The Right Tool for the Right Job: The Wii and Wii-U

Okay, the Wii and the Wii-U have gotten a lot of hate.  The Wii from the hardcore crowd over the course of it's lifetime and the Wii-U for a lackluster launch lineup which has yet to improve.  However, what I think people often forget is that while both consoles have used gimmicks and tricks to sell games, their hardware do have specific strengths.  You can scoff all you want at the shoe-horned in bits of gameplay which rely on waggling the Wiimote or meddling with the Wii-U game pad.  I have no issue with that, as gameplay needs to be organic.  However, try and remember that hardware is created with specific things in mind.  Remember that while you shouldn't use a hammer to fix a shattered dinner plate, you should use a hammer to nail down a board.  The right tool for the right job.  Are the Wiimote and Wii-U controller often used for gimmicky gameplay?  Sure.  But the fact is, they do have practical uses that are both fun and engaging.  And I intend to discuss this with the gaming public because, while I think it's fine to demand developers stop using gimmicky controls, that doesn't mean we should declare a new piece of hardware a failure just because it does something different from what we're used to.  We need to encourage developers to use the right tool for the right job.

It's different certainly, but different isn't necessarily bad.  Both the Wii and the Wii-U have their strengths.  The important thing is recognizing the potential of their hardware and using the right tool for the right job.

            First, I want to look at the Wiimote.  This was the defining feature of the Wii.  Motion controls.  It was a way to attract the casual gaming crowd, but also a new way to experience old classics.  However, what many games did was try to FIND a use for the Wii-mote rather than build a game AROUND it.  Herein lies the problem.  If you have to find a use for a new piece of tech, chances are you're better off making a game in the traditional style.  Sure, it won't be as gimmicky and might not be as memorable...but it will be a lot more fun and will probably sell more.  So, what can the Wiimote's motion sensors do?  Well, the basic actions it seems to be good at are slashing, pointing, dragging, detection of distance and force based on position, and shaking.  Now, if a game is setup properly, it can make use of these features and actually create an engaging product.

One thing no one can deny is that the Wiimote offered a style of gameplay unlike anything we'd ever seen in the past.

            Slashing is pretty self explanatory.  Games like Dragon Quest Swords and Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword focus on using the slashing action to determine speed, angle, and to mimic certain sword motions.  These work well for your typical action game, provided it's set up to recognize the slashes and to have a reason to do more than flail about, like an enemy who can block in one direction, so you need to slash in a different one.  And these two games do that well.

There's something inherently cathartic about slashing something to bits and this is one thing the Wiimote can do very well.

            Pointing actually has a lot of implications.  You can use it for an adventure game or a hidden object game, like Zak and Wiki, where it mimics the movement of a mouse on a PC.  However, they can also be used for light gun games, where if you point at an enemy, you will shoot it.  When done properly and either put on rails or integrated with competent movement controls, this makes shooters much faster, more intense, and more personal.  Games like Sin and Punishment: Star Successor or Metroid Prime 3: Corruption have proven this much.  It can also be used to simply set objective markers or to touch icons, like in Battalion Wars 2 where you can switch units by clicking on their icon or in Overlord: Dark Legend where if you click on something, your minions will either attack it or grab it.

Pointing and clicking isn't just for adventure games.  In terms of how the Wiimote is used, it can also greatly change how a console shooter is played.  That reticle on the screen?  That's where your Wiimote is pointing.  It offers a whole new level of control.

            Dragging was made very useful in the Trauma Center games on the Wii.  If you click on a specific tool, like a scalpel, or antibiotic gel, or sutures, then you can drag them across a surface to perform a specific action.  The brilliance of this type of game is that if done properly it can mimic something that is normally very difficult in real life and make players feel accomplished.  If you can break something down to dragging, you could easily make a slew of popular and fun Wii games out of many mobile titles and frankly, I'm shocked there was never an Angry Birds or a stand alone construction game, like Sim City, focused around dragging something a certain way.

Dragging sutures over a wound may not be how it's done in real life, but it makes for a fast paced and engaging play session in Trauma Center on the Wii.

            Detecting distance and force based on position sounds complicated but it boils down to this.  Sports games.  The Wii-mote detects the movement of your swing and the power based on it's position and how rapidly that changes.  A swing of a golf club, rolling a bowling ball, hitting a tennis racket, etc.  Boxing was also popular using this system and that has been proven to be adaptable.  The game Rage of the Gladiator used this system to take what amounted to a boxing game into a first person fantasy fighter game against mystic monsters.

