Levine: devs should "firewall" motion play
Don't force it on the player, he argues.
Motion control features should be optional and kept separate from a title's core gameplay, according to BioShock creator Ken Levine.
Levine has told OXM that he is in favour of toying around with new ideas, but that gamers should have the chance to opt out of any such “experiments” should they decide to do so.
“Any experience that sits in the realm of motion play needs to be kept separate from the main experience,” he argued.
“It needs to be firewalled off so that if this experiment isn’t for you, or doesn’t turn out to be all that great, you just ignore it."
Levine climbed on stage during Sony's E3 presser earlier this month to announce that, despite once being sceptical of motion control, he had decided to include Move functionality in next year's BioShock Infinite.
He hasn't confirmed exactly how his team at Irrational is planning to tackle the peripheral but, judging by the OXM interview, it intends to tread carefully.
“Any new experience we add, we need to be able to protect this experience,” he explained, before pointing to BioWare's Mass Effect 3 as an example.
“I like the stuff they’re doing with Mass Effect 3, in terms of making some of the interface aspects a little less thorny – more the squad commands than the conversation, as that’s a bit of a challenge on the controller.
“What you don’t want to do is add something in and enforce it on anybody. Do an experiment, fine! We’re in the experimental stage, and people shouldn’t be afraid of experimenting as long as we can firewall off and protect what we know works. If we don’t experiment, we don’t progress.
“I’m a hardcore gamer – I do most of my gaming on mouse and keyboard. I’m always open to new things, but I’m a really conservative guy at heart. I’ll try it out slowly, but I’ll be doing so very conservatively.”