Miyamoto's Mistake and what it'll cost the Wii

[famousringo]

noname2200 said:

famousringo said:

pastro243 said:

I don't think that anybody is bashing Rock Band or Guitar Hero for being accessible. Accessiblity of play is a major advantage of those franchises and a big factor in their massive success. It's just ironic that the Wii franchise entry in the music genre is less accessible than these established music franchises.

From what I've played, Wii Music IS actually more accessible than Guitar Hero et. al. I've seen novices on Guitar Hero struggle greatly on Easy mode (I certainly did myself) for hours before the whole thing "clicked." By contrast, none of the instruments in Wii Music are particularly hard to "get"; you'll be strumming along in minutes. So I think with that game, it's Mission Accomplished, as not knowing the mechanics of instruments is no longer an obstacle.

The problem with the game isn't that it's not accessible, it's that it only gives back as much as you put into it. Put simply, while you no longer need to learn how to play an instrument to make things sound good, you do need to have a good idea for what you're aiming for. That guitar solo you just inserted in Twinkle Twinkle? Probably not the best place to put it. And playing the cymbals off-beat in any song WILL sound bad. Still, I think a lot of people will enjoy screwing up the songs, because they're the ones doing the screwing up. It's kind of like karoake, where the performer's having a good time, and the audience is preparing to throw heavy blunt objects.

 

 

What makes Rock Band more accessible than Wii Music isn't so much the interface itself. I think it's arguable whether flicking the wiimote and nunchuk is more intuitive than controllers which are custom-built to look and operate like instruments, especially when you add in all of the modifiers for Wii Music instruments which utilize the thumbstick and A, B, C, Z buttons. You could build a case for either one, really.

Where Rock Band and other rhythm games really get more accessible than Wii Music is the scrolling instruction sheet which tells the player what to do and defines exactly what constitutes success and failure. You can see this in the response of so many people to the game. They aren't willing to go searching for their own goals, they want the game to hand goals to them on a platter, and Wii Music refuses to do this. Wii Music has a scrolling instruction sheet, but it hides it away where the player can't find it, because it wants the player to deviate from the plan.

This freedom terrifies and confuses a lot of people. Many of them video game reviewers.