Why are there no hard-hitting Kinect games?

Kinectimals. EA Sports Active 2. Dance Masters. There’s a bunch of games available for Kinect at launch, but nothing that made a massive furore in the gaming market. There’s no stand out Modern Warfare- or Fable-type game out there at the moment and there’s probably a good reason for that rather than just because it’s not had a chance to yet.

Kinect Adventures - the game that comes bundled with the Kinect – is a perfect example of the type of game that’s out there at the moment. There’s five game types for all sorts of people to play with varying difficulty and, while there is a story mode, it basically has you playing the same five games but in a certain order.

The key point in that is “all sorts of people”. The tagline for the Kinect is “Jump In” meaning “Anyone can have a go. Yeah, even you mum and dad”. You could argue it’s targeted for the quick and dirty fix. You jump in, you jump out. A lot of the games out there right now are based on that concept. You don’t need to know the controls as, quite famously, “you are the controller”.

I’m sure we’ve all been there (us young folk, anyhow), where you’ve invested so much time and effort into a game you just become engrossed within that. You must finish it. But if you’ve not had to learn the controls, not got to know the storyline, how are you supposed to get into a deep storyline.

The mere act of physical movement is already more than enough effort for the stereotypical gamer who’s more akin to pressing right, left, right and B to perform a fatality. While it could be more immersive dropping yourself (or, well, an avatar) into the game there and then, you’re more likely to do better in game pressing Y to jump-kick your enemy than you are annoying the downstairs neighbours and risking an embarrassing call to your contents insurance people.

Play space is a massive ask for Kinect. While with say the Wii you could potentially play while practically making out with your television set, the Kinect demands a certain play area which most back bedrooms don’t have. You’re asking a lot of the real people spurring on the success of things like Call of Duty to move their couch out all that way every time they want to pretend to be snowboarding.

There’s the argument that says the thing stopping Kinect going into the “hardcore” and away from the dreaded “casual” gaming route is simply it’s accuracy. I don’t know whether updated hardware would be particularly useful in enabling hardcore gaming, really. There’s only a certain amount of realism I want when curb-stomping an enemy in the inevitable Gears of War 4.

The real reason why there’s no hardcore games? I don’t know. These are really just punts into nothing here. But I think Kinect’s route into the hardcore would be not as a sole controller, but as a supplement to it. Using aspects of it’s technology to immerse the gamer further. Keeping a straight face in an interrogation scene, for example, would make an average game something pretty cool.

Mass Effect 3 is doing something along that line. It’s integrating the processing prowess of the Kinect’s speech recognition engine (which is massively under-rated, of which a later post will point out) to shout out commands to your squad. It’s not for everyone, but that sort of mechanic gives the player something else to immerse themselves in with.

There’s countless other examples in the making to go through all of them, but you get the point. The “Better with Kinect” sticker is going to have to become a bit more prominent if it’s going to have a punt at that audience.