Great article. Tell your mom that, yes, game developers have read her words quite carefully. Being a 51 year old father of two adult daughters myself, I appreciate the effort she made in trying to stay connected to her son. It’s has been interesting to me to see my wife actually spend more time with the 360 than I have (Bejewled, JewelQuest, and Hexic) so I think there is some hope for our generation and the future of games. I would hope that perhaps your mom will give Halo 3 a try when it comes around. I’d love to see how hard it is for her to get past the control scheme and into the world we’re trying to create.

Keep up the good work,
Marty O'Donnell
Audio Director/Composer
Bungie Studios

Hey, I really enjoyed this article. I especially liked how articulate your mom was about what she liked and disliked, what made sense and what didn't, etc. As a game designer, it's always good to hear the opinions of people who *don't* play your games or post on message boards.

As far as the confusing control schemes and interfaces go, I suspect dealing with them is partly a matter of motivation. Second Life's interface is fairly complex, for example, but non-gamers put in the work necessary to figure it out because they're

so interested in the game itself. Myspace.com is another example of this phenomenon; people who know nothing about HTML and web design are motivated by the desire to customize their personal page, so they take the time to figure out enough to add all sorts of garish doodads and gimmickry.

It's also related to the level of familiarity with the input device. If a non-gamer is used to using a mouse at work, they will find it much easier to adjust to a mouse-controlled game than to a gamepad-controlled game. If a gamer has been trained to use a gamepad, he will probably not have a lot of problems picking up a new control scheme on the gamepad, even if it is wildly different from other control schemes. That's the genius of the Wii controller: it is familiar in two ways. First, it looks (and in some cases, acts) like the ubiquitous TV remote. Second, if games use it correctly, it makes the interface device almost transparent; players will use intuitive body motions instead of esoteric (for non-gamers) gamepad inputs. (That said, I'd rather make Xbox Live Arcade games.)

- Neil

Thanks to both of these fine gentlemen for their feedback.

Alex,
Your article wasn’t terrible, however… "I realized that no actual gamers really played Ridge Racer on the 360, so asking my mom to play would be unfair."

Since your comment was so back-handed and insulting to all of the gamers that DO play Ridge Racer, I'll sink to your level and say: Screw you asshat. You've just lost a reader! Kudos!

Now if you said "I realized that no mainstream madden-loving gamer really played Ridge Racer on the 360" it wouldn't be insulting... But honestly dude, only real gamers DO play RR. And guess what? Being a mostly hardcore gamer crowd, it's also a much more polite game than, oh, everything else I've played on live with the 360. Needless to say, my politeness is not showing through at the moment, mostly because you felt the need to take pot-shots at RR for no good reason... We know Namco didn't kill your mother... did they off your father or something? Why the hate?

Either way, as I mentioned previously, you've alientated at least one reader, so job well done!

Your pal,
-Jon

I spoke to Jon here via email after receiving this love letter. Turns out, he's a pretty good guy, and I'd like to think we made amends.

Notice: A great number of the emails we got were complaints with regards to our design. We’re attempting a new design and approach to publishing here and are obviously suffering some growing pains. While we update our code to a better system, we appreciate all your feedback and continued support.