Motion control “a gimmick” that “adds nothing” – DICE. Do you agree?

An often highly debated and never resolved element of gaming is motion control. Ever since Nintendo brought out the Wii; both Microsoft and Sony tried their hardest to take a chunk of the market with their own devices. First was the Playstation Move, an obvious attempt at taking on the Wii with a very similar controller and an eye toy to help track players in real time. Few games truly took advantage of it though and most gamers still preffered using a standard controller. Then came the Kinect, very similar to the Eye Toy, the Kinect could track two people in 3D space at around 30 fps and also had the addition of voice control which allowed you to open disc trays, change songs, navigate menus and even turn off the console. The problem with the Kinect was that only a handful of developers ever made games for it and they often had poor tracking and were very buggy, some games got it right like Dance Central which finally proved that Kinect really did have good tracking and could be accurate. But even after it was released no game or developers seems to be able to get the accuracy they achieved and even a simple game of fruit ninja on Kinect was annoying because you would often slice a bomb when in the touch version you would have missed it. Below is DICE’s opinion on motion control.

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Motion control is a gimmick that players won’t see anywhere near Battlefield 4, says DICE executive producer Patrick Bach. Speaking with Edge, Bach said that additions to the game were only considered if they improved it and simply put, motion controls do not do that. “There are a lot of gimmicks – people throwing money at us – ‘can you implement support for this quirky control thing’. No, it doesn’t make the game better,” said Bach. “We are extremely open to innovation, but if it’s a gimmick, there’s no point unless it adds value to the player.” Not all alternative control methods were out of bounds, however. The iPhone had proven that touchscreen technology could be implemented well, said Bach. “It adds to the experience, and now everyone is doing it. To us it’s the same with motion control and perceptual gaming in general; if it adds, great. If it’s a gimmick, ignore it.” Battlefield 4 was revealed at GDC 2013, and will feature three playable factions as well as Command Mode. It is expected on the usual platforms along with PlayStation 4 later this year.

Do you agree with their opinion that it is a gimmick or do you think that they just haven’t found the right way to use motion control yet, let me know in the comments below.