Levine: Developers need to "firewall" motion control

Irrational's creative director Ken Levine has expressed concern over integrating motion control into more traditional gameplay mechanics.

Following the E3 announcement that BioShock Infinite will support PlayStation Move, Levine spoke to OXM about ensuring the safety of tried and tested methods, even when adding new control schemes.

"Any experience that sits in the realm of motion play needs to be kept separate from the main experience," he explained. "It needs to be firewalled off so that if this experiment isn't for you, or doesn't turn out to be all that great, you just ignore it. Any new experience we add, we need to be able to protect this experience."

But he was also adamant about the need to evolve. "If we don't experiment, we don't progress."

Levine also spoke about Bioware's planned use of Kinect in it's epic space RPG. "I like the stuff they're doing with Mass Effect 3, in terms of making some of the interface aspects a little less thorny - more the squad commands than the conversation, as that's a bit of a challenge on the controller."

He did admit that, personally, he's a fan of more traditional methods. "I'm a hardcore gamer - I do most of my gaming on mouse and keyboard. I'm always open to new things, but I'm a really conservative guy at heart. I'll try it out slowly, but I'll be doing so very conservatively."

Bioshock Infinite is due for release in 2012.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...motion-control