Like those God-awful, fugly, Sergeant Pepper-style fashion jackets, motion sensor gaming is currently all the rage. People are more excited to jump like spider monkeys around their living room in front of a camera than a Jehovah’s Witness with the latest edition of Watchtower.
That joke was probably offensive.
Anyway, the Game Industry™ has it all wrong. At both E3 and PAX Prime this year, I got to witness many mirthful souls test out Kinect and Move. Either the games – involving lots of jumping, dancing, and flailing – really wanted them to look like imbeciles, or the participants had all been suddenly struck, on stage, with severe disorders of the central nervous system. I didn’t know whether to laugh or call an ambulance, so I laughed.
(At them, not with them.)When you’re in a group of people who are comfortable and light-hearted, and by that I mean “drunk,” games involving silliness and lots of movement are a hoot!
“Ha ha! Look at Uncle Jeff dance! He’s about to fall on grandma! Oh, what fun! That could really injure her! Ha ha!”BUT try playing an involved game like Cranium with a group of normal, sober individuals. Participation will be less than enthusiastic and your mom trying to awkwardly act out riding a buffalo Charades-style will just make everyone want to kill themselves.
…Or maybe that’s just my family, when we aren’t all drunk which is almost never.
None of this matters anyway, since my Main Point™ is that I don’t want more gaming technology that makes me do stuff, physically.
The reason I bought my consoles in the first place was so I didn’t have to get off my couch.
Instead, we need to advance our technology in the opposite direction:
inward. I don’t want to swing my arm and watch it happen on the screen; I want to
think about swinging my arm and watch it happen on the screen. I want my brain to do the work, not my limbs.
Therefore, I propose we come out with new gaming technology called “
INACTIV.” Or some other stupid non-word like “Kinect” because America can’t get enough of that bullshit.
Inactiv will still have motion-sensing technology because it will detect when you are moving, and tell you to stop it.
In-game Message: Inactiv is sensing that you are moving too much. Sit quietly and lazily and try again. 
It will recognize movements such as drinking from a soda and eating Funyuns because, duh, those are important to gaming and even more so for cognitive brain functions.
Let’s just get right down to it: When I play my Wii, I feel stupid. My brain doesn’t work the same way it does when I’m sitting on the couch with a normal-person controller. I flail in ways never thought possible and suddenly become aware of my lack of right-hand/left-hand coordination.
So, Game Industry™, let’s stop with the flail-sensing technology and start working inward to our brains. I want to THINK about dicking Kenny over in Mario Kart and then SEE it happen. And with Inactiv, he won’t be able to punch me afterward, either, because it would say this:
In-game Message: Inactiv is sensing physical violence between players. Please stop hitting each other and try again.
