I miss the days where it was just accepted that people enjoyed pressing buttons on a controller, and rumble was all the gimmick we needed if at all.
The mentality of "this would be a cool gimmick, lets try to cram it into every game we can while its still novel" is just beyond understanding to me.
People play games, on some level, because they want to escape/engage their imagination/have fun.
The fact that the goal of some developers no longer seems to be about creating new worlds using the near limitless power of imagination, and instead making sure that they can make innovative ways to actively break your immersion is sad.
By that I mean that motion control, aggressively terrible 3D, second screens on your huge controllers, etc. are all things that actively fight your immersion instead of aiding the game design. Why have a game designed with a sense of depth and artistry when you are just gonna have it popping out of the screen like a jack-in-the-box? Why let people's minds tell them what is foreground or background when you can make it glaringly obvious?
Why design a game that requires real skill, nuance, and timing when you are forcing people to flail their limbs like an octopus to control it? Simple, you don't you dumb it down so that anyone with a nervous twitch can dominate the game with their back to the screen.
The Wii U controller makes you take your full attention off of the game, and probable hdtv you are fond of, and look at the brick in your hands instead. It wasn't fun in 4Sword Adventures when they had you look at your GBA, and they decided to base their entire company's survival on what isn't even a new idea.
Nintendo's approach of "let's make a totally unnecessary new hardware, that isn't even remotely attempting to seriously compete from a technical perspective with the current OR next gen, and the games will just magically follow" is one of the most blisteringly stupid plans I've ever seen in all of modern media. Yet they continue to double down on it. Did the Virtual Boy teach them nothing?
I don't want to go into how far up their ass Nintendo's head has been since the end of the SNES, and its no secret how poorly the Wii U is doing. Their handheld dominance however is well deserved and the only saving grace they have when their main franchises just slide further down the scale with each iteration. I'm sure that a not insignificant portion of their sales are based entirely around their various virtual consoles. I know that I overwhelmingly prefer their classic titles to the latter ones sadly. Majora's Mask, Skies of Arcadia, Paper Mario TYD, and Metroid Prime 1 and 2 are just about the only games on a (non-handheld) Nintendo console that I would consider truly excellent in idk how long.
Now, the sweat sensors and the eye trackers. That he thinks that there is any demand for either shows a questionable grip on the market as well as basic logical reasoning.
Perspiration results from a multitude of factors. It could just be a warm day, they lack AC, they just worked out, they just did well ANYTHING really. I don't think that people really want to be actively concerned with whether of not they need a shower, a good toweling off, and a thick coating of antiperspirant in place before starting up a game in order to have an easier time of it or whatever.
Also I don't think that my eye movements need tracking. I don't need a game based around constantly exploiting where it knows I'm not looking at the moment, unless its Dark Souls lol. Outside of a VR headset, why would this even be talked about is beyond me.
All these gimmicks exist because they think people are bored of traditional controls. I'm not. I don't know anyone that refuses to play a game unless they can control it by doing the robot. Do you?
I think that some developers are tired of making games, and aren't talented enough to actually contribute anything worthwhile to the industry so they try to attach their name to whatever crazy idea that they feel uniquely qualified to put forth. Like this.
So we get shitty, over-budgeted, over-marketed, dumbed-down, unremarkable games that somehow fail to sell the expected 30 million units in one month or whatever ridiculous number some exec pulled out of their ass.
While some of the best games I've played in over a decade are free or close enough. Indie, and F2P MMOs are where the real ideas are these days.
I'm sure that what I have stated here is hardly a new opinion, and it doesn't matter. What matters is that there are certainly a large number of people out there that read these stories and can't help doing a double facepalm at how clueless this once beloved industry has become.
Crap like this is why the phone and tablet markets are beating you. Serious PC/Console developers have the tech, budget, and install bases to create things that those devices are unable to do, yet, and you waste your time trying to fuck with HOW we play instead of WHAT we are playing.
I know I used to put down Kickstarter as a haven of unfinished ideas, beggars, and outright scammers but some of those people have the ideas desperately needed these days.
