Locke, Hume and Berkeley at The Game Developer's Conference

I walked the exhibit floor at the GDC looking for the answer to one question and one question only; "Is there a user interface better than that of the Wii?"  I was looking for new kinds of sensors, new kinds of sensory input devices that can enable gameplay never imagined before.  I was the colonial empiricist at the exhibit floor looking to understand the world through the senses.  I saw a bunch of disappointments, but one spectacular and inspiring innovation.

The Playstation 3 booth was not the place to see that innovation, though the booth itself was hard not to see. I asked somebody from Sony whether they were coming out with a Wii like controller and nobody knew of any such effort.  That was disappointing, but maybe it is an admission of defeat for them if they do.  Then I saw a young guy demonstrating a game on the playstation.  I approached and asked him without looking at his badge: "Do  you know if Sony is going to come up with a Wii-like controller?"  The answer I got was decisive: "I have no fu..ing clue, but if they did it would be awesome duuude!"  Then when I asked him if he knew anybody who knew the answer he said "I have no idea dude, I am just here to demo this game."  Maybe Sony should listen to its developers, but I left that booth with no luck.

Then I ran into a booth that was selling the Novint Falcon (shown here).It's supposed to be a new kind of joystick with force feedback that is supposed to make your gameplay a better experience.  I tried it and the impact is marginal.  It's also a big device and where will you really fit it.  Also, you have to hold a tiny little ball (in front of the much bigger machine in the picture) to move your character and fire your gun.  It's a tiny little ball because if it was bigger, it would be harder to give it the force feedback.  Smart thinking?  Not!  When you play a first person shoot-em-up you want to feel you are carrying a big friggin gun, not a wimpy little ball in your hand. It was a niche product at best, and not what I was looking for.

Then I visited Neurosky's booth.  They make a headgear that analyzes your brain waves to turn it into sensory input to a game (see below).  The headset is below.  I knew of their competitor Emotiv, which has a different device.  It was surprising enough to see that not only had somebody come up with a "thought controlled joystick" but there were actually two companies doing it.  You got to love innovation.

There was something really cool about their demo.  You put on the headgear walk around in a virtual world and if you focus and concentrate long enough you can move objects. Much like using The Force.  Very cleverly, they put an X-Wing fighter in the water that is very heavy and you really need to focus to move the X-Wing out of the swamp.  I said: "That's pretty cool, I'll give it a shot and try."  Then suddenly the lady with the headset looked at me with her eyes opening wider and slowly said: "Try not.  Do or do not.  There is no try." 

Jokes aside, it will be a long, long time before these devices replace joysticks.  Can new games be developed for it?  Possibly, but that value proposition won't come clear unless the makes of the devices write a few decent games.  Still not the innovation I was looking for.

Then there was Zcam, whose tagline is "You are the Interface".  They use a 3D camera that captures not only the colors but depth (it sends out a signal and measures how fast it comes back).  So it can detect your head, fingers, arms, but more importantly whether it is moving towards the screen and back.  Therefore you can just use your hand and body motions as an input, no need to hold any device.  I can see that working well in many cases, but is it such a bad problem to hold something. Don't I want to hold something like a racket when I play tennis?  Must I use my hand?  Holding something is easy, pressing buttons is harder, and what about that case when you really want to press a button.  That's a pretty simple thing we can assume that people know how to do, again that's not a problem worth eliminating.  While the technology was impressive this device also didn't do it for me.

It wasn't the Playstation 3 (not the Xbox either by the way), it wasn't the force feedback device, it wasn't the thought controlling headset, and it wasn't the Zcam.  So what was it?  What was this remarkable new user interface that stole the show?  You have to read the next post to find out.