I have to disagree on this one-- "learning" an interface like the thumbsticks is just an investment for later payoff. Sure, my Mom can play Wii Bowling and have fun with it, but she'll never get to experience the emotional payoff that BioShock delivers, discover the amazing and complex world of Portal, or even deal with an even more complicated interface-- a mouse and keyboard. My mother will never know what it's like to raise the Persians as your own in Civ 4, and lead huge armies across the border into China right after the Industrial Age hits.

More complicated controls don't necessarily mean more fun (Wii Bowling is more fun than Civ 4 for some people), but they do mean a less complicated (and I would argue, a less fulfilling) experience.

But there's nothing in that Bioshock experience that requires the use of thumbs - theoretically, it could be ported to a system that had a lower barrier to entry, assuming all else was equal. For instance, someone could hack in Wiimote support for the PC version.

This, I think, is Nintendo's point, particularly with Zelda - requiring people to use their thumbs is a high barrier to entry, and there's very few games that actually require that sort of control and that wouldn't benefit from a more accessible control scheme.

I'll admit I didn't read the article, but Mike's post about Bioshock raises a critical point -- how many people WON'T play Bioshock, and miss out on the epic, artful and emotional content of that game because they do not have the thumb or mouse dexterity to play? The light of Bioshock is hidden behind a bushel of difficulty, complexity and impossible dexterity challenges for nongamers. This is exactly why Ebert insists games can't be art, and are sports instead; because we have the audacity to "kill" the player for not being twitchy and 21st-century enough to pass the barrier.

Except, due to the vital chambers, Bioshock is an incredibly easy game. The only barrier of entry is the controls, which with the slow pace of the game, is not as much an obstacle in themselves as it is a casual player's fear of such 'complex' controls.

Cute example. I play 360 games over my friend's place, who has a one year old daughter. Too young to comprehend the complexities of shooting in Halo 3, yet she's fanscinated by the controller, and observes that when she pushes a button on it, something happens on the screen. If she keeps the same fearless attitude, she would have no problem mastering a 360 controller by age 3. I'm not convinced most people don't have the logical process given to a 3 year old. They just fear it will be more complicated than it actually is.

Half-life 2 might be the perfect game to start on considering how slowly it starts, with the focus being on basic movement, and combat not entering into much, much later.

Funny thing is, I feel like I've had to learn more controls for Wii games than for other systems. Perhaps it is because most systems follow similar established patterns, while Wii developers are trying to justify the Wii remote.

Not to mention that in most cases, Wii remote games seem to have the worst precision and most frustration from either poor detection or even poor schemes.

For many, Wii Boxing seems to just be flailing your arms because they simply cannot get the game to register the different punches on demand. The Wii sword-swinging game controls are much inferior to those cheap little plastic sword dedicated games. Tiger Woods randomly decides you are swinging forward when you are starting to draw back for your swing. Etc.

@Michael Eilers:
What is audacious about it? To enjoy a game as a game is to enjoy accomplishing goals that are just within reach. So there has to be difficulty somewhere. There are plenty of games at all difficulty levels and controls complaints are often overblown. Not that there is a reason to care anyway. Any 'art' which might be enjoyed by anyone does not deserve to be enjoyed by everyone. If you can't play the game in the first place then you are missing out on the primary experience anyways.

"Meanwhile, Nintendo has broadened their audience with games that offer the player a more natural instrument with which to express his intention."

Whenever someone parrots this, I have to ask: Are there any studies (NPD, etc.) that actually shows the Wii broadening the audience for games?

The casual games industry has tons of data showcasing its "non-gamer" demographics; where's the Wii data beyond, "Reggie says so, and I hear on the Internet that grandparents are buying it at Target."

This expanding of the market will only take place if people buy games that aren't from Nintendo. Otherwise, the Wii is great for the Big N, but not so great for everyone else.

The fact that Resident Evil is one of the top selling third-party Wii games (and that Metroid is another big seller) says more about its actual audience than anecdotes about family members digging their first console game.

@ Baines:

You're muxing a whole bunch of points here together. I'm not saying that anything is broken in Bioshock's design, I'm saying that game designers make deliberate choices that do exclude potential audiences for their games. The idea that the pleasure of discovery must be balanced out by the pain of failure is a *very* hardcore gamer perspective -- do we force people to suddenly reach for the DVD remote and complete a minigame, or they can't watch the next chapter of a movie? Do I have to watch that chapter over and over and over again, until I get it "right," and only then be allowed to watch the next chapter? As gamers we're totally used to this controlled, limited access to the material, and have learned to relish it. Nongamers have not. If we'd like to encourage nongamers to become gamers, then we could either 1) wait for them to "man up" and get some dexterity and learn to like punishment like we do or 2) bridge the gap with designs like the Wii (and the article this post links to) is attempting.

@ Michael Eilers,
to appreciate any piece of art there is a barrier of entry. Sure anyone can pick up and watch any movie, but how many people truly understand the complexity of the great films of all time. It takes a serious attempt by the audience of any art to truly understand it and get the most out of it. I know many people who look at Guernica and just don't get it, and thats fine, its still art. Art should always be a struggle, it should always enlist multiple faculties from its audience to fully appreciate it. If everyone can instantly understand every piece of art, every novel, every film, or even play every game with no work and no effort, there is no artistic/emotional/intellectual growth coming out of it. And that would make things unartistic in my definition.

