Further Thoughts on Combat in Context

April 25th, 2008 asgoodwin

In the rubric in Combat in Context, Nick Monfort describes the platform as driving all the other parts of the game development, as step one of analyzing a game. We discussed this some in class about how the increase of memory and graphic capability has made games more realistic and complex. I was thinking about this, and I think a great case study to look at is the Nintendo DS and the Nintendo Wii.

Games for all the systems before these two came out were mostly the same, because for the most part the systems had the same types of controllers – the XBox, Playstation, and GameCube, and even before that Nintendo 64 have similar controllers with buttons and joystick motion controllers to allow you to go in more directions. The Nintendo, Super NES, and Sega Genesis all had the four arrows and buttons set up, which also was present on the Gameboys and Sega Game Gear, though those had less memory than the full fledged games.

The Nintendo Wii has been selling hugely, and part of that is the innovative games present on it, nearly all of which are a result of the new game platform and controllers, like the WiiMote, so you can bowl and play baseball and other things that are not as “realistically” done, at least motion wise, with the old fashion game controllers.

The DS, with its touch screen technology and dual screens, has lead to new games and new types of play that wouldn’t have been possible on older systems. Everything from controlling your character by dragging a line in front of it, to having puzzles you must solve by writing, to having maps you can make notes on like in Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass.

Part of the reason the games are exciting people because they seem so different is because the programmers are challenged by the lower level hardware presented to them, and in order to make a great game for the system they must actively use those capabilities in a way that is interesting and necessary to the game, or people will be tempted to move on to other games that use the hardware better.