Rage of the Gladiators showed that sports games weren't the only kind of game you can play with the ability to detect distance and force.  With a little inventiveness, you could do anything.  This game uses controls popularized in boxing to fight monsters in an arena with weapons, magic, and wits.

            Shaking is pretty minor, all things considered, but if you lack buttons or want to use a cathartic action, then it can be useful.  Wario Land: Shake it made you feel good about shaking the Wii-mote because you got money for it, making it very cathartic, or the Kirby: Return to Dreamland title allowed you to shake the controller to suck in things with greater force, eliminating the need for an additional button.  It's minor, but it does have it's uses.

Pretty minor as far as the Wiimote's capabilities, but still enjoyable.  Shaking does have its uses, after all.

            And of course, any of these different skills can be integrated to create a relatively unique and enjoyable game.  Red Steel 2 managed to including pointing and slashing in the same game by making you a gun slinging samurai.  Trauma Team combined dragging and pointing for doctor sessions and adventure game like triage and post-mortem analyses.  Wario Ware on the Wii combined all these actions in various forms in different mini games.  If you use your brain, you can actually get quite a lot out of these simple actions.

By combining what the Wiimote was good at, crafty game developers could create unique and interesting experiences, rather than trying to do what other controllers already did better.

            The problem with many developers was they either were trying to re-invent the wheel in terms of game design or they did not accept the system's limitations.  The Wii-mote's motion sensing should not be used in a platform game or an action-adventure or fighting game where a d-pad controller and standard jump controls would work better.  A Metal Slug game where you need to waggle the remote to throw a grenade is the opposite of intuitive.  A Wii-mote does not need to be used for games that already have decent control schemes and I think this is what scared off many hard core gamers.  They saw Mario Galaxy having the shoe-horned in star bit collecting when just replacing coins with star bits would have been more fun and accessible and grew fed up.  That aside, you also have to accept the limitations of the Wii-mote.  It can have trouble with path finding or is loopy for a little bit when it goes from off screen to on screen.  Some games allow you to recalibrate it's position and this can help, but...don't try and do something the Wiimote can't do.  If you want it to spin, don't, because more often than not, the motion sensors will just get confused.  Don't try and make it detect movements like reeling back, because if the sensor goes off screen, it will go all loopy.  And if you're making a long game, like an RPG, and want to use motion sensors, then either offer an option for an alternate control scheme through mundane parts so player's arms don't get tired, or make the game best suited for small spurts over a long period, so gamers don't get fed up with all the motion controls.

Collect 50 coins and get a life.  Collect 100 star bits and get a life.  To collect star bits, you have to use a shoe horned in Wiimote control scheme...why not just take out the coins and the motion gimmick and make the game more fluid?  Sometimes you need to know your limits, Wii.

            Now, this information is kind of useless posthumously aside from just making people try to appreciate the Wii when it does it's job right.  However, while the Wii may be done and games aren't really being made for it anymore, you can take these conventions of game design and use them for the Wii-U.  What does the Wii-U have?  It has a big tablet controller with a touch screen.  So, build a game around that.  A game that works intuitively.  In fact, mobile games might be a good place to look.  Get HD ports of games like Fruit Ninja, Angry Birds, or Infinite Blade which require touch screen controls and have them work with the Wii-U tablet.  More than that, look to the DS and 3DS for inspiration.  You have a touch screen, so touch things.  Don't try and make the tablet give you information that you could have just as easily gotten off a TV screen, like with ZombiU.  Allow someone to go cooking or crafting on the Wii-U like with Cooking Mama on the DS.  Use the touch screen for path finding, like in the DS Zelda games, like Phantom Hour Glass.  Draw on the screen, like with Okamiden.  And don't forget what was learned with the Wii controls.  You can drag, slash, point, etc. on a touch screen just as easily as you can with a Wii-mote.  Make use of that.

Imagine how fun and intuitive this game would be on a Wii-U game pad in HD.  Mind.  Blown.

            Nintendo land is actually really amazing in this aspect, as, like Wario Ware, it shows a bunch of mini games showcasing the possibility of the game pad, from flicking on it to throw shurikens, to using it to guide a character with path finding, to touching the screen to alter certain parts of a level to keep a character from dying.  However, one thing I adore is that in some games, like the Yoshi mini game, is that they use the tablet in conjunction with the television.  This will be your big seller.  Don't use the tablet to replace information on the TV, but use it in CONJUNCTION with it.  Yoshi's game shows you a path on the TV, then you can look down at the tablet to drag out the path you want Yoshi to take.  Then, he will do it on the TV.  This is a great way to use the touch screen and it allows you to force cooperation with the tablet and the TV because your goals are only visible on the TV, but your path is only visible on the tablet...so you have to work together.