@ orlando

I'm not sure I agree with you there. The barrier to entry for all the examples you have is one of either knowledge or perception, and surely not interface. If you had to arrange the Mona Lisa in a certain way and light it 'just right' before you could even begin to contemplate it, surely fewer people would have the opportunity to actually have a chance to appreciate or not appreciate it. To understand or not understand. A barrier to entry, to my mind, should never be one of interface (or for that matter interaction) if it can be helped. Unless the controller is an integral part of the experience like in steel battalion, I think the simpler and more intuitive the better. Let the 'art' come through the gameplay or the setting or something else.

What do you think?

You have a point with the knowledge or perception aspect of it, but either way there is that struggle and growth before you can appreciate it. You have to make the conscious decision to make those leaps and ultimately change yourself to gain the fullest appreciation. Learning a new interface is, at least in my opinion, far less work than seeking to understand the great works of art of our past. Its a small thing to ask of an audience to learn how to press buttons. Part of enjoying the game, of appreciating it beyond the surface level, is learning to interact with it, and it seems that the games which give you the highest level of interactivity with their environment offer the most in terms of artistic merit. If you choose not to learn the skills you need to learn to appreciate and artform you have no right to decry its artistic merit. I honestly see no difference in learning how to use a controller in a game and learning a language with which to appreciate a novel for example.

Which actually takes me to another thought entirely that I hadn't contemplated yet. If you look at the vast majority of classic literature, its always at its best in its native language. Sure you can pick up some great translations, but if you don't learn that native language it was written in, you aren't getting the fullest experience. I'm not saying all video games are on the level of Dante's Inferno, but isn't that a question of interface.

Guess I was to preoccupied to put my name in the right place, but that was me above

Hmm...

Those are some interesting points you make there. Especially the one about reading books in their native language. I agree that the language a book is written in is definitely a question of interface. With books written in an author's native tongue, most of the time they offer more than their translations because the author came up with his/her thoughts or ideas in that language. Anything else would just be an interpretation of what they meant to say. But, it also depends on what they are trying to do. If the author creates clever or profound wordplay that only makes sense in their native tongue, then that can only be lost or paraphrased in a translation. But I doubt that there would be anything to be gained by learning English to read a mills & boon romance novel.
Unfortunately I think most games fall into that category:simple entertainment. The last game I played that made me think of art was shadow of the colossus, and even that I doubt gains much from the dual shock as opposed to any other form of control. If they had made wanda's struggle against the colossi somehow an extension of the dual shock then I would agree that one should learn the controls to experience the game. In the absence of that, I think 'translations' can work just fine, even if they are dumbed down. That world is more about the experience of conquering and being conquered than it is about using a particular interface.

Sorry if it's all a bit disjointed, long day and I am posting from my phone.

@yegwa

I think we're definitely in agreement on a lot of these points at this point. My one contention with all of this is that games should not be immediately dismissed/disregarded as being able to be works of art simply because of the barrier of interface. Its not the interface which determines artistry but the content. In my experience I find myself very deeply involved, and in a few games, emotionally invested because of my own interactions within these worlds. The ability for a work to effect you personally is my determination for art, and thus I can't accept that videogames could never be seen as art merely because of how you experience them.

It would be interesting to see a game which could only be done utilizing some new, innovative, and engagingly unique control scheme, however I don't think the Wii is that. At best the Wii is a digital approximation of actions which we've already experienced, and if need be could be simulated a multitude of other ways. I mean honestly how different is pointing at something with a wiimote from using a joystick, feels very similar to me.

I will have to reserve comment on the actual experience of playing with a wiimote vs using a joystick for now simply because I still haven't played anything on a wii before.
It would be intreating to see if someone can create something dependent on the controller though. I remember there is (was?)a game in development for the wii called sadness and there was a small teaser that showcased some interesting possibilities.

I do agree with you on the point you made that videogames' capacity to express art is not dependent on the interface used to experience it. After all, I don't think anyone knocks paintings because blind people can't see them, or music because deaf people can't hear it.
But, I believe that if an interface can be made more accessible without affecting the content, that should be done.

I've had a Wii for a while and really all of the games i've played haven't done anything truly innovative with the controller, it never feels like i'm doing something i could never have done without it.
There have been a few games which rely on a particular controller, steel battalion, guitar hero, donkey kong jungle beat, all come to my mind pretty quickly but none of them offer much in terms of artistic, or even really video game, depth (though I haven't played steel battalion). Until nintendo makes a game that just couldnt have existed without the wiimote, I can't really claim much for its actual innovation, its different and effective in the use of motion sensing, but not revolutionary unfortunately... at least not yet.

I think there is a drop off point with simplifying a controller and losing a bit of the challenge and experience. Halo 3 is a prime example, there were some control scheme modifications done to try to get some newer less experienced players a bit of a hand and from what my friends have told me (haven't played this one either lol) it very negatively affected their performance, the worst part was they couldn't change it to their liking. Unfortunately the more you simplify certain aspects of the interface, at least this is what it seems, the less you can actually do in the experience and thus the less impactful that experience can be.

There has to be some balance point, and maybe nintendo is moving there with the wii, but i haven't seen it there yet, i'm hoping we will though.

now this isn't directed at anyone in the comments but actually relates directly to the article and the essay it is about, but isn't the Xbox 360 far outselling its predecessor, and its my thought that the big thing keeping the ps3 from making a big break is the outrageous price.