Fresh off of releasing Double Fine Happy Action Theater this week, Double Fine's Tim Schafer praises Microsoft's sensor in a new Gamasutra feature interview.
Happy Action Theater, published by Microsoft, is an Xbox Live Arcade title that's more of a video toy box than a traditional video game.
The process of developing it in conjunction with Microsoft has helped open Schafer's mind to the power of the motion-sensing camera peripheral.
"I think the best games are yet to come with Kinect. Like this, where people just start from scratch with no preconceived notions about what a game can be and just build up the experience from nothing using what Kinect is good at," Schafer says.
Happy Action Theater is the second Kinect game for the studio, following last year's Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment-published Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster.
"I think it's going to be good, I think we're going to come up with whole new genres of experiences that just haven't existed before," says Schafer.
He says that the new game was "designed from the ground up to be a Kinect experience, I think that's important to Kinect."
The full feature interview, in which the designer discusses the technology and inspiration behind the game, is live now on Gamasutra.
I would think that is has to. That is, Kinect specifically and motion controls in general do not lend themselves to the common genres which were designed around button pushing. Swapping out buttons for gestures is not a solution, it just makes the game more frustrating.
New control interfaces usually lead to new gameplay experiences but the real question is whether they are more engaging than the previous iteration..Kinect for some things are better , ie body motion games, etc.. still need to get around the problem of navigation..
