momentum momentous

I do not understand E3's insistence that I flail about while playing video games, when what I actually want is to be able to play video games while lying utterly prostrate, surrounded by down pillows and sleeping puppies.

At some point, the dominant narrative coming out of E3 became something like "normal people are going to love this new motion sensor crap; hardcore gamers are just being haters because they are fat slobs who disdain movement and sweating."

The thing is, I already do lots of flailing and sweating...at the gym. When I come home from the gym, I want to shoot Nazi zombies in the face while splayed upon the couch in a digitally-induced stupor. If Sony, Nintendo, or Microsoft could design a discrete, spill-proof bedpan and a robot to feed me grapes during loading screens, now that would seriously improve my gaming experience. And it's not as though home video game exercise is going to replace real exercise, which requires sufficient space and/or equipment, and more importantly, movements that have little if anything to do with video game actions. It's not as if I can get a Kinect and then suddenly cancel my gym membership. Gaming is a certain kind of experience and exercise is a certain kind of experience, and while combining them can be fun in certain, limited situations (Wii tennis) it will usually be a dilution of both. They already sell televisions welded to exercise equipment, and it certainly hasn't revolutionized how most people watch TV. I'm doubtful, too, that it has resulted in more people exercising.

In short, if a first-person shooter ever tries to make me actually run to shoot something, I will punch it in the face, pick up a Tom Clancy novel, and crawl into bed.