Ouya CEO on mobile gaming: 'You're not having an emotional experience' - Page 2

It won't have Halo, the only reason why I own a 360.  So funk that noise.  This will be sold at swap meets and mall kiosks. 

He's right in some ways.

 

There hasn't been a mobile game yet to have that "moment" - seeing Mario jumping on the flag pole for the first time and winning level 1-1, "It's Dangerous to Go Alone, Take This" and being given a sword to start the quest that became the Legend of Zelda, Aerith getting impaled on Sephiroth's Sword, any of a ton of moments from newer console games. No mobile game so far has truly captured gamers zeitgeist. The closest has been Angry Birds, and even that was not very tight nor without a bit of eye-rolling. Maybe Plants versus Zombies, but that's kind of puttered out all ready.

 

It's all in design. The most popular mobile games are fast, easy to pick up ,and most importantly, easy to put down. You don't want to get sucked into something while on the train and miss your stop. A few rounds of solitaire, or a few runs in a tower defense game are easy. An RPG with random battles? much harder. Action games? Who wants to stop a level?

 

And of course, you add in the supreme annoyance of touch-screen controls grafted onto traditional games. It's as fun to play, say, Mega Man 2 on my iPhone as it is to play some of the most notorious NES games back in the day, due to lack-luster controls. Mega Man games are known for some of the smoothest, cleanest controls ever in gaming history, but grafted onto an iPhone it feels like stuck mud. Try controlling your jumps or those infamous yellow-bar falling puzzles in Quick Man's stage on an iPhone. Your thumbs cover half the playing screen! For giggles, try one of the best games on the SNES, Secret of Mana, on an touch screen. Horrendous. 

 

Bottom line, Mobile games are really hard to create a link to, because they don't have much to link to. Yet. 

That's not true. Quite a few mobile games have attracted the kind of 'moment' that you're referring to. Plants vs Zombies. Dragonvale. Temple Run 2. Words with Friends. The Walking Dead. Rayman Jungle Run.

The main difference is that the mobile games are not all about the imagery and attempting to make realistic pictures of guts flying all over the screen. They're more about the game play - which in many ways is a positive development.

And if you must have the extreme action games, there's always Grand Theft Auto or Infinity Blade.

There are plenty of people who want to be able to shoot 100 zombies at 100 fps with real-life images and mobiles can't match that. But that doesn't mean that mobile games can't be challenging or capture the player's mind.

 

I think you're missing what he and what the person in the story is saying. Mobile games dont create that emotional connection, you dont cry tears playing iOS games and i also bet you dont crack a smile and think this is one of the best games i've ever played. They are built to be accessible and convenient, which isnt bad but when you see the gulf between quality in say Skyrim, Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy and then whatever piece of shit they're hyping in the App Store its pretty obvious they aren't even on same universe when it comes to quality, content, or emotion.

 

The Ouya i dont think will be anything special but i think it has the capability to produce some great games, it will never challenge the biggest franchises but i think some gems can be gleaned from it. Using Android SDK to develop games should mean accelerated developments but the games on there are going to be judge far more harshly as they'll have more tools at their disposal. 

Is it any different than you who's serious about Apple? So much so that you've become a moderator in one of its more popular fan websites.

You simply don't know what you're talking about.

High frame rate action games are not the only kinds of games that people can enjoy.

 

Yes you are engaged.  Holding a device in your hand and physically touching the characters, controls, etc. on-screen is far more intimate than mashing buttons on a controller while watching your TV 10 feet away.  That's one reason why iPad is vastly more successful than Windows Slates / UMPCs  were over the last 12 years. Because they all required a stylus.  The engagement created by physically touching the screen of an iPad is drastically underestimated.  

 

And Apple is working hard on iOS' liveliness in general (e.g. bouncing at the end of scrolling and other animations to give iOS more personality.)  Apple has known, for decades, that sheer specs are meaningless, and that pure functionality is boring.  And that adding personality to an OS (what Samsung is now calling "soul" ) is the key to future success.  Technology itself isn't special any more, to the chagrin of geeks worldwide.  Design and personality are important now.  Most copycats don't understand this, but the ones that do understand it will run into Apple's extensive portfolio of UI patents.

 

 

And what does she think iPhone 5 and iPad are made of?  Plastic?

This discussion has arisen a few times with mostly the same comments. A good comparison between mobile games (as in games designed for mobile, not games designed for PCs/consoles and ported to mobile) and AAA PC/console games is the Youtube to feature film comparison.

