Let’s be honest: most of us fanatical enough to be reading TSA every day are most likely hardcore gaming enthusiasts and early adopters. We will jump on any new technology with glee (not Kinect obviously, exceptions have to be made for moral decency on occasion) and somehow find it entertaining, even if it’s really just novelty chaff that gets thrown under the sofa after a week to be buried in crisp packets and empty pizza boxes, never to be seen again.
For this article, we present something unique. We have taken a (very) small sample of people from completely different demographics and asked them to try the Move and give their feedback.
Each participant was an individual who had never used the Move before. The trial was held one day after Move’s release, with each person being given the same simple task: calibrate the controller, then complete the tutorial and 2nd level on Tumble. They were given about 20 minutes to do this with minimal guidance, then asked a fixed set of questions to get their first impressions. Do note that this therefore presents no information about how they might use the device long-term.
No concrete conclusions can be drawn from a small number of people of course, but the anecdotal evidence should prove interesting. Is the Move novelty chaff? Does it appeal to non-gamers? Let’s find out.
The elderly person
Gender: Female
Age: 56
Occupation: Telephone sales
Has heard of Move: No
This subject was as green as you could get: she had never heard of the Wii, and although she has tried many years ago to use a regular gamepad, she considers herself to have never played a video game before in her entire life.
Her experience with Tumble went quite smoothly and only required minor prompting. She grasped the 3D tracking concept within one or two minutes and had no problem getting gold medals on the test levels.
The subject commented “I have tried to use normal controllers before and this is much better”.
Ease of use – 4.5
Ergonomics – 5
Fun factor – 5
Value for money (pricing information was given) – 4
Would play again if left alone – 4
The non-gamer
Gender: Male
Age: 51
Occupation: Nurse, Rehab Worker
Has heard of Move: No
This subject had seen the Wii but not used it. He had much more difficulty understanding the motion controller concepts than the previous subjects, particularly with depth perception. The task took longer to complete and he managed a silver medal on the test level.
The subject commented that he had trouble reading the symbols on the four face buttons and that the controller was a little too small for his hand, but was the most enthusiastic of all the subjects about continuing to play on.
Ease of use – 4.5
Ergonomics – 4
Fun factor – 5
Value for money (pricing information was given) – 4.5
Would play again if left alone – 5
The conservative gamer
Gender: Male
Age: 29
Occupation: Fitness Instructor
Has heard of Move: No
This subject had used a Wii before, at ‘1’ on scale of 1-5, where 1 represented occasional use. His primary gaming focus is PC-based games World of Warcraft and Starcraft II. The subject described himself as skeptical about playing console games primarily because he prefers a game with is long and deep, and plays for the social aspect. Single-player gaming does not particularly appeal to him.
The subject had surprising difficulty understanding the motion controller concepts and needed considerable prompting, again depth perception being the main issue. He managed a silver medal on the test level.
The subject commented that the T button felt a wrong fit for his hand, that Tumble wasn’t really his kind of game, and when presented with pricing data commented that the cost of a DualShock 3 is “a rip-off” (Norwegian RRP: £54.99; Move RRP: £29.99)
Ease of use – 3
Ergonomics – 3
Fun factor – 4
Value for money (pricing information was given) – 3
Would play again if left alone – 2
The skeptic
Gender: Male
Age: 30
Occupation: Warehouse Floor Manager
Has heard of Move: Yes
This subject described himself as a fairly interested gamer who tires of console games quickly. He has approximately equal experience with World of Warcraft and PS3 games but finds much greater longevity at his PC. Although he owns a Wii, he also rated his use at 1 out of 5, noting that only Super Mario Galaxy was particularly worth playing for him.
The subject’s initial view is that devices such as Move and Kinect are gimmicks – “like the Wii” – and will generally go unused after a short while.
The subject grasped the concepts extremely quickly – being familiar with the Wiimote – and had no problem completing the task. However, he commented that the tracking was laggy, and on a later try of Sports Champions archery, height was an issue as the PS Eye frequently lost tracking when the subject reached for an arrow. Like the conservative gamer, this subject did not feel the T button was well-placed or shaped.
