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Wii Ambassador: Subject #2 - Published by N-Philes, Feb 25, 2007

Can Nintendo's Wii offer him a new form of relaxation?

Weapons Arsenal:

Wii – Nintendo's fifth home console. It's a small, affordable gaming system that features a wand-like, motion-sensing controller.

Mii Channel – An integrated Wii feature that allows users to create a simplistic, but uncanny representation of themselves to use in various games.

Photo Channel – An integrated Wii feature that allows for pictures from digital cameras to be shown, altered, and shared with friends.

News, Weather, and Internet Channels – Wii features that allow users to surf the internet and get news and weather updates straight from the console.

Wii Sports - A Wii game packed in with every console. It allows players to enjoy tennis, golf, bowling, boxing, and baseball by using the Wii Remote to simulate the activity of each sport.

Wii Play: A compilation of nine simple games that introduces many aspects of the Wii Remote to Wii newcomers.

Rayman Raving Rabbids - A minigame-structured game, created by acclaimed game designer Michel Ancel, set in a bunny-ravaged Rayman universe.

Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz - The third console iteration in the Super Monkey Ball franchise. Players guide a monkey-filled ball to a goal by tilting the floor and avoiding obstacles.

Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam - A downhill skateboard racing game that takes players around the world. It stars Tony Hawk and a cast of fictional racers.

Trauma Center: Second Opinion – A surgery sim where you operate on patients using the Wii Remote to mimic various surgical tools.

Before Wii:

Our interview started with Pramod describing what a videogame is to him. "A videogame is a computer program with graphics. [It] is a game of mind, played over a console, on a television, or a computer console." To him, a videogame isn't that different for many other kinds of games. "It is not like soccer or tennis that gives you physical exercise, it is essentially a game that gives you mental pleasure."

Pramod doesn't think of himself as a gamer, though he admits to having spent large chunks of time playing simple games like Minesweeper. "A gamer is somebody who draws pleasure from playing games," he explains. "His free time is spent on playing time. All the time he can squeeze, that he can make free. His homework may be faltering, but he can have free time."

At his home, Pramod has a GameCube that is primarily used by his daughter and kids when they visit. Both his son and his daughter have Nintendo DS Lites, along with individual copies of Brain Age and Big Brain Academy. I took an opportunity to get his thoughts on those games, since he's a prime target for them. "I played [Brain Age] briefly to see what it was about. It is a great game. If somebody has time, it's worth playing."

Pramod and I discussed videogames and a form of entertainment. He conceded that, given the right approach, videogames make for a good time, but either way, they aren't for him. "[Videogames are] a better form of entertainment than movies, provided that games are made knowledge-centric. But senseless entertainment? Movies are better if the game is senseless. A Senseless game is a game that is made without purpose other than entertainment. Entertainment is that when you are exhausted, your brain is not functioning, and you need time to wind down and relax. Whereas for me, I wind down while doing things. My winding down is not about relaxing – I draw enjoyment in producing something. If I have time, I would rather enjoy writing something or making something. Or I would rather make videogames. If I had the time to study them, I would rather spend my time making the game rather than playing it."

What would it take to get Pramod to play a game? "It would be for educating someone," he responds. "If I were to educate the masses being involved in that game, then I would play. Meaning, I have to produce some outcome for either society or family or somebody beyond myself."

The biggest development going from the previous generation of consoles to this one may very well be Wii's motion-sensing controls. In order to compare what Pramod thinks of them, I asked about what he thinks of the standard controller. "They have this A, B, C, D, and up and down arrows..." Pramod continued to describe the controllers with an air of pessimism. "I think if you have enough time to monkey around, and once you are trained, they are easy to learn quickly. If somebody does not have great motivation to play a game, then [controllers] are not motivators. You have to really learn. If somebody says, ‘that is the mission' to a young child, then no matter how, they will learn because otherwise their life is a standstill. My life isn't standstill; I don't bother learning this A, B, C, D to gain entertainment."

