Happy New Year!
By Joe Dodson, 1/1/2010 8:11 PM2009 is behind us, but before we jump into 2010, we've got five New Years resolutions for the video game industry.
1. Stop laying people off!
The only fad worse than all the workout games has been our industry's thinning workforce.
2. Produce a killer mobile app.
There have been some great smartphone games, but the cellular genre still doesn't have its Tetris. And no, Tetris on a smartphone doesn't count!
3. Someone other than Blizzard needs to make a great MMO.
We're looking at you, Bioware. May the force be with you.
4. Someone other than Bioware needs to make a game with romance.
We don't want to get all sappy on you here, and we certainly don't want to see less violence, but dammit video game industry, where's the love? Hopefully, it's in 2010.
5. Release a great motion control game that my mother SHOULDN'T play.
2010 is going to be the year of motion controllers, as Sony and Microsoft both attempt to conquer Nintendo's blue motion-ocean, and Nintendo attempts to remain the king of wacky controller hill. That's going to mean a bunch of namby-pamby, family friendly games. And if it also means one ultra-violent, eyeball gouging, entrail yanking, curb-stomping gesture based gorefest, then we'll consider this a pretty successful 2010.
"I think it's important to make discoveries like this about yourself. I forgot to mention something important earlier: I don't think Wii Fit's purpose is to make you fit; what it's actually aiming to do is make you aware of your body.
That's why we wanted people to talk with their families about Wii Fit, and become aware of these things together as a group. If you're standing still, and it tells you 'Your body is swaying', you can see on the training results screen that your body has been shaking. But I think you'd never realize that your body is shaking in day-to-day life. I think becoming aware of things like this about yourself is quite interesting."
If fitness games were real games, I'd play them myself. But they're gimmicks, and they're kicking the crap out of real games on the sales charts. And it turns out I sway side to side when I stand. WTF is up with that?
Plus, no matter how you do it, Wii Fit, a balance board, and a schedule you stick to will do you far better (and for less money) than a Weight Watchers membership - or even a real gym membership if you can't ever find the time to go there or just kind of putz around when you do.
