Your emotions, kinected

There's an old article on Gizmodo on how making certain physical motions can drive your emotions, and how the Kinect and Wii can "hack" that effect.

Numerous studies have shown that movements or postures generate cues the mind can use to figure out how it feels, a phenomenon dubbed the physical-feedback effect. Wii games might also create emotions between people through "emotional contagion," where the brain can make us feel what we see, hear, read or think others experience.

I think this goes without saying -- haven't these people ever danced before? Climbed a tree? Been on a swing? Done a really great exercise class at the Y? And I'm not even talking runner's-high endorphins, I'm just thinking about that moment when you let something loose and boom, you feel fine about everything.

It's like that funny trick with Yoga -- you connect the name of the pose with the action you're doing (get into being a snake while doing Cobra, really push down like a petulant child in Child's Pose, make like a Warrior, etc.), you definitely get that mind-body connection.

However, I think one thing that the Kinect brings to the sheer joy of moving, something that hasn't been explored, is how pairing the Skinner box-like rewards systems of flashy lights and "gamer point" rewards with the fact that moving is fun.

Below are Wii players rating their emotions as they are having them. Maybe we should be doing this during daily activities -- and novel, exercise-based ones, as well?

Ubisoft

Apparently Ubisoft is an early winner with its prescience that Kinect would be a killer app for video games and is poised to release a bunch of new titles to capitalize on its formidable precog skillz.

Well, best of luck to Ubisoft, but I'm going to hang back and actually try a video game subscription service before buying their games this time around (except for "Just Dance 3", which I've already pre-ordered and, reading some of the updates, feel fine with my decision).

My first Ubisoft motion gaming experience was "Just Dance 2" on the Wii -- and it was great. The dancing was pretty awesome, but the graphics and the music were standouts. I mean, it does not get much better than "Rasputin," am I right?

I figured if Ubisoft has the "Just Dance" series this tightly buttoned down, then the rest of its titles will follow suit. But ... not so much.

Ubisoft prefers a complicated interface for the titles I do have -- "Your Shape: Fitness Evolved" and "The Michael Jackson Experience." You have to use your hand, stuck out to the side, moving incrementally, to navigate menus. Maybe because I have a cathode ray TV and not a fancy pants, electricity-slurping HDTV, this equates to somewhat more incrementally than on a bigger picture. But I'm kind of doubting that since your skeleton's movements are what is being tracked.

So if the interface isn't totally friendly, you've got the games themselves. How is it that the colorful, quirky characters of "JD2" end up looking so small and not-cool in these other titles? The phantom MJ that you become in "MJ:E," for example. You are tiny, and you are surrounded by tiny backup dancers. The flashcards that show you how to dance are way off to the side, and aren't too intuitive, so that's not easy.

There's no reason your avatar can't be bigger in "MJ:E," as far as I can tell. Looking in on such a small playspace makes your efforts feel small, too. It's weird.

As for "YS:FE," the playscapes are pretty basic and your avatar (based on your own body -- you have to make peace with it!) is also small. You have to work within a certain amount of space, and you have to hit your marks exactly with the virtual trainer -- it counts against your score if you aren't perfectly on-beat, and you can be pretty much perfectly on-beat and still fall short (says this longtime aerobics class vet) of the video game's expectations. Plus, the gamerpoints system (intermittent rewards, the hallmark of the Skinner Box, do have a way with me).

In sum, they knew the tech would be big, but they didn't quite hit their marks with some of the basics that would make their games friendly and fun.

Reading (in the first linked article) that Ubisoft realizes that the first "YS:FE" was judged and found wanting makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. They listened. Just how closely will is TBD, as I'll need to check out the game to be sure it's not just moving for the sake of moving. (Hard to get a feel for something they haven't updated their own Your Shape page for -- there's a trailer on YouTube, but:

as you can tell it's more fantasy than exposition. Though the African dance part looks cool.)