After Wii:

The first thing I did was hand Pramod the Wii Remote to get his initial impressions. "It's small and easy to hold, not like the other [controllers]. I can hold it in one hand whereas many controllers require two hands, so that is the difference. It has a speaker – or a microphone, I don't know. Something is different." Once the Nunchuk was added to the Remote, Pramod quickly pointed out that both hands are separated. "You have more flexibility [with the Nunchuk] in the sense that your hands can go far or closer whereas before they were a fixed distance."

Once we turned our attention to the Wii itself, he and I browsed the Forecast, News, and Internet Channels. One of the websites where he spent time was for an organization in which he's very active. Pramod was impressed with the functionality of the browser. "I think that is a definite plus for the system: the web browser, weather browser, and news channel." A low number of international news stories on the News Channel left Prmod wanting more. "The News Channel's navigation system was very good but they didn't have enough selection of news sources."

The Photo Channel thoroughly impressed our previous subject, but Pramod wasn't quite sold on the functionality, or lack thereof. "Possibly," he hesitantly replies to whether he would use such a feature. "If I were showing pictures and there were a TV, then most likely. But I wouldn't buy Wii to show the pictures." Then he became excited about where this channel could go. "If it was there and it was somehow integrated with some kind of network storage because pictures take a lot of space. As a result it should be stored in some kind of media that holds a large volume of data. Sometimes [SD card usage] is ok, but for people who take many pictures – people are going to have a lot of digital pictures in the future. Once they start collecting their life's pictures, and they have to go back and forth between months and years and all that, they would have to definitely be integrated with network storage. That is where all the systems, computers, printers, and appliances of a household have to converge – everything has to be networked. Right now things are not that well networked."

Before we could get into the games, Pramod had to create a Mii character. "I think that would be good for a group of people," he says, reflecting on the significance of the Miis. "It can give a certain level of personality and everybody identifies by that so you don't have to be familiar with different characters all the time. I have a definite identity and I always use that identity which is easier for me to know if its my turn or not. With billiards, for example, when it is my turn, the same ball has my face. When it is your turn, the same ball has your face. Then you don't need 1, 2, 3, 4 player numbers." His Mii name, Bua, is a Nepalese word that children use for "father."

Pramod enjoyed his time with Wii Sports. "It's the first time that I felt alright playing a game. If I have to play in a crowd, no problem. Otherwise all these thumbs going up and down and A B C D pressing and all of that, of course its not a big deal – it's not a big deal to learn typing, but I never bothered." He started playing Tennis and Boxing by sitting on the sofa, but by the time Bowling and the Fitness Test came along, he was standing up and really getting into it. At one point guests were over, and he was enthusiastic about teaching them how to play. "[The sports] are very well developed."

The two of us played through the Wii Play, spending more time with Fishing and Tanks than the other games. "It's good," he says on the package as a whole, "but it could be better." Pramod didn't think that Wii Play held up as its own game, but definitely saw the value it presented. "Some games can be amazingly complex, [but here] you have multiple games, but simple ones. Monkey Ball is one of those great games, from coordination and balance, how fast you have to respond, etc. [Wii Play hasn't] gone through the same level of development. They must have been just introducing the features: different remote, whether it's held in the horizontal position, vertical, swinging... all different uses of the remote have been properly introduced. I see that game's value in that greater than anything else.

"The motions are better understood here than in Wii Sports. Similarly for game developers, I think it opens up new concepts, which weren't covered in Wii Sports. It's targeting game developers on how, where, what kinds of movements they can utilize to develop their games. I think that's one of the primary intentions behind it. But that is my speculation. Actually the interesting thing, in some of the games like [Find Mii], aren't about hand-eye coordination, it's purely visual, memory. That part wasn't well captured in Wii Sports. People can now capture that dimension."

A few years back, Pramod was so impressed with Super Monkey Balls 1 and 2 that he bought a GameCube, so naturally I had to show him the Wii iteration of the franchise. Pramod didn't have much to say about the game itself, because he's already experienced it. "[When Super Monkey Ball] came it was spectacular and revolutionary. Because the revolution was already understood, here on Wii, it doesn't bring any new spectacle on that. In fact, when I saw the graphics on the first one, I was very impressed at the time. But here, there was nothing too spectacular about that because expectations were already set."

