4 Video Game Gimmicks Nobody Likes Anymore

Yep, turns out that having something deeply, deeply wrong with you is a prerequisite for being the sort of person who would want to broadcast your life through a video game console. Some people got drunk and gave their numbers to the Internet, with predictable results. Some people performed live sex acts or knocked robots around with their nearly bare asses. And this guy just used it to show the world his Yu-Gi-Oh card collection.

via nichegamer.net
This is exactly how we imagine everyone who's still a Yu-Gi-Oh fan in 2014.

And of course Japan makes it weirder because they have to. Those links are from a specific show called Pinup Girl Party, which is less sexy than you'd think. Or exactly as sexy, if you're into housekeepers stripping down to blow birthday cakes and just being Japanese in general.

via nichegamer.net
Pictured: someone's pants right now.

The average users of Playroom seemed to fall into four often-overlapping categories: perverts, drunks, weirdos ... oh, and children. Like this kid here, who is told by a random commenter, "I'm at your window watching you" and actually goes to check:

via YouTube

Aww, that's adora- wait, no, that's terrifying. Why is that kid on the Internet's equivalent of a sex dungeon, and why are there 10 people watching him? Only two weeks after the service started, Twitch banned all Playroom broadcasts and so, for the most part, ended this great experiment. Clearly, humanity isn't prepared to put Internet cameras on our game machines, and we doubt it ever will be.

Of course, this "interactive gaming" thing might have been fucked from the start ...

Wii Sports sold 82.5 million copies and became the Nintendo Wii's best-selling game, followed by Mario Kart Wii (35.5 million) and another version of Wii Sports (32.6 million). The lesson was obvious: People like pretend bowling ... and mustachioed Italian plumbers driving go-karts. Even though they never developed the painfully obvious Mario Bowling Kart, and allowing for the caveat that those units-sold numbers include bundled copies, the Wii did pretty well on the implicit promise that Wii Sports was only the beginning and that something even more amazing would come in the future. It had to, right?

Nope, that was it. Fast-forward to today: The best-selling game for Nintendo's next console, the Wii U, is New Super Mario Bros U -- basically the same Mario game you played as a kid, with slightly better graphics. It's sold only 4.16 million copies, and like 4.15 million of those probably went to actual mustachioed Italian plumbers.

Nintendo
"Yes, honey, this is exactly what daddy's job is really like."

So that's where Nintendo's "new era of interactivity" ended up: in retro-style Mario games. Nintendo all but ditched the motion-sensor technology (or at least stopped trying to come up with new uses for it) and decided to jump on the bandwagon of the next big thing: touchscreens!

How's that working out for them? Well ...

Turns out most real game designers (as opposed to the people trying to scam you through your phone) hate touchscreens because they keep the player from focusing on the TV, which is pretty much the exact opposite point of a video game. That's why big developers want nothing to do with Nintendo's touchscreen-based Wii U, and why Microsoft has released exactly two Xbox One games compatible with their tablet-based SmartGlass system since last December. Sony probably had the right idea: They abandoned their touchscreen controller before it even launched.

via gadgetmill.co.uk
It still sold more copies than the Vita.

Here's someone else who doesn't like touchscreens, besides developers: your child's doctor, since they can apparently stunt development in young kids. We're betting a large number of adult gamers aren't big fans of these screens either, since it's kind of difficult pretending to be a bad-ass space marine when your chubby fingers keep getting your digital self murderized.

But maybe we're thinking too small. All this technology might suck for games, but maybe there's another cool use for it. Like, for example ...

Don't worry: Microsoft says the Halo movie with Spielberg is still coming out ... you know, like when they said the Halo movie with Peter Jackson was still coming out, back in 2005. But we're sure this time it's different. Anyway, we found a trailer:

So, why did Microsoft cancel the entire project so suddenly? It might have had something to do with the fact that the shows would have used Kinect to let you interact with them, and everyone hates Kinect -- to the point where taking it away doubled the Xbox One's sales. We hated it so much that the idea of interactive TV shows was murdered before it even started.

OK, so cameras are for weirdos, Wii remotes are a dead end, everyone hates touchscreens and Kinect ... what's next for the video game industry? Well, look at this headline for the latest interactive gaming technology:

extremetech.com
Now everyone will know exactly what part of Lara Croft's anatomy you're staring at.

They're right! Eye tracking is the next joystick -- as in something we stopped using because it didn't have enough buttons. As in, this is just a small step forward from the Kinect, that thing that everyone hated so damn much. In other words, start investing in arcade machines and air hockey tables, everyone.

Carolyn loves zombie and Silent Hill games. If you tweet at her she promises not to be too interactive.