Naysayers will tell you that motion gaming is a gimmick; it doesn’t appeal to the hardcore crowd, and no one can make real games that support the tech. But don’t forget: More than 100 million people were perfectly okay spending a couple hundred bucks on a Nintendo Wii so they didn’t have to drive anywhere to go bowling. At least one person accidentally died for the chance to own the then-new console back when it launched in late 2006. So there must be some value in waving a piece of plastic in front of a television to make stuff happen on-screen.
For many, that value is in the accessibility that comes with motion controls. Think about what happens when you hand a gamepad to friends or family who don’t play games on the reg–watching them try to figure out how to use two analog sticks is like watching a person with one arm trying to pat his head and rub his belly at the same time. For those of us who grew up gaming, controlling a character’s movement independently from a free-moving camera is easy. But it’s nigh impossible for those who are just starting to get into gaming. That’s exactly what happened to Will Provancher, a professor at the University of Utah…