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The Simplicity of the Extraordinary
One of the exciting aspects of hardcore videogames is that there is often a clear indication of what a player must do in order to complete a task or to be morally upright.  Games based around the extraordinary make it appear as though the player has control over his or her choices as opposed to the player’s everyday life where many aspects (such as politics, the economy, health, violence, war, etc.) seem out of the player’s control.  Therefore, the reduction of everyday experiences and the veneration of extraordinary experiences in gaming creates an exciting atmosphere where the player is in control and able to affect change easily.  However, it seems to me that the acknowledgment and engagement with the complexity of everyday experiences can offer far more intriguing and unique forms of gameplay as opposed to gameplay continually relying on stereotypical heroes/villains and the overly simplistic binary of good versus evil.  The unique everyday experiences that different players engage with are complex interconnections of discourses, ideologies, truths, lies, facts, and everything else read between the lines.  An acknowledgement and engagement with the diversity of everyday experiences may create new and complex games that challenge players in new ways.  I believe one way games can engage with “the everyday” is through the player’s body.

The “Ordinariness” of the Body
The perpetuation of “the myth of everyday life” in art and entertainment is due in part to the reduction of the reader’s/spectator’s/player’s body.  Take film as an example: A film spectator in a theatre forgets about his or her “ordinary” life for a few hours.  If one has to urinate or gets hungry during a film it is annoying and breaks the “dream” of the film.  The darkened lighting, the comfortable chairs, the (hopefully) turning off of cell phones, and the lack of communication with the other spectators in a theatre all add up to diminishing the presence of the spectator’s body.  Since bodily function and bodily discomfort are everyday occurrences the realization of one’s body in a film theatre can translate into a realization of the everyday.  If the spectator becomes aware of his or her own body (or another spectator’s body) during the film then the spectator’s own everyday life presses in on the film world and breaks the “spell of the extraordinary” many filmmakers aim to achieve.

Hardcore gaming works in a similar fashion to film.  The player is asked to sit motionless in a comfortable position with only the movement of his or her fingers to control gameplay.  These finger movements eventually recede into a kind of subconscious state where the player memorizes the buttons that need pressing and the amount of pressure required on the joystick(s) to make the game character(s) move appropriately. However, it is not the button press that is central to gaming.  The central aspect of gaming is the sensation of controlling something extraordinary through the least amount of difficulty. I am not saying gamers are lazy rather I am referring to the feel of mature hardcore games.  One way ‘M’ rated hardcore games create sensational experiences is by reducing the one element of a player’s “ordinariness” that a game can accurately reduce: the player’s physical body.  The player’s body is reduced to simple finger presses that become internalized so the player is no longer consciously searching for the right buttons to press.  Therefore, the player’s body becomes internalized, which means that many hardcore games are not about physical interaction but about memorization and internalization.  Hardcore games are about the mind and engaging with the imagination of the player.

One may argue that there is an element of the physical to hardcore gaming beyond just memorizing patterns for button presses.  There is the vibration of the controller and contextualized button presses designed to mimic the physical action of the in-game character. These contextualized moments, like controller vibration and repeatedly mashing the same button quickly to open a door or move a heavy object, pull the player into the game world and into the character the player is controlling.  In other words, contextualized controls are in relation to what is happening to a given character and not in relation to what is happening to the player.  The amount of pain/strain a player may feel while mashing a button reflects the pain/strain of the in-game character the player is controlling.  Quicktime events and controller vibration are not about revealing the player’s physicality or about engaging with the complexity of everyday experiences. Contextualized gameplay and vibration are about revealing the character’s plight and about removing the player from his or her “ordinary” experiences of pain and strain (thus ignoring the complexity of those sensations for each gamer) and making those experiences seem “extraordinary” through the action in-game.

Conversely, motion control games seem steeped in “mundane” everyday actions such as throwing a frisbee, playing golf, playing instruments, cooking, etc.  Motion controls also rely on the player’s body—potentially reminding the player of his or her physical self.  The reliance on the physicality of the player perhaps determines the “mundane” aspect of many motion control games.  The player’s body is not capable of producing the extreme experiences of mature hardcore games and any attempt to mimic the extreme actions of hardcore games with motion controls (beyond aiming a cursor) ultimately fails because the player is not capable of recreating the precise motions of a controller. Every time the player presses “A” or “Square” in a hardcore game the character on screen should do the same action the same way every time (unless the button is context sensitive).  Most players’ bodies (most bodies in general) are not as fine-tuned or precise as the body of a classic hero. Since the average player’s body is not an ideal action hero’s body the repeated actions in motion control based games are either too simplistic to offer any sense of the extraordinary or are to complex to repeat accurately every time.

Since motion control is tied to the human body and the human body is connected to everyday experiences then motion controls are also tied to the experiences of everyday life and thus it becomes difficult to translate motion controls into the extraordinary experiences hardcore games offer.  To accurately translate the extraordinary experiences of hardcore games into motion controls the motions of the player cannot be expected to accurately mimic the actions of the character on screen.  Therefore, game developers of hardcore motion control games are forced to either keep the motion control to a minimum or have the motion controls act like a button (swing the controller/the player’s arm down and the in-game character will do an incredible jump attack—just as if the player had pressed a button to make the same action happen).  This poses a problem for the believed sweet spot of motion controls (the dream of one-to-one correlation between the player’s movements and the movement of the in-game character the player is controlling).   One-to-one correlation of player movement to character movement means that the “extraordinary” in-game character is tied to the physical abilities of the “ordinary” player.  In other words, if hardcore games are based upon the extraordinary then one-to-on correlation of movements does not necessarily mean that hardcore games will become motion control friendly.