Yes on 3DS

Why the cynicism? Nintendo finally have their eye in for smart hardware, and the 3DS should be no different

After six years, four releases and 125 million units sold, Nintendo have announced the 3DS, a brand new 3D-enabled iteration of the DS family. It is likely to be an evolution in the same vein as the Gameboy Advance, upping its horsepower and features but not trying to be quite the game-changer that the DS proved to be.

Details on its 3D capabilities are sparse, but with true 3D technology still very expensive, initial rumours point to Nintendo doing a DSiWare and fitting both screens with cameras (and possibly an accelerometer) to track the player's head and eye movement, letting the game adjust the image to seem as though you're peering around a 3D space. It's a cheap alternative to 'real' 3D and not as convincing, but for fooling the eye and creating a strikingly responsive sense of depth, it is more than enough for a handheld console and should keep costs down to a minimum.

Opinions have been mixed, with a fair amount of scepticism occupying the middleground and other gaming sites being completely divided. I remain optimistic though, for these reasons:

1) We don't need another revolution yet

For better or worse, Nintendo have changed the face of gaming this generation. Aside from drawing new crowds to the gaming scene, they've shown that what should have been niche control schemes could be mass-marketed, as well as producing some excellent games that simply wouldn't have been as fun otherwise. With touchscreen and motion control only just beginning to dig in, there simply isn't any need for the 3DS to revolutionise in the same way. Whether it does or doesn't, it's all good.

2) There are plenty of gaming applications, in the right hands

Okay, most devs aren't going to make a lot of 3D besides window dressing, but the DS has played home to some truly excellent games such as Elite Beat Agents and Metroid Prime: Hunters, both of them excellent ambassadors for touchscreen gaming. Super Paper Mario and Echochrome both play with perspective, and both could do so much more with real-time 3D trickery. Items and secrets could be hidden from view, puzzle games could add an extra dimension of difficulty, and true outside-the-box developers like Hideo Kojima, a man who used daylight as a game mechanic, could doubtless find new and interesting ways to work with it. This isn't just about prettying up the graphics; with a little creative flair, 3D could make our games a lot more interesting too.

3) Both DS and PSP changed the importance of handhelds

The PSP has kept pace with the PS3 in the range of games, services and features that it offers, and as I suggested in my feature on Remote Play, a little extra bonding between the PSP and its big brother could make the handheld indispensable. The DS, meanwhile, is arguably superior to the Wii; both changed the gaming landscape, both brought in whole new audiences to gaming and both got bogged down with shovel-loads of crap, but the DS has emerged with a much stronger library of games, with traditional titles like Metroid Prime: Hunters and Mario Kart DS scaling down so well that they rank as two of the best titles in their respective series'.

Whatever way you look at it, handhelds are bigger now than they were at the start of the decade, not least due to the sudden minimising of hardware with smartphones and netbooks, and that means Nintendo have 125 million fans to please, for many of whom graphic alone aren't a key consideration. 3D needs to have potential as a key hardware feature, not just as a gimmicky graphical upgrade.

4) The palm of your hand is the saviour of 3D

Sky are launching their 3D TV channel later this year. There's only one slight drawback, which is that the industry is hopping on the 3D wagon trail about five years too early, and even commercial 3D televisions that don't require a pair of stupid glasses can't display HD visuals and require you to sit in fairly specific places relative to the screen in order to see the effect in the first place. Sheer convenience is a pretty important factor for a lot of people, hence why music CDs and printed newspapers are slowly dying a death in favour of digital distribution. Asking people to slip on a pair of glasses every time they want to watch TV is like requiring that they wear headphones if they want to hear sound or forcing them to push buttons on the TV instead of using a remote control; speakers and remotes were invented for a reason, and until the glasses barrier is taken down, 3D is going to have a hard time selling itself in the home.

Portable devices are a different matter, because the small screen does away with the problem of viewing from an odd angle, or having to worry about multiple people watching at once, or even producing fully HD visuals; mobile phones are being produced that won't require glasses, and although the price will be high by mobile standards, the impact of the iPhone means that high-priced cellphones are now a viable purchase, so long as they offer enough for the money. Even if the 3DS doesn't display 'true' 3D, it could be a striking example of the benefits that 3D brings.

I can't help but wonder that Nintendo are being unfairly criticised; with every new console generation it is a given that graphics will improve, and with 3D the current hot topic Nintendo are being a lot more farsighted in their tech forecast than they tend to be. We have an entire year to see exactly how much potential the 3DS brings, and how Sony will respond with their inevitable PSP successor. It may not be a revolution, but the 3DS could emerge as a strong evolution.