On Youtube, you can laugh at a baby having his finger bitten or cry when a tiger hugs an old keeper but will you pay $15 to watch it? You might recommend it to friends, you might watch it a hundred times and it counts as an emotional experience but the vast majority of the time there's no depth to the experience. It's low budget, typically disposable entertainment. That doesn't mean every feature film will have depth, most Summer blockbusters are very shallow, CGI-laden experiences but by far the process by which feature films are made offers the best possibility of having an immersive experience.

There's a gameplay video of the Ouya console here:



You can see at one point they have a mouse cursor on screen being moved by the controller. This is what's going to happen with games designed for touch mobile devices so that's not great. But one killer feature this device has, which has been overlooked is game streaming:

http://www.ouyaconsole.com/ouya-confirms-onlive-partnership/

This means that it will play Borderlands, L.A Noire, Saints Row, Sleeping Dogs, The Witcher 2, Assassins Creed, Darksiders, Deus Ex, Bioshock, Splinter Cell, Arkham Asylum/City, Dirt 3, Mafia 2, Metro 2033, Tomb Raider and so on.

The good thing about streaming games is they can be played on a laptop or whatever right from where you left off so you could be playing Arkham Asylum on your TV from the Ouya, play it in bed on a laptop and it starts from right where you left off without having to do any manual syncing. That's not bad for a $99 price. You can think of this less like a console and more like an Apple TV with a complete iOS that streams AAA games and will have media functionality.

On the topic of what constitutes a AAA game, here is a trailer from the people who developed The Witcher 2. The latter game was in development for 4 years and the studio has about 100 staff. It was based on the novels by Andrzej Sapkowski:



Here is a game coming this month from Irrational Games, the series was originally based on the works of Ayn Rand (in opposition to its ideals), the latest game seems to be based around the concept of American Exceptionalism:



Upcoming game from Ubisoft:



While some of the gameplay elements they have are the common first person shooter variety, they tell stories and they develop characters, which is something that feature films for the most part do and Youtube videos for the most part don't. Nobody would argue that because you sit in front of Youtube and watch a clip and it's the same with a feature film that the feature film has no extra value. The extra value is clear from the prices it can sustain.

The hardware and controller discussed in the article aren't all that important (they help) but the most important piece of the puzzle is the development process. That development process exists because it produces content that can sustain a high purchase price regardless of what hardware is out there. The choice is which hardware will allow those content creators to monetize that content. For now mobile hardware doesn't do that because it has created a culture of quantity over quality and the price expectations are low. It can change but it might not. I have no plans to scour a catalog of 800,000 apps to find something good when I can scour less than 1,000 PC/console games and know they are backed by a AAA development process.

For me personally, my iPad is mainly used as a game guide when I'm playing AAA games. There are a handful of games that hold their own on the platform - mainly adventure games, NFS Most Wanted was amazing on it - but for the most part, I treat it as a gaming accessory. In due time, the platform will become more powerful and it will allow simultaneous publishing of high-end games to all platforms. Whether the content creators choose to publish to them depends on whether or not they can get the return from them. I think they can but prices will have to go up. I'm not sure if they need a controller or not. I do find the touch controls very frustrating at times but it's because I mainly only have two simultaneous inputs. They could resolve it somewhat with rear or side controls but they have to allow for people using cases. I think they could design a nice controller but it would be a commitment to gaming that I don't think Apple wants to make.

What it shouldn't be is an either/or scenario. Mobile games have their place and so do AAA games and there is a crossover, which right now is quite weak but very apparent and the common ground between them will grow rather than diminish. Beyond the PS4 and next XBox, I don't really see many places for them to go so I can see them scaling the hardware down and focusing on services. The best thing Microsoft and Sony can do is to maintain the visibility and worth of AAA publishers, which is something the free-for-all model of mobile has failed to do.

I don't know whether the OUYA concept will succeed as a product, but the success of Nintendo Wii proved that there was a more diverse market for consoles than just what hardcore gamers with their vaunted game controllers and elite-spec'd boxes think.

Are you implying you cry when playing other video games?

I've gotten verklempt twice.

If people want an emotional experience why do they sit in front of TVs with 5-6 commercials every break?

What game has commercial breaks?

Who said that they do?

You just managed to make his point for him. All the people supporting Ouya on this one think that these high end photorealistic 100 fps action games are the only way to have an emotional experience. That's just plain nonsense. One can enjoy iOS games just as much. And there are plenty of non-game experiences involving electronics that can be enjoyable as well.

