Wii play together, if you’re able bodied.
Saturday November 25th, 2006
In all the excitement about the innovation of the Wii, the control scheme and the new ways games can be played, it’s never dawned on me that the console isn’t actually for everyone. As we all know, games like Zelda or Wii Sports require you to be mobile and have full control of your body to perform the actions within the game.
Did anyone stop and think about those who are unable to do this? Disability prevents people from doing things that more able bodied persons take for granted, and in some cases, people who are unable to use the Wiimote to it’s full advantage are alienated from playing the console.
After reading this article it’s bought things into perspective. The Wii sounds great and the concept is exceptional, but you feel as if Nintendo have failed to address a portion of their market who are disabled. You could argue that all of the big players have done this with their controllers, but the Wiimote needs full motion to interact with the game.
I’m just interested to see whether Nintendo will reply to the guy who wrote the letter, and I hope Nintendo will bring in measures to assist disabled gamers with the suggested sensitivity adijustment to assist disabled gamers in enjoying the Wii with everyone else.
Tags: disability, games, gaming, Life, nintendo wii
5/12/2006 at 12:58 pm
This had occurred to me, too, but I don’t play games enough to warrant worrying about it.
To be honest, I’d just assumed that the overly-physical use of the controller was optional anyway and that games would offer an alternative, like the way games that use light-guns allow you to use the standard controller to aim instead - it’s not as fun or accurate but at least it’s an alternative.
5/12/2006 at 10:58 pm
Hi Timmargh, I’m surprised you found this site! Thanks for the comment.
The alternative control scheme is a good idea, I’m just unsure as to whether the Wii will employ this sort of thing.
8/12/2006 at 12:46 pm
I found it under the “Users homepages” list on PM.
I’d hope that in this day and age a company as large and far reaching as Nintendo would try and make their games/consoles accessible to more people than just the standard gamer - with the amount of time, money and effort that goes into producing the hardware and software nowadays it wouldn’t be too difficult to add a few extras to make life easier for some.
Still, as I said before, I’m not too fussed.