Wiimote tutorial best practices: “Zack & Wiki”

Exemplary Work, Games, Wii,
7/20/07

One of the things that’s apparent in this first generation of Wii titles is that many developers have underestimated how much attention needs to be given to instructing the user in how to hold and move the controller. Static icons don’t cut it anymore; you’ve got to have animation, and even then it takes some finesse, as simply playing a loop of the controller being waved around can still be confusing if the loop point itself unintentionally conveys some kind of gesture.

The best in-game controller tutorials I’ve seen to date are in the upcoming title Zack & Wiki. They actually show a little 3D animated guy (upper body only) holding the remote, along with text prompts. Seems like overkill at first, but it’s actually great because you not only pick up on controller movement, you also get posture and timing. When necessary, they can also switch to a first person view of the figure, or even a “disembodied hand” view to aid with object manipulation. Check out some videos of the interface in action, the game does look pretty fun.

I wonder, though, you think they’ll let you customize the guy’s skin color? I’m assuming he’s not a character in the game but is supposed to represent some kind of abstracted ideal human, which opens up a whole set of issues… many of which Anne Friedberg and I also ran into when picking silhouettes for The Virtual Window Interactive (and which we tried to skirt by letting users create their own). Gestural interfaces are increasingly going to require representation of the human form to explain, so whose form do we represent? Do we need an interactive 3D update to the 1974 AIGA/DOT symbol system?