Kinect and it's specs!

Seems it's a busy day, news-wise!

Seems Eurogamer has the scoop on Kinect. I was quite skeptical of Kinect and it's abilities on our last podcast and it seems my fears might not be that far off the mark. The technology for the kinect is generally scaled down from its prototype (take that Bioshock 2 haters!):

Maybe Tboon can enlighten us a bit better on the field of view specs (which i've posted below).... that's a little over my head, but the resolution is half of what we thought with at a distance of up to 3.5m. My simple calculations for a distance of 2.35m (middle distance for the depth sensor) put it at approximately 3.24 DPI. Considering they're supposedly only tracking whole body parts as opposed to individual pieces (such as the fingers) as the tech was originally designed to be able to do, then it's unlikely to be much of a problem for gesture control..... that poor depth 'perception' might limit what developers can and can't do on the system though: Gestures won't be able to be too slight otherwise they will not register - especially if the camera is unable to properly detect the depth. This likely means the movement of an arm that is in the plane of the body will be easier to detect than if it is pointing towards the camera.

More worryingly is the potential only two player limit. I don't quite understand why the system can track six people but with only two participants.... i'm not understanding the difference there. This could limit the appeal of the system as opposed to the Wii and Move but then, to be honest, how many games allow more than two people to play a game when on the screen at the same time anyway? From my understanding this is rare even for Wii games.

One interesting tidbit is that the motorised portion of the device is only for effectively setting up the monitoring area of the cameras so that it'll work on multiple surfaces/height levels and in different environments. It won't be used to follow users around if they move towards the edges of the monitoring area - which is what we saw from demos at E3.

Overall these differences in spec from prototype to final product might not make much difference in user experience as Eurogamer reports that, having tried both pieces of tech, they state that "the overall experience is fairly close". Playing devil's advocate - it makes me wonder if the overall experience is being held back...

Sensor

Colour and depth-sensing lenses
Voice microphone array
Tilt motor for sensor adjustment

Field of View

Horizontal field of view: 57 degrees
Vertical field of view: 43 degrees
Physical tilt range: ± 27 degrees
Depth sensor range: 1.2m - 3.5m

Data Streams

320x240 16-bit depth at 30FPS
640x480 32-bit colour at 30FPS
16-bit audio @ 16 kHz

Skeletal Tracking System

Tracks up to 6 people, including 2 active players
Tracks 20 joints per active player
Ability to map active players to Xbox LIVE Avatars

Audio System

Xbox LIVE party chat and in-game voice chat (requires Xbox LIVE Gold Membership)
Echo cancellation system enhances voice input
Speech recognition in multiple languages

I love this...

Mark Rein has been talking about the new platforms like the iPhone and future handheld devices and is saying that triple-A games won't go away. I agree with him on that note but what has me more worried is what he goes on to say:

"I'd rather sell 10 million games at $25 and have a chance to sell DLC than 5 million at $50 on a disc that gets traded around," he said.

"I think it'll change, and it'll change for the benefit of the customers. We're definitely going to experiment with micro-transactions and lower-price games."

Well, of course you'd rather do that! So would everyone. I mean, lets take an example of how much it costs to make one of those games these days.....anywhere between $20-100 million. Those are the copies that are being shoved around on disc which your customers are trading around. Those filthy scumbags!

So the new plan is to half the cost to the consumer but the games will be on cheaper platforms: we're talking about development costs of less than a million. Not only that but there'll be micro-transactions as well though no guarantee that they'll be on those cheaper games.... PSYCH! Of course they'll be on the cheaper games.

Great business plan guys. Shit for consumers though.... but hey! Like many people I see on gaming forums say: "Who cares how much we're shafted when the developers are making money and giving us games?"

(Okay, no one actually said that.... but i interpret that sort of thing from what they do say!)

:)

Seriously, it's just a slog towards taking all control away from consumers... making exponentially more money whilst offering exponentially less for the same amount of money.... reducing value. The problem i have with it is that it will work.

Podcast! The Easy Button Episode 8

Hello, and welcome to the Easy Button!* The show were you get to hear me miss the point several times as Tboon goes over my head with his high-brow humour and intellectual debate.

You might have to pre-stitch up your sides this week as Tboon had sharpened his wit to a fine edge so prepare yourself for some laughs! Though he also pulls out his "old man curmudgeon" act for a bit of naysaying. :D

Enjoy!


The Easy Button Episode 8

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If you want to contact us please feel free to email us with comments, shout-outs, suggestions or questions at: The.easiestbutton AT gmail.com


*I swear i'm going to get that right one of these days!!

