Kotaku
Anyone who has ever had the misfortune of having a mahjong addict neighbor can attest to the double-edged sword that is traditional table games: the sensation of having smooth and cool tiles in your hand can be a pleasurable one, but damn it all if that incessant shuffling isn't irritating after hours and hours of it into the wee hours. Still, it's the positives of the sense of touch that Ian Bogost picks up on in his latest Gamasutra column. Using the classic game of Go as a starting point and ending with Rez, he takes a look at what games can do — and maybe should do — to enhance the tactile pleasure of playing:
... the potential is great. We craft every aspect of videogame worlds in excruciating detail: the marbled, diffracted surfaces of water, the filthy grit of alleyways, the splintered grain of bombed-out church rafters.We render the visual and aural aspects of these worlds in startling vividness and at great expense. But those worlds remain imprisoned behind the glass of our televisions and our monitors. Rez shows us that as far as texture is concerned, games can be as much like food as they are like film.
He's clearly not advocating that all games can — or should — be Rez, but it's just another aspect we should be paying attention to. And, unlike a lot of ideas that get floated about improving the gamer-game interaction, ramping up the tactile factor when warranted seems easy enough to do.
Persuasive Games: Texture [Gamasutra]
Comments
The real reason Mahjong is frustrating is that you can never find 3 other people who know how to play it - or who know the version you do. I came back from Yunnan with a craving, and have been forced to go cold turkey ever since.
Blast these people, complacently satisfied with their card games!
@Pombar: Blast these people, satisfied with their games that require specialized Mahjong pieces rather than 52 universal pieces of laminated paper which can be used for innumerable games.
Blast these people, satisfied with puny cards and tiles, ignoring the true glory of well crafted Warhammer 40K figurines.
Blast these people satisfied with cards, tiles and WH40K figures, ignoring the greatness of
# AD&D Player's Handbooks
# Character Record Sheets
# Pencils
# Notebook Papers
# AD&D Adventure Dice Sets (7 Dice Set)
# Dice
@Boolean: If you count the different versions of Mahjong, it won't be far off the number of popular card games... :P
@errington07: I might play D&D also, but again, no-one plays it here. It's pretty much a non-entity in the UK.
@Pombar:
I know what you mean... but I learned Japanese mahjong so at least there are thousands of video games I can play against.
This show cracks me up... mahjong melodrama.
Mahjong is a game of mental toughness. Similar to poker, but far far more complicated. You play all night until your bleary eyed and broke.
I nearly forgot the touch of the cold tiles of mahjong, but thanks for reminding me.
Note: Don't go play old asian people. They will pwn you so hard it's not funny. At the end of the night you'll end up broke and politely laughed at.
Blast you people. We are supposed to start comments with the same phrase, damn it.
The problem with vibrotactile feedback in a game is that it is normally event or time based. In real life, you get a sensation of texture by getting tactile feedback in response to continuous movement.
With motion sensing technology coupled with vibrration feedback, you could better fake this effect though.
I don't own the Wii. Can anyone tell me if there are any games that let you feel feedback in direct response to hand movement? For example, is there a virtual cancer diagnosis mini-game where you move the wand around and feel for lumps. I know, icky example.
Blast you people who enjoy the glory of a well crafted WH40K piece and can't enjoy the glory of a well crafted Warhammer Fantasy piece!
I don't really like playing solo games with physical cards anymore since I always have a computer handy and its so much faster to use the computer to reshuffle and lay out cards than it is to do it yourself.
@gozirah: Not any that I can think of off-hand. It's the sort of thing you might not really notice though. Like for instance, there are several games where at some point you have to twist the remote to turn a key or a tap or something. Usually when you've turned it far enough there will be an audio cue. Is there rumble as well? Probably, but I don't remember.
(Obviously that's not as 'essential' as you described, but it's the same principle.)
I think it would need another generation of controllers (and some more complex tactile feedback than the Wiimote has; iirc it's just one vibration motor) to really improve this. But even without actual feedback or without making it actually 'necessary' in a game sense (i.e. you could have pressed a button with the same effect), Wii games that use the motions well definitely do feel more tactile/physically involving - when you twist that key, you're twisting it for real.
@gozirah: Theres some lovely work of that in the door locks and switches in Metroid Prime 3, and Trauma Centre does a good job most of the time
Blast you people!
That out of the way, what ever happened to that computer mouse that claimed to simulate different textures as you physically moved over them? Did any games ever take advantage of that? Btw I'm a console gamer, but I think this is a cool technology that should totally be used.
There could be a future for tactile games - I'm eager to see what that Microsoft touch table PC thing could do for the western board game. Having a digitized board where you interact with actual physical game pieces & digital counters for Money/Chits/what-have-you.... Ecstasy. It would be two seedy worlds of gaming combined and mutated into a beautiful swan.
God damn. Mahjong, really? You have a way of making Gamasutra articles sound less interesting than they are.
@Demaar: Mahjong is the bomb man! Especially when you're playing those japanese ecchi gmahjong games trying to get some pixels to strip. I've loved Mahjong since Akagi, awesome way to sensationalize a tabletop game.
As far as 40k, Warhammer fantasy, AD&D is concerned I've been there and done that and now if I'm playing a tabletop game I prefer something that has quick rounds like Poker or Mahjong.
Plastic guitars and virtual sex. Some things work, others don't.
Just saying.
@MasterDex:
Akagi was OMFG awesome, yes. I have nothing against mahjong itself. But man, there are better comparisons to draw.
I'm not terribly inclined to want to feel the sensation of falling off of a cliff or getting shot with a laser. I /like/ my games behind a wall of glass. If I wanted the real thing I would just go outside with a baseball bat and instigate a riot. Oh God, I think I've been playing too much Brawl...
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