Water Cooler Games served as the web's primary forum for "videogames with an agenda" — coverage of the uses of video games in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment.
The site was maintained at watercoolergames.org from 2003-2009, where it was edited by myself and Gonzalo Frasca. It is now archived here in full.
I hate wires. Hate them. One of the main advantages to the early GameCube days for me was the WaveBird, in my opinion the first good quality wireless controller. So, I was thrilled this holiday season when I saw Datel's PS2800D Wireless Dance Pad. It's got the same non-slip bottom and 1" foam insert material as RedOctane's excellent Ignition Pad, but the Datel runs wirelessly. And best of all, the Datel costs $49.99, half as much as the Ignition.
I bought two of these Datel pads recently and just got a chance to try them out tonight. The pads themselves are very similar. The Datel seems a little smaller than the RedOctane, but comparing them side by side showed that this was an illusion. There is a bit more room around the zipper area in the Ignition pad; I found it very difficult to zipper in the Datel's foam pads, and once I had done it the Datel appeared to bow a bit off the floor. The Datel's padding feels ever so slightly more supple than the RedOctane, but the Ignition's directional pads are slightly raised from the pad surface. The raised edge helps me orient my feet on the pad during play. Maybe more coordinated players don't need it.
After a few rounds of DDR Max 2, I got the distinct sensation that I wasn't doing as well as I usually do. I'm no arcade snake DDR head-turner, but there are a number of songs on that release in particular that I perform well at consistently. After a few rounds of D grades instead of my usual A's, I wondered... could there be a delay between the wireless transmission and its receipt at the console? DDR requires such precise timing that even a minute delay could have been the reason I was scoring so many Greats and so few Perfects.
So, I decided to test it out. I must have played "Conga Fever" a few dozen times. Read on for my results, which spell certain disaster for the Datel pads.
The pads and their batteries were new out of the box, so I felt confident I had a reasonably controlled experiment on my hands (or feet, more properly). First I played several rounds of Conga Fever on the Datel pad. My scores were consistently mediocre -- about 30 Perfects, 85 Greats, and 30 Goods. Then I plugged in my Ignition pad and enjoyed the higher scores I'm used to -- about 90 Perfects, 30 Greats, and 25 Goods. It seemed plausible that the wireless transmission might be delaying my key presses. But I still found it hard to believe. I could see the little arrows at the top of the screen throb when I stepped on both pads, and I couldn't discern any visible delay. If there was one, it must have been minute. Of course, a minute delay could easily make the difference between a Great and a Perfect, perhaps explaining why I had so many Greats on the Datel that registered as Perfects on the RedOctane.
I knew that the Datel pads operated on a 2.4 Ghz wireless frequency, like many other consumer electronics these days. Maybe wireless interference was causing the problem. We have a 900 mHz phone, so that wouldn't be an issue, but I do have an 802.11g router, which also transmits at 2.4 Ghz. So, I unplugged the router and tried again on the Datel. Same results, about 30 Perfects to 80 Greats.
Desperately wanting the wireless dance pads to work out, I reasoned that this particular Datel pad might be faulty. Luckily, I had bought two. I cracked open the second and connected it up. Same results, right around 30 Perfects to 85 Greats on average. After this, I could only conclude that there was in fact some delayed response in the Datel wireless pad. I packed the two pads up to return to Best Buy.
But I wondered -- would all wireless controllers have this problem? Is the slightly delayed response time unique to the hardware, or is DDR in particular a game that demands extremely accurate input response? Luckily, I also had a brand new Logitech Cordless Action Controller. Now, playing DDR using the D-pad is a lot harder than playing on the dance pad. But I figured that if I experienced commensurate performance on the Logitech controller and the normal wired DualShock, then I could conclude that the defect is in the Datel pads, not the use of wireless controllers in general for dance games.
So, I endured several more plays of the same bloody Conga Fever song. Sure enough, my performance was significantly worse using the controller compared to the dance pad, around 50 - 60 Perfects, 75 - 90 Greats, and under 5 Goods. However, my performance was roughly equal on both the wired and the wireless controllers. If anything, I seemed to do slightly better using the wireless controller.
While my study wasn't truly scientific, I think I can nevertheless conclude that Datel wireless dance pads effectively reduce the player's performance in DDR-style games. Worse, the performance degradation is unpredictable; the minute delay in wireless transmission or reception can easily disrupt the player's rhythm in the game. Given my continued insistence that the incremental motivation of DDR-style scoring is key to the genre's effectiveness as an exercise tool, in my opinion Datel's product effectively destroys the exercise potential of these games.
Datel manufactures a whole lot of electronic components, and it's possible that they just included an inferior transmitter and/or receiver in this product. Perhaps part of their motivation was to undercut market leader RedOctane's price. It's clear to me now that the 50% savings just isn't worth it. Of course, it's possible that another manufacturer could solve this problem -- it doesn't strike me as a major technical challenge. Yet, I fear that enough buyers of Datel's inferior pads might be turned off to future wireless dance pads, or even to RedOctane's similarly designed Ignition pads. Worse, some consumers undoubtedly purchased a DDR whole setup for the holidays, and they may attribute their unpredictable performance to the software rather than the hardware.
It's interesting to see how minor changes in peripheral response can create massive waves of influence in gameplay. While DDR is a unique case, it strikes me that there may be other, harder to find cases where peripherals have a greater effect on gameplay or player response than we may think. It seems credible that there is both a tactile and a technological influence in fitness games, a connection worth exploring further.
An Atari Travels
Exergames, Microtalks, Nuovo Sessions, and More
Exhaust Objects
We Have Never Been Threshing
Shell Games
Comments
Robert Jackson on Exhaust Objects
anxiousmodernman on Exergames, Microtalks, Nuovo Sessions, and More
Alvaro Cavalcanti on How to Turn Heavy Rain into a Restroom Simulator
Carl on Philosopher Slab Poems, in Pixels and Letters
Michael Austin on Philosopher Slab Poems, in Pixels and Letters