The subject did not wish to provide ratings based on 10-15 minutes of play – stating that it would be too much like game-show journalism, and wanted to play a variety of games for some hours to give a more balanced view. In the 4th part of this series, we’ll have an interview with this gamer and get his detailed feedback.
What is it?
A separate set of subjects picked at random were shown the device up front and asked to guess what it was. These subjects were 3 young females, 1 young male and 1 middle-aged male. Here are the results:
Don’t know – 2 (young male, middle-aged male)
Halloween toy – 1 (young female)
Microphone – 1 (young female)
Sex toy – 1 (young female)
Broad conclusions
Feedback from the non-gamers was encouragingly positive, although nobody had heard of the Move except for the skeptic, who I told about it some months ago. Problems with depth perception were common, and everyone except the elderly subject raised complaints with button placement, shape or size.
Observational notes were also taken during the trial to note how different subjects used the controller differently and any particular problems they had. The most common issue with everyone except the skeptic was a failure to memorise the different function of the Move button and T. Everyone except the elderly person failed to move the controller sufficiently in the Z direction (towards and away from the screen) to push and pull blocks at first, and these three each took a different amount of time to adjust.
The elderly person and the non-gamer both commented that the game was becoming more fun just as they got a grasp of it and finished the 2nd level. It was especially interesting to see that both of these subjects had more enthusiasm than the gamers and both seemed more switched onto the idea in particular that they could control a video game and that it could be enjoyable.
We will bring you the full skeptic interview in the final part of this series.
X201
What are the scores out of?
CaptainMurdo
Five, I’d assume.
Person678
Teehee, a male nurse. Joking aside, good read.
3shirts
54? Elderly?
I know some people who will be after your blood!
3shirts
56 sorry.
tonycawley
This was my thought exactly, better not let my mum and dad read this or there’ll be bloodshed.
Spence1115
Remember, this is Norway, the actual elderly can’t handle the cold, bringing down the lifespan.
cc_star
My dad is a non- core gamer but has a DS with about 15 games, and loves Wii Sports Bowling and an iPod Touch with about 20 games and 30 ‘lite version’ Although he’s not a core gamer he probably represent the target market and certainly represents the profitable sector of the market.
He hadn’t heard of Move and he didn’t get on with it that well, when I played him at Table Tennis he couldn’t take a point off me as my deft touch and smashes won point after point.
Even the Bocce wasn’t fair as I could press the buttons to move my stance creating a better angle and flick my wrist for curve balls with ease, whilst he kept asking me “what button is it again” and stopped what he was doing for about 10secs to locate said button
The steady hand needed for Archery was also a bit of a fail as the aim wobbles around with the precision of Move… this was repeated with Disc Golf which curves the frisbee at wayward angles unless your wrist is 110% perfectly straight, something even I dislike
Flight Control was fun until we’d racked up about 20 landings then as soon as the pace ramped up he was hopeless.
Tumble was fun, but the Z-direction caused problems and rotating the screen seemed far too difficult for some reason.
‘My Dad’ is far to small a sample to judge Move but its the only sample I have and it wasn’t a favourable experience… He’s now off back to his Wii bowling, DS & iPod touch gaming scratching his head wondering what my enthusiasm was about.
tonycawley
Shall we double the sample size and add “my mrs”? She played sports champions and enjoys it. She also played flight control and enjoyed that. Yes she takes a while to remember button location and uses, but she has played a lot more playstation since launch of move than she did prior to it, in fact she pretty much didn’t touch it prior, so i like it.
teflon
With the buttons thing, though, that just takes a little getting used to. At EGX, I painfully watched a guy try to find a gun to take out a tank in KZ3, before I leant forward and told him the button he wanted was triangle. He proceeded to look down for two seconds before pulling out the WASP and blowing it to hell.
Up till that point, I reckon he was very frustrated with the experience.
Likewise, me picking up a 360 controller for Bulletstorm and automatically using certain control layout tropes from other shooters and forgetting that X is where Square is…
After that it sounds like a case of you knowing how to get the most out of the game, whilst your dad could have done with some of the tutorials explaining to him that he can get top spin and stuff.