This is how you use the game pad right.  Make it work with the TV rather than fighting against it.

            What else can you use the tablet for?  Well, just some ideas, but...how about using the touch screen without forcing people to look at it.  Create item shortcuts on the tablet that you can just touch without having to look down to make an action game more intuitive.  This would take control and accessibility to a new level for games like Dark Souls.  Or have the screen as a blank canvas that you need to draw on, so you don't need to look at it, you can just draw and what you draw affects the world on the TV.  There are lots of possibilities, however you cannot shoe-horn things in.  Making the Wii-U a scanner seems like a good idea in ZombiU, as it allows you to use it as a sniper scope or scan for threats or see what containers have what items...however, because of the size and the effort involved, it feels really unintuitive and cumbersome, especially since you don't NEED the game pad to do these things...they can be done easier on the TV.  The Wii-U needs to find things that it can do, then build games around it's capabilities.  That's how you'll get hit titles.

Explain to me again why this couldn't be done on the TV instead of the game pad?

            Rayman Legends actually offers an interesting compromise between looking at the TV and looking at the tablet.  You can do either and still play the game, however in many sections, you can alter the environment with a quick swipe or touch on the tablet, opening up new paths for your character, however, often, you're timed or being chased, so you'll want to see all the action on the big screen.  This creates a choice.  You can sacrifice control for a short cut or a power up and risk taking a hit or miss the secret to survive.  It creates a dilemma where either path can finish the level, but where one may be more fun or more challenging than the other, opening up venues for replayability.  And it does this by mimicking a concept from DS games and their touch screen controls.  And that kind of experience will be unique to the Wii-U.  It's not necessarily a gimmick, but a different kind of choice.

Go for a straight run through, or use the game pad to speed things up and open up short cuts?  In Rayman Legends, the choice is yours.

            The Wii-U's biggest benefit is that it is not shackled to the TV, because the tablet does not require the TV to function...so, you could synchronize the Nintendo E-shop from the DSi or the 3DS with the Wii-U to play those games on the tablet in HD.  Or you could release games in a similar style to mobile or DS games, relying on a touch screen, that can only be played on the tablet.  The biggest problem, however, is that no one wants to invest in the Wii-U unless it has a proven concept which works, like the Wii did with some of it's early titles, like Punch Out or Dragon Quest Swords.  No one seems to know what to do and in the bloated AAA industry, few want to risk anything on the Wii-U's novelty and unique capabilities.

            The trick is to use the right tool for the right job.  Look at the Wii-U and what it can do...and build a game around that.  It doesn't matter how simple or ugly it is, so long as it uses the tablet and is fun.  If you create a game that uses it but looks like crap, release it as an E-shop game and take what you've learned to make a more complete game.  Just don't try and re-invent the wheel or mistake the Wii-U's novelty for limitless potential.  Embrace the limits of the tablet alongside it's strengths and work in conjunction with them.  And this goes for all new tech.  You don't need to create a survival horror game or a shooter for the Kinect.  What can the Kinect do?  Recognize movements.  Where would this be useful?  Dance games.  If Microsoft or it's partners don't realize the Kinect's strengths and instead keep trying to use the wrong tool for the wrong job, then...it'll flop with the Xbox One just like it did for the Xbox 360.  Same for the Playstation 3's sixaxis...it had a set of strengths to be exploited, but like the Kinect, it wasn't used to it's fullest.  A few good ideas were thrown out there, but...it was just too limited and the demand to use it died down.

Last I checked, no one was clambering for another Kinect horror game.  Why?  Wrong tool for the wrong job.  Use your hardware for what it's good at and you'll have better luck.

            Now, this little lecture on capabilities has two purposes.  The first is, of course, to defend the Wii and Wii-U.  Were they perfect?  No.  Could they be annoying?  Most definitely.  However, did they have some experiences that were almost completely unique?  I'd say so.  Trauma Team, Sin and Punishment, Dragon Quest Swords, and Metroid Prime 3 all used unorthodox control systems that actually worked and were more memorable and unique because of it.  And the Wii-U has the potential to do the same.  If people will give it a chance.  Secondly, whenever new tech comes out, be it a physics engine, a level designer, or a new motion control scheme, I have to encourage a developer to remember what the tool was designed for an to use it accordingly.  Does your game really need physics?  No?  Then don't build it around Havok.  Does your game make good use of the Unreal engine or would it be better with a made from scratch engine?  Remember.  Right tool for the right job.