A Mimetic Revolution

There's a reason the Wii was codenamed the Nintendo Revolution. It has proved itself to be a revolutionary device in the way games are played by introducing a standardized mimetic controller. While standard controllers have been growing reliant on more and more buttons to increase control options, the Wiimote actually has fewer buttons than did the Gamecube controller. And yet, with its motion-detection capacity, it has expanded its control options even further. The near-literal "magic crayon" of the Wiimote, combined with the simple, interruptible minigame collections released for the system, brought the system enormous success among casual gamers. As a result, games are more popular than ever.

Now, Sony and Microsoft are attempting to capitalize on this success by implementing their own mimetic interfaces - Move and Kinect, respectively. Games such as Guitar Hero and Mario Kart Wii have implemented their own mimetic devices, in the form of a guitar or a steering wheel, to help bring players "into" the game. This is the power of the magic crayon - it presents the illusion of competence by removing the real-life difficulties of an activity. Driving a car is more than turning a steering wheel, and playing a guitar is more complicated than pressing buttons. By dumbing them down to these bare essentials, the games have lowered the learning curves of these activities and made them more accessible to the masses who wish they could take part.

As these short bursts of gaming continue to sell to the enormous casual gamer market, the companies profiting from them continue to churn out these easy-to-make, easy-to-play titles. This has come as something of a shock to hardcore gamers, as games about exploring a virtual 3D world or fleshing out an in-game story have begun to fall between the cracks in an industry increasingly saturated with games simulating "real world" activities in an appeal to the average person, or games that favor interruptible minigames rather than a grand scope. The typical casual gamer would rather play a guitar like their favorite rock star than pretend they're a warrior in some fantasy world they've never heard of before. Hardcore gamers, looking for an escape from the familiar rather than an emulation of the familiar, are seeing the immense rise in popularity of casual games as a cause for concern, fearing they are beginning to edge hardcore games out of the market in favor of "safer" titles, those that promise more payout with less investment. They point out that a company would rather produce a "safe" minigame collection that can rake in lots of money from the casual crowd with minimal investment of time, money, and effort, as opposed to a development-heavy hardcore game, requiring a large monetary input for a product that appeals to only a niche market.

So what do you think? Is the new drive for casual mimetic games putting in-depth hardcore games at risk? What effect is the increase in gaming in the general population, spurred on by a mimetic interface, having on the type of games being released? What lasting effects has Nintendo's mimetic Revolution had on the industry?