Persuasive Games: Wii’s Revolution is in the Past - Ian Bogost

Now that Nintendo’s Wii has finally hit the streets, we can really start assessing its potential impact on the future of video games in general, and serious games in particular. With all the fuss after Nintendo’s announcement of the console’s official name six months ago, it’s easy to forget that the company promised nothing less than a “Revolution” — the original code-name for the console. And even after the official name was made public, the marketing rhetoric of the console has retained its revolutionary tenor: “changing the way we play.” Developers of serious games, art games, political games, newsgames, and other related genres often share a similar goal of expanding the possibility space of video games. This common goal may suggest a possible alliance of interests between serious games and the Wii.

Serious games and political games often try to get underneath the surface of human experience and make statements about the social, cultural, and ethical situations that drive them. Those of us who make such games have often cynically lamented the type of innovation promised by the other new consoles on the block, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. These machines are architected for advanced graphics processing, designed to produce the most detailed, high definition images possible on current display devices. The massive size, complexity, and quantity of instantial assets required for games on these systems are partly responsible for the ballooning costs of commercial game development. The PS3’s cell processor is complex to program for, even though the processor itself is still primarily used for improved 3D graphics and audio processing.

Wii’s underlying technology is not really new (accelerometers and infrared controls have been around for years), but Nintendo has constructed one of the first convincing mass-market applications of a gestural interface. And the experience of playing, for those who were lucky enough to get one, is buttery and seductive. Nintendo’s decision to downplay graphics in favor of interface innovations offers a welcome counterpoint to the industry’s usual obsessions. The Wii Sports title that comes bundled with the console offers a case study for this new value system; the visuals throughout the game are purposely downgraded and abstracted to a level much greater than is even necessary.

But Nintendo’s de-emphasis of graphics primarily draws attention to the gestural user interface as a new design value. Nintendo’s own marketing statements testify to this: the wiimote is conceived as a tool to “make gaming as accessible as possible to people of all ages and all abilities.”¹ Simplified graphics may increase a game’s approachability, but the new user interface is Nintendo’s principal gambit. The wiimote is modeled (and named) after the remote control, a device Nintendo perceives to be the lowest common denominator for accessibility. The rhetoric makes sense; a positive innovation like new controls based on familiar objects is much more appealing than a negative one like limited graphical fidelity. The motion-sensing wiimote is indeed a sexy device that does alter player interaction.

In terms of applicability to serious games, the games for health community will no doubt see the immediate opportunities for the Wii. Physical interfaces like Dance Dance Revolution have proven effective in exercise and weight loss regimens, and the wiimote extends active play to many more genres of games, and therefore to more varieties of players. Aside from exercise games, the wiimote’s application in serious games is more limited. There is nothing wrong with using physical interfaces in serious games, but the feature does not directly help developers model things like disease or organizational politics or leadership or nonviolent conflict, examples of the problems serious games address.

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₁ http://wii.nintendo.com/controller.jsp