A whole lot of heartburn and 9 hours of driving later, I have returned home from visiting my girlfriend’s parents over the Thanksgiving holiday. Per usual, it was great to visit family and be away in a different neighborhood for a few days, but I really didn’t have any time to blog a darn thing.. It would seem that most of the other regular bloggers did manage to find time to jot down their own two copper on the continuing discussion of Real Money Transaction and Intellectual Property (IP) ownership, or lack thereof. Here’s a few links for that:

Ok, with that out of the way, I do have something to talk about today.. the Nintendo Wii. Nintendo has long-said that they designed this console specifically for a broad-spectrum of consumer, a.k.a the “non-gamer” as opposed to the “hardcore gamer”. There have been many skeptics, including myself, that have called this a very lofty goal, since most of us know of people who look down upon video games and/or generally have found video gaming to be “not for them”. Nintendo seeks to change all of that. Where others see people saying “Video gaming is not for me.”, Nintendo understands that existing video game systems and interfaces simply have not been accessible enough.

What do you mean by “accessible”?

According to Raph Koster’s book “A Theory of Fun for Game Design”, the brain of a person perceiving something as “hard” is really seeing a pattern they can’t quite yet understand. The current console gaming interface of a controller with a series of buttons, triggers, analog sticks and thumbpads is without a doubt overly complex and to those un-familiar to using one, rather daunting. The fact that this type of controller has been successful goes to show you that even complex patterns can be “chunked” (made second-nature by the brain) over time if the brain is happy with the little successes of using the controls during the learning process. Of course, as with any complex pattern, not every brain is up to the task of learning and mastering it, and in many cases will look at the complexity at first glance and pass it off as “too hard”.. as is the case of many “non-gamers”.

By focusing on making the interface accessible and having games that are very new-gamer friendly, Nintendo has opened the doors to succeed at expanding the market way beyond the current focus of it’s competitors… and succeed they will, I believe.

My own experience..

This weekend, I brought my Wii along to the parent’s house as many lucky enough to already own the system have done. That first night, I hooked up the system to the flat screen TV in the living room and introduced everyone to Wii Sports. We took turns since I only own two Wii-motes at the moment, though by the end of the holiday, I think the case was well made to purchase two additional ones as soon as possible. Not only did me, my girlfriend, and her sister play the Wii, but her PARENTS got into the fray as well. I have to say that I was amazed at how quickly they picked up the interface and became immersed into the game, but what impressed me the most occurred the next few mornings. Both mornings I awoke and stumbled groggily into the kitchen to discover my girlfriend’s father already well into a game of Wii Sports, BY HIMSELF! He wasn’t playing for the kids or anybody else. He was having FUN! *gasp* ..and then.. I died.. No, no, no death, but I did find myself thinking “WOW, I think Nintendo is actually going to pull this off!”

So, after having this experience with my girlfriend’s family over the holiday, I have to give my sincere kudos to Nintendo for really going back to the basics, improving the gaming experience, and making gaming accessible to even more people than ever before! They really hit one out of the park with the Wii! (even if the name does still sound goofy)