It's OK if you like some supercharged game that requires the latest computer hardware to play well. I don't have any problem with that. But please stop trying to tell me that that's the ONLY way to enjoy a game.

As previously mentioned I've gotten very focused and, dare I say, emotional playing Words with Friends (and Chess with Friends) against friends and family members. Something about playing a real person seems more engaging to me. I guess I'm just weird that way.

This whole thing is all a bit more complicated than he makes it appear to be. We have to differentiate a bit and spend some time thinking about why mobile games have gained so much traction, became so popular and essentially so profitable.

 

The reason is not because they're necessarily so much better than traditional PC or console games. However, they can be played anywhere. Waiting at a bus stop, in a train, airplane, in bed, sitting on the toilet, while having a bath, etc. Doesn't matter. Whenever you feel like entertainment you can just play something. Pretty much like old handheld devices used to enable you, minus of course the bad battery life and the ability to have much better and complex games, as well as being able to do other things than just gaming. There are some deep titles for mobile devices as well, such as Baldur's Gate, etc. and honestly, nothing feels better than being able to play this in bed on cold evenings. ;-)

 

However, the real breakthrough didn't happen because of people who call themselves gamers. It happened with the rise of casual games, which started taking over PCs and consoles to some extent already. And since a lot of people that normally wouldn't have been interested in any form of gaming own those mobile devices for other reasons they discovered those addictive little casual games. Switch on, play a bit, switch off, get a notification, play some more, etc. Quick entertainment on the go, replaceable titles. And people love it, because it entertains them. Consider, many people do not feel the need for complex games with deep experiences and also do not feel they should spare the time. That's why those casual games are so huge, because for the first time ever they became super accessible and mom doesn't need to sit down in front of the computer anymore to harvest her crops.

 

Therefore, I believe most dedicated gamers own other platforms for the traditional kind of experience anyway. However, in this regard I really don't see this console offering anything new. Most serious consoles are much more powerful, are run by huge companies with a lot of marketing power and have great titles secured. I just don't see this one being any strong there for many reasons, most mentioned by posters above. However what this console certainly won't do is bring casual games to consoles, the Wii did that to some extent and that's about as far as it goes. People are just not interested. When it comes to "real" gamers, they own "real" platforms with "real" AAA titles. I just don't see anyone longing for the occasional good game and a truckload of phone ports, sorry.

 

Regarding the whole console matter: Perhaps it is just me, but I have always seen the PC as the gaming platform and not consoles. Perhaps it is my choice of games, which tend to be of the complex or competitive kind, which just don't work well on consoles. I've always seen consoles as what console players probably see mobile platforms these days. Inferior systems with dumbed down games. Obviously this is not a general rule and depends heavily on taste, although I'm sure many people will agree the PC experience in conjunction with certain genres is a totally different one from consoles. ;-)

I feel like the main reasons gamers have gone to phones / tablets are... a) less time in the day to play games b) to shut their kids up while out and about :)

 

I used to game like mad, I still do once in a while, but it's so much harder when you're trying to be responsible. Ugh growing up sucks ;)

Mobile games have their place, but they are a far cry from the experience you get from a console or PC.

And, again, you don't get to decide what a 'real' game is.

Lots of people enjoy playing mobile games. There are lots of people who do NOT enjoy your kind of high end games.

Can't you just let people play whatever type of games they enjoy without criticizing?

 

Abject nonsense.

 

Or just a different opinion, is that OK?

 

Where are the mobile game series that span multiple character timelines, have plots & story give you sweaty palms & make you leap out of your skin or your jaw drop at particular a scene. Games that can hook you in for hours on epic tasks. Where can I buy Shadow of the Colossus, Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill or even the original Halo for the iOS or Android? 

Mobile OS's get cheap games that are short & have less plot and development time and attention as Marvin clearly explained. 

 

Is Walking Dead & GTA the closest iOS has to those games? They are good games, but I prefer big screens & real controllers, or small screens with real controls.

 

What about simple classics like Tetris? That's a pain to play on iOS.

I expected games like Loco Roco or Me & My Katamari to be great on iOS, but the developers are making versions that are 'smaller by design' or not even bothering to make them for the platform.

Original Sonic the Hedgehog was great, but iOS versions are simply better graphics with worse controls. Sometimes you just need a button or two & a D-pad.

I can't get involved emotionally when a game is simply difficult to control.

 

Maybe I'm just too old, but I find the connection to hardware with real buttons part of the experience, tactile and comforting, especially when buttons have pressure sensitivity, analog joysticks, buttons where my fingers lie around the back… it begins to fit you like a pair of good shoes or a keyboard that you use daily.

