My Two Gils

How Motion Controls Ruined Gaming

Yes, you read that right. The Wii, the Kinect, the Move… THEY ruined the gaming world. Don’t try to blame this on EA, Ubisoft, DLC, early access, microtransactions or the misplaced egos of entryway mechanism fanatics. Gaming’s downfall started with the Wii and ended… who knows how long we have left… We’re already so deep. Luckily, we have retro gaming. I mean, there’s a reason why the 1 More Castle cutoff platforms stop at the Gamecube, Xbox and Playstation 2. While some people would say the limit wasn’t set to exclude motion gaming and cater to my every desires and needs, I certainly disagree.

Ugh… Disgusting

But, why am I talking about motion controls ruining gaming if they’re not “eligible” in retro gaming discussions? Because we could’ve prevented all this. We all saw the signs of the rise in motion controls and did nothing to stop them. Now they allowed our arch-enemy to penetrate the gaming market: The devious casual gamers. Or at least that’s what I’m told. I think I should make some kind of disclaimer here because I have a lot of ethics and all.

I don’t really follow modern gaming as much as I should, but some people have told me that “Candy Crush Saga is the worst” and “kids don’t know what they’re missing with their silly Angry Birds and touch controls.” I’ve also seen people debate how the inclusion of casual gamers in demographic studies brings the misconception that gamers are decent human beings capable of social interactions. While I do not see how any of this can influence a whole market to voluntarily give up on the very idea of making money by sabotaging the development of their own products, my self-doubting nature wonders: “What if all these possibly enlighted individuals were right?” If they were right, and not blinded by the light they generate, we’d soon learn how we, as retro gamers, could’ve prevented this uprisal. We could’ve identified these foul individuals and stopped encouraging them.

The enemy

The signs of casual gamers were obvious. They’re the ones who felt they just didn’t have enough control over their video games, it’s no surprise they’re now trying to control the entire medium. They were the ones who raised the controller when making Mario jump; they were the ones who turned the controller when they wanted their Top Gear driver to make a right; they were the ones who pushed harder on “A” to make their attacks more powerful; they were the ones who mashed buttons in fighters only to use their whole hands. Some of you might recognize these behaviors, as they were fairly frequent in the old days of gaming. These blasphemous ways of playing video games were often found in “non-gamers” or, as I now call them, “future-casuals.” It pains me to say, my own mother was guilty of this… and to think I invited her to play. And that invitation was the true downfall…

Our own desire for inclusiveness and our desire to share our passion were our greatest mistake. A bit later, when we acquired Nintendo 64 and other 4 player consoles, another enemy crawled into the gaming world: Mini-games. Despite their fun, mini-games only served as another way to reel in “future-casuals” to your gaming habits. We all wanted to enjoy video games with our entire family or that someone special, but had we known of the monster we would create… Soon our favorite franchises became polluted with mini-games collections or worse: puzzle games. When the Dreamcast came around, Chu Chu Rocket even became known as a classic!

It doesn’t even have guns or anime girls!

Now the world is buried under palette swaps of puzzle games and mini-games passing as full titles. They ignored the Power Glove shaming and designed countless controller wobbling experiences, all marketed to people unaware of the flawed technologies creating cruel split-second delays… They flooded the market all because we were trying to be inclusive. Now they’re infecting the next generations… Be warned, casual gaming is contagious. In fact, that’s the main reason why I wanted to write this… Seeing how I’m now finding Just Dance in my library, I understand that it’s too late for me. Thinking back, it was always too late for me. Ever since I started pressing “Up+B” when catching a Pokémon. It’s not that I have become what I hate, I think I always was a filthy casual.

Don’t cry for me, protect what’s left instead. Keep retro gaming pure. Let the casuals have their modern gaming, but make sure only the elite can have access to the treasure that is retro gaming. Let there be no more mistakes in official timelines, proper pronunciation and spelling. Run to your basement clasping your sealed copies and limited editions and don’t look back! Disconnect yourself from this doomed world that has already caused so much pain! You don’t have much time, I can hear the laughter of the women and children playing on their mobile phones! RUN! For all of us!

GO! I’ll hold them off!

Are they gone? Good. I hope that makes less idiots for us to worry about. Come on, motion controls are awesome! And mini-game collections? Man! Mario Party, Fuzion Frenzy, Pokémon Stadium, all great. Phew, making up a completely irrational rant sure drains your energy. I think I’m done here, see you in two weeks!