Why We Needed Waggle

The term 'waggle' has been used almost like a four letter word by many commentators and reviewers when talking about the Wii. Common complaints were that poorly implemented motion controls resulted in the gameplay simply involving wild shaking of the arm. Another complaint would be that the controls were not sensitive enough and as such the motion you attempted did not correspond to the on screen action, and as such eventually you would just give up and start waggling the Wiimote (I know that the official name is Wii Remote, but Wiimote is a better name). With the release of Wii MotionPlus there were claims that this is what the controller should always have done. However, I believe that had the Wii shipped with 1:1 motion at launch things would have been quite problematic.

The Wii introduced a new control scheme to both players and developers, and as with any innovation there is a learning period, this learning period is obvious when early games are compared with newer ones. Need for Speed: Carbon, a launch title for the Wii, had several different control schemes. The default scheme had you hold the Wiimote sideways and use it like a steering wheel; another set-up used the nunchuck to steer and the Wiimote was tilted up and down to work as an analogue accelerator/break. This second control scheme shows that developers weren't entirely sure how best to use the motion controls and was removed in later entries in the series. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance used shaking the Wii remote to replace button presses, except they most basic of shakes was the same a tapping the A button so most players just used that. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance also used tilting the nunchuck to control the camera, and any player could do this which often meant that during four player games someone would tilt their hand to the side and the camera would start to spin.

I firmly believe that had MotionPlus been included at launch the control issues would have been even greater. Developers would have been even less certain how to best control the games and could easily have resulted in third party developers simply walking away. I see this as being similar to the problem the Atari Jaguar faced at launch, being the first 64 bit machine it was different and also difficult to code for. However, inside the console was a 32-bit Motorola 68000 chip for use as a 'manager' and to handle the controller inputs, these chips had been around for a while and developers knew how to code for them, meaning that quite a few games on the Jaguar used this chip as the primary CPU and as a result the games often seemed dated.

So in future when you hear people complaining about waggle, just remember that Wii MotionPlus, Playstation Move, and Xbox Kinect all owe their success, at least in part, to this most criticised of control methods.