Ponderings: Deus Ex

It's interesting playing Deus Ex 10 years after its release. Doubly interesting for me because this is the first time i've played it.... ever. There's no rose-tinted glasses to improve my experience. No past knowledge of controls or levels or AI to exploit. Even worse, I have all the knowledge and experience of nouvelle gaming – all the improvements and accoutrements afforded the modern gamer and their games of choice. Usually, in this cutting light, the games of the past just do not hold up.

Deus Ex does.

I often say that gameplay trumps graphics and this is definitely a case of that; though in its time Deus Ex was no slouch in the graphics department. I'm about 7 hours into the game and enjoying it a lot. People often extol the multitude of choices available for the player when talking about Deus Ex and, yes, every level has multiple paths on which you can walk..... narrow paths, but (marginally) different nonetheless. Going in with no expectations of the game I haven't been disappointed with these options so far but ultimately they seem a lot more shallow than some people might lead you to believe – they're not so far from the choices available in System Shock 2 or Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (which SO needs a sequel!!) in that what you specialise in with your augmentations and skills tends to dictate what method you use to bypass whatever obstacle is in the way.

What sets Deus Ex apart from other games like the ones mentioned is the pseudo-RPG mission mechanics with primary and optional secondary objectives available from various places within the mission areas. There just isn't another game that I can think of that combines this multifaceted mission approach that is often found within RPGs with the linear-ish plot and interface of a traditional first person shooter.

On the poorer side of things the dialogue isn't great, nor is the voice acting but then they're not any worse than 90% of the games released today..... and that's the saddest thing about this and various other games from that golden era of PC gaming: that games really haven't improved much over the last ten years. Even Half-Life 2, the second coming for PC games, showed little in terms of gameplay improvement over its predecessor – it was all prettied-up and the set-pieces were all perfectly calibrated for various play styles – but the “go here and do this for no real reason” element of the early behemoths of gaming was still there. Not only this but story and plot were pretty much espoused in that game in favour of “experience” and they only really came to the fore during the subsequent (and excellent) episodes.

Looking back, there was so much promise coming into the new millennium for gaming and yet overall I don't think we've really hit those expectations yet. There's always room for growth and it's nice to be able to mull over what worked and what didn't and then try and emulate and evolve what has gone before. However, i'd like more games to emulate the other excellent games that aren't Half-Life from around the 1995-2001 period. Half-Life is great and I do enjoy the games and appreciate what they've brought to the gaming landscape but when every first person shooter you play reminds you of the meticulous set-pieces and emotionally-charged dialogue and inter-character relationships of Half-Life 1 and 2 you get to wondering where the other influences should be.

I'm tentatively looking forward to Deus Ex: Human Revolution as I want what Deus Ex had to offer but with the influences of Half Life to bring it all together. It may be that this is the first game of its type to make something more than Half Life in a different skin.

Co-op or competitive?

Back in the day, competitive meant playing against other people. It meant 1 VS anyone else. Team play meant competitive play in a cooperative environment. You don't play a team game alone. However, it looks like game playing itself has come down to this.
Players do not see themselves as part of a team. They do not control themselves as part of a team, of a greater whole. You watch those people play online and you see them just shooting, regardless of the consequenses because alls that matters to them is whether they, personally, get more or less points. What happened to the team game? What happened to sacrifice and honour?

Did the lack of team play on console over the last few years do this? Or maybe the current trend towards self-glorification? Honestly, it's probably neither and both a the same time. Humans have, as a society during my lifetime, become much more self-obsessed and self-indulgent... they believe that they are more important than other people and so there are corollary effects on how we perceive ourselves both in-game and in real life. It's a never-ending feedback effect that results in people that experience life in a way that is alien to most older people: they are part of a team but soley responsible.... they are not co-operating but innovating. You look at corporate CVs and you see the result of this social experimenteering... none of it is real and yet it all is. But how do you tell the difference?

Every single thing is real and yet it is not the exact experience of reality. *I* am responsible for X and yet, unknown to you, several dozen people were also responsible for X taking shape. It's ego... it's personality.... it's everything and nothing all combined to form a globulous whole that results in a non-definition. I worked in a team that resulted in my own personal goal....

Personally, i hope we move away from this self-aggrandisement because ultimately we are not generally responsible.... nor are we capable. Society is a mass of links and co-operations against other cooperations.... 1 vs 1, or deathmatch.... that is individual skill. Anything else is co-operation. The sooner we acknowledge this, the sooner we see where our strengths lie.