All of this is why most Move games rely most heavily on the trigger and the central move button. Outlying shape buttons are then for more minor things.
cc_star
It’s those minor things which give a massive advantage like rotating the screen in Tumble, moving the player left and right in Bocce, rotating the player in Bocce meaning its very difficult for a non-core gamer to play against one
This adds depth for core gamers, keeps the advanced stuff hidden away for non-gamers so they can have a more simple experience so it’s a great gameplay technique and a good piece of game design, but also means competitive play is very difficult/non-existent between players of differing abilities.
Nintendo doesn’t have this problem, and it doesn’t look like Kinect will have either
In Move’s favour (well, Sports Champions favour) I like the way you can choose bronze & gold ability for different players meaning there is some assistance, I hope this mechanism is mandatory in social-type Move games, but it needs to go a tad further eradicating use of shape buttons altogether on the easiest setting, and ramping up the assist levels further for that player.
All-in-all a great start I suppose, hopefully there’s more to come and it comes sooner rather than later although I’m not sure what is on the release horizon that will beat Sports Champions for this type of game, although there needs to be.
TSBonyman
@cc_star: In other words you didn’t go easy on your dad! For shame ;)
While i agree that Wii and Kinect may have that accessibility advantage for casual/non-gamers – seemingly by reducing the amount of actual control you have, that’s precisely why i’m not interested in buying a Wii for motion control gaming. I think many Kinect devices might end up with that 1/5 rating for frequency of use unless the next tier of kinect games ups the bar.
Early days yet and i actually can’t wait to see how Kinect does at launch and how well Move does when the new contender enters the market. I’m happy with Move so far so i really hope Kinect adopters enjoy what they get too.
dirtyhabit
I’ve had my parents and a few mates round to have a go on Move. The above responses seem fairly typical , but that’s the first I’ve heard of the trigger being misplaced. Ive found that tumble is by far the best game to use as a Move ‘tutorial’. Even my self confessed 360 fanboy mate enjoyed ‘Disc golf’ (but I think that’s cos he beat me) :-/
tonycawley
I think the problem at the moment is the distinct lack of games. If you’re going to show a non-gamer something like this, you want an awesome game to show them. Sadly, there are only “quite good” games, so we’re never going to blow them away with it.
tonycawley
Damn, i pressed submit before i was ready! I really don’t think tumble was the best game to do this with. Ok it may be the best for showing off the tech, but it’s not the best game for getting a non-gamer into gaming. Ok, it might be good for a gamer, the idea of puzzle/problem solving, but that’s not going to entice a non-gamer is it? You needed something much more fun for everyone, and what better than sports champions for that? Even my non-gameplaying, non-sporty mrs enjoyed that.
TSBonyman
My non gaming friend had a go and now he is planning on getting a PS3 Move bundle at xmas. He had mulled it over before, as he knows about bluray and the other features but didn’t consider himself enough of a gamer. He enjoyed start the party and then thought the Archery was really cool – but the one that sold it for him was Tumble! I could see how concentrated and intent he became while playing it. I didn’t have to give him much instruction either which was what he liked, any time i’ve tried to get him to game before it’s aways been followed by frantic cries of “which button is it?”.
Now i just hope that there are enough games to make it worth his while but it’s looking promising based on the launch titles.
Apnomis
“Has heard of Move: No”
And therein lies the problem with SCEE’s marketing department…
Apnomis
Just to add I also took my Move around to my sister’s house who occasionally plays a bit of Wii with her kids. It was quite hilarious watching her on the demos of Table Tennis and Disc Golf, after years of wrist flicking with the Wii she just couldn’t grasp the concept of treating the Move like you would if you were doing it for real rather than if you were using a Wiimote! The avatar on table tennis had his wrist contorted into all sorts of unnatural positions! My brother-in-law however picked it up straight away and loved the realistic feel of it, my nephews and niece were also very excited with Start the Party and my eldest nephew was pretty decent at The Shoot too. They also dusted off EyePet for another go and were able to play it unsupervised thanks to the new ‘point and click’ menus…
bunimomike
I’m usually in a state of shock at Sony’s inability to market a product properly and on a global scale. How do they reach the average Jo(e) in the street? Word of mouth only goes so far.
UsernameHere
Can I get the name, number, and picture of the female who thought it was a sextoy? lol
bunimomike
DJ-Katy’s initial opinion has been well documented previously. ;-)