Oooooh-Wii
I don't really know anything about video games, but it seems weird to me that the newest innovation out there is a controller that makes the task of playing games feel more like actually doing things. Assuming I understand the Wii correctly, you have to swing the controller like a bat if you're playing a baseball sim, and throw it forward like a rod if you're playing a fishing sim. This seems regressive to me. What happened to the old "at the push of a button" thing? Wasn't the whole point that we could just sit there?
It's a weird development that mirrors the bizarre move from blogs to podcasts to live podcasts, something J. L. has pointed out. If it was radios we wanted all along, J. asks, why'd we bother with podcasts? If we are swinging and throwing anyway - and treating our ability to do so in front of the TV as some great step forward - why not just go outside?
It's a weird development that mirrors the bizarre move from blogs to podcasts to live podcasts, something J. L. has pointed out. If it was radios we wanted all along, J. asks, why'd we bother with podcasts? If we are swinging and throwing anyway - and treating our ability to do so in front of the TV as some great step forward - why not just go outside?
posted by Leon at 10:12 AM
1 Comments:
I don't know -- I think I can understand the appeal of the Wii.
1. You can go outside to fish, maybe, but what if you don't live near a stream? You can go outside to play baseball, but what if you don't have anyone to play with, or what if you're bad and embarrassed to try in front of people, but you still enjoy the game enough to want to shamefully play indoors?
2. I don't know anything about video games either, but I imagine that a lot of the "play a sport, but inside and on a console" games that are out so far are just the low-hanging fruit, the easiest stuff to program for early release. I'm sure there will be some kind of LucasArts Jedi combat game at some point, and this seems to be what everyone wants; it's also not something you can replicate just by going outside.
3. Sometimes it's cold out there! Sometimes it's rainy!
4. Video games make kids fat, and the ones that don't have been pretty lame, it seems. Wii might be able to stop our kids from being disgusting. Since when was the whole point that we could just sit there, anyway? I thought the whole point was that we could live out fun fantasy scenarios, and the controllers available were just a crude substitute for the full-immersion VR experiences we'd have in the future.
I kind of lost my coherence lol.
As for podcasts: are live podcasts a thing now? Is that a trend? The point of a podcast is that instead of it being streaming and thus forcing you to have a network connection to listen, it's just a straight-up file, so you can put it on your iPod, do whatever. If it's live too, well, fine. As long as the streaming ability doesn't counteract the portability aspect, it's still a step up from radio because you retain the choice to listen when you want.
Or it may be that the word "podcast" is sort of tech-sounding so people just use it where it doesn't apply. Either way, I'm not seeing the trouble.
:P
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