kinect thoughts

[chronovore]

I played several Kinect games recently. The differences in front end implementation are stunning. Adventures! and the Kinect Hub have very similar models, where the "stickiness" of the cursor remaining on an interface icon feels similarly weighted, and the timing with which it initiates and processes item selection are nearly identical. Joy Ride seems to ape some of the conventions without actually understanding why it's doing it. Specifically, it makes the cursor stick when over a selectable area, but then the timing of initiating the "selection countdown" seems to trigger quite late. This works in negative conjunction with whatever tolerance they've built into the stickiness, so right when it seems like I'm going to get what I was trying to select, it instead leaps off the item and forces me to re-select.

Don't even get me started on the maddening, unclear, complete freak-out Joy Ride had when I tried to start a two-player race with my kids' accounts logged in. It managed to completely kill their enthusiasm for the game before it had even started.

Dance Central, OTOH, seems to have its ducks in a row. They made some very smart decisions about limiting the selectable items, and instead of using the "mouse pointer" and countdown timer model of everything above, there is a stack of selectable items, and then use relative limb speed to move between the selection. Did you ever own one of those cell phones with a jog wheel? This feels like that; you can very quickly move to the item you want, even within a large list. There is also simple and consistent separation between right-hand and left-handed operation, where a swipe with the right hand is "select" and left hand is "go back." Super simple, very low user stress.

Comments

[ferricide.livejournal.com]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/31414/MIGS_2010_Harmonixs_Solution_For_Kinect_UI_Design_.php

[slinka.livejournal.com]

Dance Central is a LOT of fun as well as easy to understand. Great party game. Attempted to play a kids' game (can't remember the name) but it was incredibly tedious. Can't imagine a child making it through an hour long intro.