Ken Levine: Motion tech should be 'separate from the main experience'
- Posted June 23rd, 2011 at 17:09 EDT by Mike Harradence
- 2 Comments
If you're going to incorporate motion controls in a videogame, then it should be "kept separate from the main experience,” argues Ken Levine, co-founder of Irrational Games.
The BioShock creator said that while it’s all very well to experiment in the realm of motion controls, the tech should not be enforced on players, and instead integrated so that those who aren’t keen on the feature can simply ignore it.
“Any experience that sits in the realm of motion play needs to be kept separate from the main experience,” Levine told OXM. “It needs to be firewalled off so that if this experiment isn’t for you, or doesn’t turn out to be all that great, you just ignore it.
“Any new experience we add, we need to be able to protect this experience. I like the stuff they’re doing with Mass Effect 3, in terms of making some of the interface aspects a little less thorny – more the squad commands than the conversation, as that’s a bit of a challenge on the controller.
“What you don’t want to do is add something in and enforce it on anybody Do an experiment, fine! We’re in the experimental stage, and people shouldn’t be afraid of experimenting as long as we can firewall off and protect what we know works. If we don’t experiment, we don’t progress,” he continued.
“I’m a hardcore gamer – I do most of my gaming on mouse and keyboard. I’m always open to new things, but I’m a really conservative guy at heart. I’ll try it out slowly, but I’ll be doing so very conservatively.”
Levine took to the stage at Sony’s E3 presser a few weeks back to confirm that BioShock: Infinite will support PlayStation Move functionality, as well as announcing development on a PS Vita entry in the series.
BioShock: Infinite is due for release on PlayStation 3, PC and Xbox 360 in 2012.
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GunTeng
- 12:20pm EDT - June 23rd, 2011
- 1
Exactly how it should be IMO.The same could be said of player perspectives (3ps/fps). A game should not really force a gamer into using one or the other, but have both as an option. Albeit there would be some serious development concerns.
BUT this is something the Socom series did so well in the past, although it did have one or two discrepencies. This is one major element that made Socom great & one of the reasons its become an a-typical shooter on rails today.
@Developers
Take a note from Levine's book and stop limiting your games. Make them inclusive for all and your games stand a better chance of hitting the mark with a broader audience. Limiting a game to a single type of audience (although a larger one) is not the way to improve a franchise. ZIPPER took Socom in the wrong direction...they went backwards. Don't make the same mistakes and improve the experiences for all, by improving the accessibility of your games by catering the the entire audience.
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hush404
- 12:57pm EDT - June 23rd, 2011
- 2
I agree. The experience should be an option at most. Look at Lair for an example of how well a game does when a new control method is FORCED on gamers. Lair itself itsn't THAT bad of a game, but because of the sixaxis only controls, it destroyed it for many gamers.
If motion control is an option - in a game like Killzone 3, I might give it a go to see what the fuss is about... but I would outright skip the game if the motion controls were the ONLY option.
This will permanently ban this user and delete all associated comments. This action is irreversible, are you SURE you want to do this?!
