewse, the original PlayStation pad is the same as the SNES pad except with four shoulder buttons. Why four? Because the SNES pad only had two!

And now Microsoft has crawled up and inherited this idiocy, just showing how desperate they are. They’ve lost whatever vision they had; all of the creative people behind the original Xbox are long gone, leaving Microsoft with a body and no brain. All they have to go on now is high-definition displays and removable faceplates. Just — fuck you, you know. If you’re going to waste our time, then go away. Leave videogames to the professionals.

*: I understand some people hit the one on the left accidentally. This puzzles me a little. Perhaps again it’s just my hand shape; it’s never been an issue for me. However, even should my thumb somehow stray, that they are a different size, feel different, and are sunken into the pad should send me a signal. Fundamentally, I just see no reason why my thum should stray down and to the right from its “home position” on the bottom point of the diamond.