The use of this word by gaming journalists for the past three years has been a big pet peev of mine. It's ugly, and derogatory. Clearly designed to put down the very idea of motion controls.
The word might have had a place if it was used properly. Some game designers use a flailing action with the wiimote for quick time events. The word 'waggle' could have been used to describe button-mashing with your wrist.
Instead, it is applied to any and every use of motion control. I just saw a journalist use it to desribe Metroid Prime's controls. Metroid Prime is almost entirely controlled with the pointer, making almost no use of the accelerometer. The precision of pointer control in Metroid is as far from 'waggling' as motion control can possibly be.
So now that Sony and MS appear to be seriously persuing motion controls, is the label of 'waggle' going to be applied to their inputs, or are journalists going to suddenly find respect for creative new input methods?
"The worst part about these reviews is they are [subjective]--and their scores often depend on how drunk you got the media at a Street Fighter event." — Mona Hamilton, Capcom Senior VP of Marketing
*Image indefinitely borrowed from BrainBoxLtd without his consent.
