Issues in Social Media and the Future of Gaming: Motion Interfaces and the Revolution of the Non-Gamer

Back in the early 90’s this is what a game controller looked like.

SNES Controller circa 1991

Super Mario Kart

It had face buttons you could press and two triggers on the top where your index fingers rested. This was what we used to interact with video games. Now if you’re like me you might have had a family member or friend who wasn't very familiar to playing video games but wanted to give it a try. You would pop in Mario Kart and hand the controller over to them. After giving them a quick overview of how the controller works they press start and the race would begin. They seem to be doing fine, they are accelerating and keeping up with the rest of the racers. Then they get to the first turn and they start turning the controller on its side as if it was a steering wheel. You might tell them that isn’t necessary but they continue to do it unconsciously.

Motion Gaming for Everyone

Jump ahead to 2006. Nintendo releases their newest game console, the Wii. What is special about this release is that Nintendo has added a new way of interacting with the game world, motion control. Now that embarrassment of watching your mother rotate the controller fruitlessly becomes a new kind of embarrassment where all the flailing around is actually for a purpose.

The Wii was a smash hit. Stock was sold out everywhere for months. That left Microsoft and Sony sitting there scratching their heads thinking “How do we do that with our consoles”? Their response to the Wii’s motion control came in the form of the Kinnect and PlayStation Move respectively.

Everyone can play

This time around things were different. The hard-core fans were joined by the everyday people, the non-gamers. Through games like Nintendo’s Wii Sports and Just Dance, gaming was becoming more social. It was a time where practically anyone could play along and join in the fun, which Nintendo wasn’t shy of pointing out in their advertising.

As of today the motion control fad has died down quite a bit. When it first hit it seemed like motion control was going to be the future of how people interacted with games. While motion as an interactive method is still around, the traditional multi-button controller is still king.

As technology advances and interfaces change what does the future of motion gaming look like? In what new ways can new interface methods change the way we play games together? I think motion as an interface will continue to evolve and help to try and remove the boundary of entry for the non-gamer.