Water Cooler Games - Disability and the Wii

Disability and the Wii
November 23, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Console & PC Games, Health & Medicine Games

Kotaku posted a letter they received about from a longtime Nintendo fan who also has Muscular Dystrophy. He's having trouble using the Wii effectively.

I can't really play some of the games in Wii Sports, because of the broad physical movement required. ... I can however play games with more subtle movement controls such as Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. This leads me to believe that more options related to the adjustment of movement control sensitivity could have been included in games like Wii Sports, as would fit the precision that the Wiimote seems capable of providing.

I'm sure this isn't the last disability-and-the-Wii issue we'll hear about. The idea of a motion sensitivity setting seems feasible, although I'm not sure how feasible it really is given Nintendo's developer tools for gesture detection. That is, I'm not sure if it's possible to easily ratchet down the motion range in software. In any case, developers could certainly capture multiple gestures for different sensitivity levels, although this would require more effort.

In any case, I want to point out that this isn't just an issue of specific disability like MD; it's also one of broad access. There are lots of motion-impairments from age, sports injury, and so forth. Nintendo probably will have to address this issue to cash out the mass market promise of the console.

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Comment from Andrew on November 27, 2006

"Nintendo probably will have to address this issue to cash out the mass market promise of the console."

I will have to disagree with you there. While there are certainly a lot of people who wont be able to play the Wii, even if they constitute one fourth of the population Nintendo could essential ignore them (in fact, I imagine that will be the case) and still manage to dramatically expand their market.

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