From A to Wii – Relaxation

R – Relaxation

Video games can serve a variety of purposes for the user. Sometimes it’s about overcoming a seemingly impossible obstacle, sometimes it’s about crushing your competition, but most of the time (at least for me) it’s about relaxing from a hard day’s work. Although I use video games as a relaxation tool, most video games aren’t “relaxing,” at least in the meditative, take a deep breath sense. Can the Wii’s motion-based controls bring some more relaxing games to its broader target audience relaxing us gamers in the process?

Games like Animal Crossing and Pikmin have been called relaxing, for different reasons. With these two games, I think the lack of overt, forced goals helps to relax the player. Although the games have goals and can be “won,” they both are content to let the player simply walk around their environments and get lost in their respective worlds. The sounds that each game uses are also key in their “relaxing” nature. But these are games that just happened to be particularly relaxing, not overtly made to be soothing experiences. After all, anyone who has dealt with Nook’s extortion or the death of a hundred red Pikmin in water can attest to the lack of calm in those situations. But what about a game specifically designed to be soothing and stress-free?

The first game that comes to mind when I think of relaxation is Electroplankton. With its soothing ambient sounds and non-goal based gameplay, the game is really easy to get lost in. Part of the reason for this is the way the game uses the touch screen. Where a lot of games use the DS’s touch-screen as a method for action, Electroplankton uses it for interaction. When playing with most of the Electroplankton, you are interacting with them, dynamically changing tones sounds and colors as you touched the screen.

You literally are playing with the Electroplankton, and random play (both musical and physical) is soothing. Clearly the Wii can pull off something similar to Electroplankton, but on a different level of interaction. Where Electroplankton’s dulcet tones are controlled with the touchscreen, imagine the possibilities of a similar experience with the entire range of motion with the Wiimote.

The Wiimote (and in a more limited way the PS3′s SIXAXIS controller) offers up some interesting opportunities to guide players movements for meditative and relaxation purposes. Soft, subtle movements used to control a game can do wonders to help someone chill out. Anyone who has played with one of those colored oil and water toys where you control the ebb and flow of the environment can attest to the ability of simple, slow movements for relaxation.

Another aspect of the Wiimote that I had not considered until it was brought up by Chris Kohler in Wired’s GameLife blog. The Wiimote and Nunchuck are obviously split up into two parts, and because of that your hands a free to do whatever they want to do. When playing any game that uses both pieces of the controller, you hands can rest naturally. I haven’t really experienced this, but Kohler seems to think it’s a revolution.

Get where I’m going with this? By hour two or so, my remote hand was resting on my right leg, twisted inwards. But my left hand was out of my lap entirely, just hanging over the arm of the chair as if I was holding a Dustbuster and cleaning the rug. And I was playing the game, actively, perfectly. Had the only innovation of the Wii controller been to split the game pad up into two independent halves, it would have been worth it for that alone. You can’t understand this with a five-minute trade show demo. You have to be at home, in your natural environment.

While I’m looking forward to all the great experiences that we are bound to get with the Wii, I’m really interesting in the oddball things like games designed to possibly relax you. When we covered “I” in From A to Wii, I talked about immersion and how that would make gaming even better with the Wii. Adventures will be more thrilling, more frightening, and more tense… sure, but there is also the possibility for the opposite effect… a calming one. The possibility of more “relaxing” game experiences becomes even more plausible when you consider Nintendo’s expanded target market. Soccer moms and grandpas probably aren’t that interested in the latest Super Smash Bros. game, but they may be interested in a meditative Yoga game… or a relaxing fly-fishing game.

What do you guys think… are there games you consider especially “relaxing,” in the meditative sense? Would you be interesting in more of these games on the Wii? Would nongamers?