Ken Levine: PS Move In BioShock Would ‘Cheat’ Gamers.
Ken Levine. I wank off to your philosophical wanderings and universal construction in BioShock. You are a good man. Full of win. Now you’re further full of win, and uh, a gooder man with your latest musings on PS Move.
“I’d never want to throw in Move support just because it’s going to make some first party happy or because some marketing department wants it on the box because, at the end of the day, gamers know,” he explained. “If you don’t have anything special to say about that control device gamers are going to know.
“3D is a little bit different … it’s something I’d be more open to. I’m not saying whether we’re doing that or not but it’s sort of a passive integration. Unlike movies, you don’t just shoot it differently. Games are 3D. But I think if you’re going to get out, front and centre on something, you have to be able to say you’re doing something special with it. Especially with a control device. Do you want to play BioShock and it’s like, ‘okay, do you want to harvest or save Little Sister? Waggle left to harvest, waggle right to save!’ You can have Move support on your box but people are going to know you’re cheating them.”
Cheating is a loaded word, isn’t it? Jim Sterling takes issue with Levine’s usage of it, but I’m following Levine like the rabid fanboy I am. I would be cheating if Levine was mandated to throw in PS Move control by the higher-ups. The corporate big wigs. Shoehorning it into a system that wasn’t clamoring for it, in some sort of peripheral synergy play. If the box reads “PS Move”, and fans buy the thing only because a favorite franchise of theirs has compatability with it, and that compatibility was spurned only by a corporate mandate and not an intent to utilize the device, that’s cheating in my book.
Yessir.
Note that I’m not outright demeaning the PS Move or the concept of games using it. Certainly there can be genuine and interesting ways to integrate the device into a game should the developers want to. It’s the forcing of it down the gullet of a game, that leads to fans purchasing the device that seems a bit bush league.
Yes? No?