The main difference between then and now is the control. I would wager that Pramod played through and completed more levels in Banana Blitz than in the GameCube games. "It was easier to play for a guy like me just because you can turn. For new people, I feel [this one] would be easier." The same could be applied to Tony Hawk Downhill Jam, where Pramod was intent on learning how to stay on the course simply because the control was easy to understand.

When I brought up Rayman, Pramod began to laugh, describing it as "the cool one." Rayman is very much about reaction and hand-eye coordination, and Pramod saw this as the main draw to the game. "I think it has good value, even for old people to keep their brain sharp. If old people start playing these games, they'll live a few years longer." He pointed out that the controller is what would open up gaming to older audiences, that previous controllers don't have immediate appeal.

Of all the games that we played, perhaps the one that left the greatest impression on Pramod was Trauma Center. It's a great example of the potential to blend learning with fun gameplay. "[Trauma Center] may not be educational, but it is a step towards developing educational systems. This can be refined further to make close to real life scenarios. It's going in that direction, but it will improve over time and become very realistic – that is my hope."

After his first Wii experience, Pramod began to see how Wii can expand gaming as a whole. "[Nintendo has] opened a new dimension to video gaming, a totally new dimension that possibly others may have thought about, but they were behind. Nintendo has come to the forefront on the sensing side. As a result, very useful and practical applications can be built." He then examined the versatility of the Wii Remote and how people could learn how to drive or pilot an airplane without the need for expensive peripherals.

The pointer technology that the Wii utilises isn't new, but coupling it with motion sensing, and bringing them to the masses is where Pramod feels the revolution is taking place. "The revolutionary [step] is the gyroscopic sensing, meaning how my hands are moving, etc. Full three-dimensional movement, how they've captured it is revolutionary. That which could have been expected in a very high-end scientific instrument is coming into this cheap device. I think that's [the Wii's] primary revolution. To have such a thing in something ordinary, now people can develop all kinds of applications that were not thought of before."

Pramod further emphasizes this point when we talked about graphics on the Wii. "There is nothing new. They haven't introduced anything new in my opinion." His amazement with Super Monkey Ball came up again when he stated that visually, nothing that he saw impressed him. "The remote is the primary thing that killed everything – killed in a positive way. It's the killer ap or killer invention. [Nintendo] deserves some kudos for that. They were in the forefront of developing gaming anyway. Others were copiers in a sense. I'm happy for them to at least be not taken over by large conglomerate companies that want to be everything. It is commendable what they came up with to survive."

You can't talk about Wii and not bring up the price point. Pramod did exclaim that game prices in the $50-$60 range was probably too high, but he did explain that it's fair that developers get what they put into their products. With the Wii itself, he felt that the price point for the system was fair and offered good value. "If people were to play in a controlled amount, and let us say that there was a way to actually gain a certain level of physical activity – at least for the hand – mind-body coordination, etc... If they were to play for one hour a day or something like that, I think it has value."

The benefits, he believes, can go beyond simple entertainment and physical activity. "Similarly, it can also increase people's IQ, possibly – strengthen the mind, it may stop from degeneration. I do not discount its value at keeping the mind alert. On the other hand, it depends on what kinds of games are developed. If the games help you enhance your memory, or at least stop the degeneration of the brain, and if on top of that, it were informative, if it can somehow make you learn something new and useful for life other than just to have fun, then I think it could have a great future."

Does Pramod see a Wii creeping into his home? "For my children, I would not mind having one." I asked if he himself would enjoy what the Wii has to offer. Pramod stuck to his original thought of creating rather than playing. "When do I find time? If I had time, I would love to develop educational [software] on this, if I had a way. This tiny box, people can carry in their bag, and let us say there's a flattop monitor, I could take it to third world countries with educational, game-looking things. It would be worth it. People can learn while doing something exciting. But I don't know if such a thing would happen."

The whole point of games is to have fun, so I wanted to know if Pramod had fun throughout this process. Enthusiastically, he says that he had a good time trying out Wii. He would probably recommend the system to those who can afford it. "I would say that even older people should be doing this because they have lots of time at hand." After laughing, he adds, "it's something they couldn't have done before." Pramod still hopes to see the educational value of Wii. "They had done entertainment value until now. They have brought a bit of physical value. If they can bring true educational value on top of that, that day I'll recommend fully."

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