Core77

From Wednesday's Guardian Unlimited Technology section, a cute, brief article about the recent mad expansion in the number and variety of unique controllers available for home gaming consoles. We're not talking about the array of third-party controllers that have been around for years, designed to improve upon the standard ones that come in the box, but rather the highly specific (and often astonishingly poor) specialty controllers that bundle with particular games.

The author, Steve Boxer, blames the success of the Wii, which owes much of its universal appeal (it's soon to be named the fastest selling new system in UK history) to its unique controller and interface, and I would agree. There are certainly specialty controllers that pre-date the Wii frenzy, notably Dance Dance Revolution's stomp pad and some of the more gear-headed automobile and aircraft consoles, but the pile of cruddy plug-in gadgets described in the article represents an outpouring that has no pre-Wii equivalent.

What's subtly ironic about the sudden fad for eye-catching gadgets is that it's responding in exactly the wrong way to Nintendo's success. What made the Wii interface so seductive, and its sales so robust, was its brilliant non-specificity--many of the system's purchasers were first-timers, drawn in by a completely new mode of interaction that could be applied to hundreds of different scenarios, from bowling to firing an elven longbow. Rather than go through a long learning curve, figuring out which combination of button A and trigger 3 makes your secret agent do a forward roll, the Wii user is encouraged to pick up and play, trusting that motions in the real world will be interpreted in a logical way in the game. The controller is the same every time, but the motions are unique to each experience, just like in real life.

The bongos, buzzers, fishing reels and flight decks enumerated in the article do just the opposite: now if you want to switch to a new game, you not only have to learn a different kind of play, but a different kind of controller. Gone is the instant familiarity that the Wiimote promised, replaced by a dubious assurance that if you know how to play maracas in real life, then simulated maracas will be a snap. This may be true if you know something about maracas, and if the interface is well designed, but these are two large ifs for such a small product niche.

It's a pretty good example of another pitfall of "me-too" product development. Rather than putting the effort into understanding what makes the Wii so lovable in the first place, gaming companies see a Wacky Controller and essentially freeze their understanding there. The Wii interface is an idea that's been developing since 2001, and is a great example of good product design: there's a clear usability problem being solved, as well as in-depth user research, critical concept development, and extensive refinement based on user testing. Most of the more recent alternative controllers are marketing tools. As Boxer points out, "the games industry sees them as a kind of Trojan horse, hoping that they'll kindle an interest in games which will lead to experiments with games that require joypads." Kind of a pity, especially for the hardcore gamer who eventually has to rent out a storage unit to house all that crap.