Drinky Crow said:
Ami: I'm not seeing these "alternatives to normal game design". To me, the stylus is just like the bongos for Jungle Beat or the SdeA maracas -- a cute gimmick, but nothing that pushes gaming beyond a slaphappy novelty act for a select group of jaded gamers and niche game fanatics.
There's no doubt that absolutely no one has made great use of the stylus yet. Now there's two places we can go. Either developers are going to improve and really create intelligent and progressive game design centering around the stylus, or they're going to continue on the road they're going and completely defeat the purpose. No matter what party you're in, it can't hurt to
try. I have no loyalty for any company, but I do at least like to give new gaming possibilities a chance... because I like games. What can I say?
At worst, it'll be a failure and we would have played a bunch of glorified mini-game compilations and a few worthy N64 ports. At best, we'll end up with a bunch of really brilliant games that exploit the design of the DS to show what impact such a direction has on gaming. What actually happens is anyone's guess... and obviously you've already developed a pretty firm guess
Drinky Cow said:
Really, is the input device THAT CRUCIAL to innovation? I'd say it really isn't. The best forms of innovation come in software, and a great designer doesn't have to use an alternate input device as a crutch. Is there anything that REALLY makes Yoshi's Touch and Go more fundamentally fun than Yoshi's Island, save that a few kids are sick of joypads? Not to my mind.
Here's the part that there's going to be the most contention over. Is the touch screen crucial to innovation... hmmm... I think my answer would be No. But is the touch screen
helpful to innovation? I think I'd go with yes. It's not that the best forms of innovation aren't through software, it's that the stylus device provides a developer a chance to expand on certain concepts to create innovation through software using an alternate way of input. It can do it without a stylus, but at the very least you must admit that -some- thought must go into how both screens will be used, even if in the end a boring developer will just plop some map on it.
Is it fundamentally more fun than Yoshi's Island? Absolutely not. It's just different. And different can be good.