Dolphin shows used to be nature lectures and factoids punctuated with animal tricks.  Now they are full scale musical productions complete with a narrative story.  Instead of focusing on teaching facts on dolphins and birds, Sea World took a page from the astounding performances of Cirque-du-Soleil and told a story of a young girl who dreamed of meeting the god of the Dolphins and the goddess of the Skies.

No longer are the people in the show merely trainers – but gods and goddesses.  The performance takes a life of its own as the sea god and his cohort would ride the dolphins and flip in the air with them.  The dancing sky goddess and her birds would swoop from the skies touching the ocean surface while birds of paradise were released to fly over and around the dazzled crowd.  To punctuate the performance and bringing the show to its climax where the sea and sky meet in a singular dance would be a pulse-pounding musical number that resonated the entire theatre.  But what brings the whole performance together as a whole is the dreaming girl and her story.

Stories give people purpose and meaning.  It helps people make sense of their lives in an otherwise chaotic and meaningless world.  In a study conducted on children as young as two, it was found that children as young as two formulate and understand their world mostly through narratives and stories.  These studies were condensed into a volume called “Narratives from the Crib” and it shows a surprising amount of comprehension and understanding of the world through the stories a child who would tell herself before falling asleep.

Many of the rides and shows I’ve been seeing have been altered or changed so that they become part of a larger story.  For instance, to revitalize the “Enchanted Tiki Room” in the Magic Kingdom, the animatronic birds were given new life by infusing two characters into the song: Iago (the parrot from Aladdin) and Zazu (the bird from the Lion King.)  By adding these two characters into the performance, the “Enchanted Tiki Room” becomes part of two larger stories rather than an exhibit that doesn’t mean anything by itself.

Even through adulthood, we also are inexplicably drawn to the power of stories.  We spend billions of dollars on watching TV shows and movies.  It is an unquenchable thirst for meaning that fuels this desire for stories.  And, given the opportunity, people want to be part of the story – part of history.  That is part of the reason so many people are drawn to celebrities.

You may agree or disagree with this person.  But you cannot deny the power of his life story.

Miyamoto motioning for "Force Feedback"

Or maybe we just had the same thoughts on Microsoft’s Project Natal:

I don’t think as a creator that I could create an experience that truly feels interactive if you don’t have something to hold in your hand, if you don’t have something like force feedback that you can feel from the controller. That’s why I think the Wii remote, particularly with Wii MotionPlus, makes for such a strong experience.

I think that some of their designers are going to be faced with that question going forward, and they’ll have to find solutions to that, and perhaps that’s why you see for one of the devices that it’s not simply a camera, but that you’re holding some kind of wand with lights that change colors. I think those are interesting ideas, and there are interesting ways that that could be developed, but those are challenges that they’re still facing and trying to learn to overcome.

Humans can go without sight or sound - but not without touch

One of the things that make games fun is feedback.  In my post about gameplay and fun, seeing the feedback from various interactions is fun.  What is underestimated is how much a small interaction makes a difference.

For instance, when you depress the mouse button, you can feel it “click.”  What if you pressed on a mouse and you couldn’t hear or feel it click?  The small “click” makes a difference in feedback.  On a keyboard, I can type up to 110 words per minute.  But if you put me on a touchscreen where I cannot physically feel the keys depress, I will suddenly drop in speed.  Little tangibles make a difference in gameplay experience.

One of my favorite games to play in the arcade was the original Time Crisis.  It had a gun that when it fired, the breach would fire back like a real semi-automatic pistol.  I didn’t notice how much this little feature made a difference in the experience of the game until the home version of Time Crisis came to the Playstation One which came with a light gun.  After feeling the vibration from the arcade version of the game, the boring light gun just didn’t give quite the same experience.

When the PS3 came out and the first generation of Dual Shock 3 controllers came out without a rumble pack, there was a serious uproar.  The vibration features of a game made a serious difference in how people played because you could “feel” the game and removing the rumble feature was like removing one of your senses – specifically touch.  There was a huge relief to gamers that Sony quickly returned to putting rumble back into their controllers.

In fact, one of the major complaints of the iPhone in competing against the Nintendo DS and Sony’s PSPs is that there are no tangible buttons.

The big news from this year’s E3 is Microsoft’s “Natal” – a sensor that allows you to play a game with no controller – or rather as your whole body as a controller.  What I love about this is that Microsoft and Sony have taken a cue from Nintendo and started focusing less on pushing polygons and more on enhancing the gameplay experience.  Natal is an impressive piece of technology, and I am in awe that we are in an age of science fiction gone reality.

But where I think Natal goes wrong is because there is no controller – there is nothing tangible to hold, manipulate or use.  Imagine a driving game where you have to pretend that you are using a steering wheel.  Wouldn’t your arms tire out without holding onto a real steering wheel?  And even with game systems that have steering wheels to use with their controllers, isn’t the element of feeling the road and feedback missing?  The draw of arcade games is that those bulky machines can give you those sensations.

A Place to Make-Believe

In my rush to recreate one of my favorite arcade games “Afterburner”, I forgot that one of the major elements of fun for that game is the fact that I got to sit in a seat that looked like a fighter plane cockpit with a flight stick.  The cockpit would elevate according to the way I pushed the flight stick and it allowed me to feel like a fighter pilot.  When I tried to translate the same tangibles to keyboard and mouse, I quickly realized that I had made a mistake, but forced myself to finish Strike Eagle.

Where the Wii-mote has advantages is the fact that it is a controller – something you can touch.  You can swing it like a tennis racket.  When you strike the ball, it can vibrate and make a noise.  With Natal, without some sort of prop, you’re just swinging wildly.  Even when my son likes to pretend he is swinging a sword, holding a stick or a spatula makes a big difference thank swinging with nothing but air.

It’s these tangibles that make a big difference.