 

Touch screens should be able to emulate the joystick but it is lousy, not enough thickness in the case to hold comfortably and when the game does get tense you have to stop & wipe the moisture away because it is getting in the way of the action or you are loosing grip on the rounded-rect.

 

Accelerometer based games should be great, but I have yet to sit somewhere that light doesn't reflect every time you lean in one direction.

 

Mobile gaming is adequate for eating up some time on the train, but it doesn't compare to the joy of beating GLaDOS for the first time.

Has this thread just descended into "Name your favourite console games and complain that they aren't on iOS" ?

People need to make up their minds - does iOS need its own catalogue of high-budget, AAA games, or does it need a bunch of ports will ill-suited controls.

I'm in favour of the former, and I don't think there's any practical reason why it can't have them, it just doesn't yet. I don't see any reason to think that the Ouya will be any different.

I hear where you're coming from, and I find that the touch screen makes controls on productivity apps potentially (and often) more intuitive, but I'm a bit more dubious about it's value in bringing you deeper in to a game.

 

On a PC, after playing a new game for an hour or two, you have the controls down pat and you just forget about your hands, never looking at them. So your face is permanently focussed on the screen, without your hands coming in to and out of view, sometimes occluding the picture like on a touchscreen. It helps to draw you in to the game world when it's all that you're looking at, without the real world (your hands) flashing in to and out of view all the time. You can also relax more without the weight of the iPad reminding you of reality (unless you have set it down).

I get pretty darned emotional when I hear those bongs in Fishdom on my iPad telling me I am running out of time.

You're playing it wrong.
Edited by jragosta - 3/18/13 at 8:08am

Huh?

I don't know.

I do find it funny that people come here and tell us "Apples are toys", then tell us about Windows computers for "serious gaming", which is pretty much means the device it's played on is a toy. If it's for serious use, such as training, then it's called a simulator. Most of those are pretty elaborate rigs.

By 'serious gaming' I mean that people take it seriously and not that the games are serious. Many people devote hours out of their day to play games. I used to be one of them. I've played is such intense fashion that only during a quick break in the action did I finally realize my bladder was about to explode, now if that's not serious I don't know what is.

I think there's huge potential for this system.  There's some great mobile games which are almost throwbacks to old-school gaming (Kairosoft titles for instance), some which are nearly AAA visual quality (but run well with lower specs), some cool platformers and of course casual games.  For casual games (like Angry Birds or Cut the Rope) a phone/tablet is much better, but the other categories of games will be more engaging on a console with controller.  

 

Throwback RPGs are probably my favourite category, and this console is perfect for indie developers to create for.  Say what you want about Android development, the fact that all the tools (Eclipse, SDK, NDK) are easily installable on any computer (Windows, Mac and Linux) is a huge boon to small-time developers.  And while alot of indie games suck, there's some gems out there, which make a console like this worthwhile...

I'd say that's probably worth calling obsessive.

So your point is that iOS games don't encourage mental illness the way console or PC games do?

Ouya runs mobile games natively:

http://www.joystiq.com/2013/02/06/ouya-partners-with-double-fine-and-words-with-friends-creator/

The only way it will run high-end games is via streaming but it handles both markets and is really what many people wanted the Apple TV to do.

You could say that playing board games is more engaging than reading books. You seem to be implying that playing word games with your mother is more social and therefore better than any single user experience but people who spend hours reading immersive stories might describe playing board games as vacuous and repetitive.

There's also a limit to how varied casual games get. When you increase the complexity of the medium, you have more variables to work with. Think about how many popular board games there are compared to books. While casual games are vast in number, they usually don't bring much variety to what's already in the market. This happens with AAA games too but they mostly have vastly different dialog, characters, environments and gameplay styles.

Again, that's not to say mobile games can't be deep - just look at a game like Broken Sword, which plays on anything these days - but that's not a casual game. When people talk about casual games, it's games like Doodle Jump. No story, no character, not social, poor production values, cheap and sells a lot of copies and represents the typical mobile game. It's addictive for some but addictive is not equal to immersive.

There has been a rise in the number of mobile/causal gamers but people who love the AAA titles aren't abandoning them. They still sell in high numbers. Hitman Absolution sold 2 million copies in the first month and these are high priced titles. I don't see it like abandonment but different levels of growth. The main abandonment is from mobile gaming devices like the DS and Vita.