A Better World (of Warcraft) For All of Us

MMOs could tell us more about ourselves than we thought possible - and the key to doing so could come from a pastime even geekier than WoW.

Like many people (11.5 million at the last count), I like to spend my weekends immersed in a fantasy world. Swords, magic and grand battles are the order of the day, though with less weapon upgrades to stop my spare room getting filled to the roof with the damn things, and at 2am we all get to stop what we're doing and hit the pub.

Yes, I am a LARPer, and like many of its participants my preferred style of LARPing involves the same orcs, goblins and stupidly named spells as the finest half-baked Lord of the Rings knockoff. On paper I'm a perfect candidate for WoW, which is why I was surprised when I sat down with the free trial several months ago and loathed every single minute. The animations were horrible, the monsters identikit and the combat was the most dull and dreary thing I had ever performed in a video game ever. EVER. And like many, I take the not unreasonable view that a game should be basically entertaining from the get-go, not when I've invested enough time to read the whole of the Narnia Chronicles. But the truth is that MMOs are never really going to sit with me right, at least not the way WoW plays it. Because as much as I love the world of Warcraft itself, its denizens and mounts and scheming dark lords, what I hate is the progression.

In LARP, your character defines your skills. Skills are the means for enabling the fantasy persona you want to be. A good LARP system is slow-burning, letting all players mingle without too much of a power gap, extra skills augmenting your character and letting them flourish in new directions. It's all a bit Eastenders, if the cast were elves and wielded foam sledgehammers.

In WoW, by contrast, your skills define your character. You can call yourself whatever you want, pretend to act however you will, but a rogue is a rogue and that is what defines him and makes him useful to the party. Moreover, the Alliance vs. Horde fluff that window-dresses the story is thrust on you for no particular reason beside backstory and squaring the players against each other arbitrarily, and with just as little room for expansion.

This is my problem with WoW, and MMOs in general, that makes LARPing so special to me. While perfectly linear LARP exists, essentially aping the average MMO dungeon raid, larger events with hundreds of people and days of in-character time are at their best when they give the player choices and let the resulting catastrophe unfold. Imagine that at the end of a gruelling, 10-man dungeon, the players aren't given treasure or loot. Instead, they are given a choice, represented by a switch or similar. Pushing it one way gives priority to the big hitters but leaves the scouts and rangers out in the cold, while the other gives the magic users a boost but leaves physical attackers in a tough spot. Perhaps it changes something in the nearby town, one decision flooding the street with law enforcers, thus making the streets safer for more scholarly types but preventing thieves from plying their trade, while the other choice causes more chaos but more potential for the opportunistic. Essentially, MMOs should be squaring friends and allies against each other, not dumping different coloured football shirts on each other just because they picked the wrong species.

Imagine what would happen. Arguments would start, fights would break out; friendships would be tested, perhaps even prompting an EVE Online-style retaliation, with one disgruntled member hightailing over the horizon with the guild's earnings. Even if the team worked things out amicably, what would they do next time? Prioritise the ones who lost out before? But the choices would change, and you'd never be able to satisfy everyone; even a simple, three-way system of fighter, magic user and ranger would allow this. You don't need to script an explosive and satisfying climax when the players will do it themselves, and no experience is as personal as one that directly affects you and the time you've invested in the game. Why tread the same path that every other player has when you could be helping to shape your own?

It needn't be difficult to achieve, but MMOs would have to lose certain assumptions; Warcraft and its ilk already sport enormous social spaces, but they are based on camaraderie, not conflict. Clinging to the idea that player conflict is a matter of forcing arbitrary rivalry on differing groups stops MMOs from seeing the fountain of friendship, tension and stroppiness that underpins our own lives. A more robust system of progression could make MMOs a genuinely personal affair, where your input can be stunted by your own teammates and tension comes from reconcilling the differences between you and your closest allies, where progression isn't simply a linear stride up the mountain of progress and requires compromise, bargaining and sacrifice to achieve. The possibilities extend far beyond these examples, but I doubt that Star Wars: The Old Republic or Activision-Blizzard's inevitable WoW-successor are going to even consider them.

Until that happens, I'll be sticking to my LARP. It may be cheap and my lizardman may just be a rubber snout with face paint, but no massively multiplayer game makes each character and its goals more meaningful. Take note, developers: now is the time to turn MMOs from a pleasant social pastime into something meaningful.