Dear Reader:
Hideo Kojima gives his opinion on Wii and motion control
A portion of a Kikizo interview with Hideo Kojima, creator of the Metal Gear series…
Kikizo: What do you think of the trend towards simplified control led by the Wii?
Kojima: Well I don’t have any concerns actually, because the bottom line is, when you design a game, you have to target who you want to target. And you design knowing which target to approach, and that’s the key. Even when people say that they may change the interface to a very simplified version, I agree and disagree at the same time; look at games that are more difficult because of that new interface, like a racing game for example: it was right or left in the past, but now you have to manoeuvre using the motion controller - this is actually more difficult than in past racing games! In traditional games you practice a lot, and you kind of ‘upgrade yourself’, and then you clear the game. So I think there are pros and cons.
For some players, motion control will come naturally straight away, but for others it might feel difficult, so the game designer is really now responsible to think about which direction he or she should take. I played Killzone 2 this morning, actually, and it was funny because the FPS control was traditional FPS, but when you come to a door and have to kind of open the latch, you all of a sudden have to use the Sixaxis, and nobody was succeeding. So maybe they were kind of rushing to implement the technical design, which might not be the correct way to do it in that title.