In light of the recent motion gaming releases such as the Sony Playstation’s Move and Microsofts Xbox Kinect the internets have been set a-blaze in regards to whether or not these pieces of technology are the next  push forward in interactive gaming. As Geeks, and its culture alike you would think we would want a more innovative step towards total immersion, yeah…. not so much. The general consensus has been “I don’t want to  get up and play games, I want to grab my controller and sit down”. Now don’t get me wrong even I have been guilty of that statement and thought process until I started to realize what I really want from my gaming experience. The one word that entered my mind was “immersion”. As I thought about it I will never be able to truly immerse myself in games due to the proverbial crutch which is the controller. When you think about it, the controller itself was made as a platform piece of equipment that allowed you to interact with what was on screen, due to limits in technology, resources, time or cost effectiveness. The only thing we’ve gotten since then are more elaborate and complex pads. If you have a wooden crutch and you add, buttons, a wheel, heck even a jet-pack its still a crutch. I say that to say this, in every geeks mind at one time or another we  imagined one day being able to go into an X-men’s Danger Room, Tron world, or Star Treck’s Holodeck so when you look at all motion gaming especially a device like Kinect you can see the primordial steps towards that immersing interactive experience.

I’m not saying this merits a $150 upwards to $300 (in some cases) purchase, but at some point we as gamers have to realize if we don’t evolve our mentality we will never have those types of experiences. Right now we control avatars or a protagonist in some way shape or form, even if we have the choice to customize them totally to fit our precise physical description, its still not “us”. In short (lol) what Im saying is lets not be so quick to point a condemning finger at something that falls outside of our gaming comfort zone, and try to look at what the technology presents to the innovation of gaming. If we do this who knows, maybe the Nintendo Powerglove would have been more successful (what am I saying that thing was dead on arrival), but gamers lets get off the controller crutch take up your bed and walk and maybe one day we’ll learn to fly.

Written by: Henry Knox Writer