Commenting on a comment

Recently, commenting on my post 'Qwerty futures' Andrew said...

It is a problem with any control interface, the granularity, the fact you're working on a 2d plane.

Precision is a major thing to have fun. Or rather, it prevents frustration. No one likes bad control schemes (or poor controllers) - they mean whatever the player does, they fail, lose, or simply take more time the necessary to do things!

Just see the reason why there are no real precise things with the Wii, and you'll see why certain things are pretty impossible with gestures. Even humans are terrible at guessing without stringently precise gestures (Signal flags, deaf sign language, drivers hand signals...) what someone is indicating. It's kind of going backwards using gestures of any kind!

1 March 2010 12:38

I like this and I think it should be a post in its own right. The limitations of signs (especially in the day and age of the 'floating signifier' and the problematised signified) is something that people never highlight when they open vistas of promise with new gesture-based gaming technologies. As Andrew says, the keyboard provides a degree of granularity that is not yet matched by gesture-based technologies. Strangely enough, it is the latter that people consider to be more liberating ... well, all I can say is 'not yet'. If you wish to talk to Andrew here's his site. This last paragraph, however, is not something I have discussed with him so our views may differ.