Do you or anyone else have a list of recommended mobile games? I rarely hear mobile game recommendations, just news about how well mobile gaming is doing because of the volumes of sales. I think people buy the popular titles in the store charts to have something else to do with their devices and the bulk of the App Store earnings go to these titles but people don't have watercooler discussions about them.

It would be nice to see Valve get round their hang-ups about Apple and port the Orange Box to iOS. The hardware should be powerful enough now.

The Ouya will stream AAA PC games - some will be simultaneous launches with the consoles. There's nothing stopping the Apple TV doing it but Apple blocked the app from the App Store so you can't even Airplay it although HDMI would be better because of the latency.

Touch can improve games, for example The Room where you have to interact with objects using gestures - it makes you more focused on what you're doing. It doesn't work quite so well for FPS games because the controls there are fairly standard. It actually works pretty well for NFS though and it's great for adventure games like 1112.

It depends on how you're using the word 'toy'. Often it's used to mean something basic that only children find entertaining but a sex toy is something designed for adults. There are toys (or to use a less intentionally demeaning term 'forms of entertainment') designed for adults. That includes books, movies, games etc.

There's only a handful of situations where Apple's designs put complexity limits on things, which restricts what they can be used for but you can certainly play games designed for adults on Apple products. It's just they tend not to be ported over. The Witcher 2 is a good example though - Mac native and definitely designed for adults.

It's not anymore mentally ill than being on here arguing points that most people don't care about. We all pick a poison to be passionate about.

I think immersive is a better word that emotional. I seriously can't imagine anyone that gets emotional and cries playing a video game. The next think you know we'll have an Amber Alert issued the next time Princess Zelda is kidnapped¡

Ouya?

I bought it was "Booya!"

 

Won't happen.  Apple wants control, and Valve won't give it up.  Which is why Valve is porting everything to Linux, and their console will essentially be a Linux PC...  

 

There's zero operational reason not to do it. The only thing it will be "missing" is a Steam 'overlay'. The games themselves can go without trouble.

Playing laggy PC games with a software keyboard and mouse? I'm glad that one wasn't even allowed the possibility of room to breathe tbh, sounds like a terrible idea. Ouya is welcome to it.

Yeah I'd say it would be the exception that people get that emotional while playing a game but the same goes for films. It would most often be due to a directed cut-scene during the game that would be the most emotional not the game itself. The game adds to it as the cut-scenes involve characters that you are controlling. More powerful hardware is allowing the two to blend together more seamlessly though. The people who made the Kara video demo made the game Heavy Rain and bringing stronger acting and emotion into a game at the expense of action was their aim:



You can do that on weaker hardware but you can see even in that video, the characters just don't look right. LA Noire is another example of a high-end game that isn't much about action:



These games are trying to be more like interactive movies. The most common emotion developers seem to aim for is fear and anxiety because it has more of a formulaic source. The most recent Tomb Raider game is an example:



In pretty much every game in the series previous to that, the focal point was how big her boobs were. I didn't think they had to that away necessarily but the focal point now is on the story of her being trapped on an island and going through the survival routine and they did a pretty good job.

You could also word that 'Valve wants control and won't give it up' given that they are against Microsoft too. Valve doesn't build the platforms so by all rights they shouldn't have the control. Gabe said they wanted to allow 3rd parties to have their own stores so there's no reason why there couldn't be a branded section of the App Store. Apple already has a 'Big Name games' section. They could partner with Valve and offer a Steam section or just have branded sections for AAA publishers. Like Youtube channels.

There's going to be quite a competitive environment just now between all of the people involved in digital distribution: Microsoft, Amazon, EA, Valve, Apple, Google. They all need to protect their cut of digital distribution because it's the most sustainable form of long-term income generation. Hardware will get cheaper and less relevant but everybody will always consume and pay for quality content. This has to be why everybody wants their own operating system. Unfortunately I don't think there's an alternative model where they can all gain and avoid harming consumers with vendor lock-in.

They work with a controller, it's not any different from playing a console really. Try it out yourself if you like: http://www.onlive.com - you can plug in a USB or bluetooth controller from Amazon, XBox / PS3 / Logitech controller. It's free to signup and play. You get half hour demos on a lot of games. There is some lag but it depends on your connection, wired is best.

Wrong. What you described was classical obsessive behavior.

Not necessarily. When in battle whether real or perceived one's attention is at the the threat or objective and bodily functions are ignored until the threat is gone. It's not different when a athlete doesn't realize how hurt he/she is until after the game.