Been the ball for a while, now…

BY: JEFF MURRAY  |  General Rambling, Gaming, Mobile, The Future

Anyone who grew up in the 80s and has visited an amusement arcade recently would no doubt feel disappointed by the lack of progress arcade games have made. Back in the 1980s video game makers worked hard to find new and exciting ways to convince people to part with their quarters; controlling the in-game action with a steering wheel perhaps, or bike handlebars, maybe an entire racing car cockpit for players to sit inside! As the 90s approached it was almost as though arcade machine manufacturers said goodbye to the control race - most likely because of rising production costs and physical space limitations in decreasingly sized video game arcades.

The console boom certainly helped to kill off amusement arcades, but I would even go so far as to suggest that the console boom may have stalled commercial innovation within the field - right up until the last few years.

The recent commercial trend of finding new and wonderful control systems (largely thanks to Nintendo) is not very far removed from Atari’s own experiences during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Think Rockband was the first to have a drumkit hooked up to a computer game? Atari did it first with ‘Atari Jammin’. As far as I know, Jammin’ never actually made it out of the prototyping phase, sadly, and I’m sure someone is kicking themselves now for not letting it go out to the world. Jammin’ featured an 8-button drum pad on the front of the case that users could tap out a beat with and try to synch up to match the in-game beats. It even featured a record feature, which in my mind was quite a feat given the tech.

Steering wheels have been around for a long time, but how about the idea of an entire BMX bike? Atari prototyped it back in the 1980s… (photo courtesy of atarigames.com).

For more information on the incredible Atari story, the Atari History Museum website is a good start. For old game design documents, internal memos and technical notes be sure to visit Atarigames.com - an essential and inspiring time machine for anyone interested in games.

As some of you may already know, last week I was interviewed by a true gent; Gary Doyle on 570News radio about the launch of the iPhone and the possibilities it presents to game developers and game designers. One of Gary’s questions was ‘what’s so appealing about the iPhone to you guys?’ I answered with ‘the power of the little thing and opportunity for mobile entertainment with a whacky control system’ or words to that effect, though it crossed my mind that the iPhone accelerometers may be perceived as a bit of a gimmick - perhaps rightly so. Anyone can utilize accelerometers, but it takes a little more to actually utilize them in a meaningful way that isn’t expecting users to be contortionists. I fully expect to see all kinds of failing control methods as developers get used to it all…

As a case in point, I’ve been working on a game that seemed to be a perfect candidate for Wii remote control. Everything about the game screamed Wii and so I set to work on prototyping it out; It wasn’t until I’d built a playable version and used the controllers for the first time that I was able to establish just how badly the proposed control scheme was going to function. After trying out more than 5 completely different methods, the only one that worked was (suprise suprise!) the most basic. I’d approached the problem as an engineer trying to reproduce a real experience through an unreal interface - it just didn’t gel. The connection between player and game was disjointed and awkward until it was broken down to its most basic form; where natural body movements could synchronize with game mechanic.

I had experienced first-hand what Tony Walsh had commented about on my previous ‘Be the Ball’ blog post ‘The idea is that if we become familiar enough with an extension of our physical self, our brain’s interpretation of where our body is fills that extension.’ Essentially, we’re trying to engineer some kind of phantom limb syndrome. Perhaps an interesting - if not slightly disturbing - indication of where games may progress in the future and where amusement arcade game engineers tried to get to, some 20 years ago. Only now is the commercial interest and the technology strong enough to push forward.

As a final note, take a look at Julian Oliver’s Levelhead. It’s an “augmented-reality spatial-memory game” that blew everyones minds at the office this week. I have no idea as to whether or not this is real, though in this case I’m not even sure that it matters. The concept is incredible and perhaps a true glimpse into mobile entertainment of the future. Either that, or we could be looking at the next Rubik’s Cube craze!