How the Nintendo Wii is Going to Change Game Design

One of the efficiencies and later, problems with video game design is the phenomenon of genre-ization. Video games have become ruthlessly categorized to the point where if a game doesn't fall into a very narrowly defined category like "racing game" or "fighting game" or "puzzle game," it doesn't get made. When games that don't fit into the pre-defined genres get made, like Katamari Damacy, for example, they often do quite well which causes many to wonder why there are genres to begin with, but that's another article.

One of the first questions video game designers, or, for that matter, any game designer asks is "what are the verbs?" What this means is "what exactly does the player do in this game?" Coming up with a list of verbs makes it possible to then decide what choices the player has to make, and how the verbs will apply to those choices. The combination of these two things forms the basis for a game design.

With the Nintendo Wii, video game designers have been provided with a completely new, and up to now, never before possible list of verbs: a list which takes nothing away from the original possibilities of video game design each with another limitless universe of verbs. The result is going to be fun beyond anything tried before.

Imagine a game of Tetris which replaces arrow buttons with Wii remote actions. For people who played the original Atari console, imagine a four-player Nintendo Wii game of Warlords which requires players to handle the Wii remote like a shield. What about Breakout? Or how about that arcade Olympics game where players run by pressing the opposing buttons really fast? How about Dragons Lair? Think you could beat the Black Knight's Chess Room if you actually had to jump from square to square?

This is not to say the Nintendo Wii should become exclusively a retro-game platform, but these are just a very few examples of what new game designs could try. The key to making this work is to start with a clean sheet of paper and for goodness sake, to not limit creativity. There are going to be a lot of ideas, and some of them probably aren't going to work at first, but a lot of them will, and they are going to expand the market for "video games" astronomically. The possibilities for educational and instructional games alone are amazing.

When there are so many possibilities, it tests creativity in ways that are sometimes difficult to overcome. Like any good design, the key to success is limits. Great designs rely far more on what is removed than what is added. The new list of verbs possible with the Nintendo Wii has expanded the boundaries of video game design a great deal, and it will be very important for game designers to focus on making sure their designs take advantage of the system without throwing so much into their games that they become a confusing mess.

I think that Nintendo Wii version of Tetris would be a cool place to start.