Wii elbow, and other powers of technology

For the past year or so, we’ve heard lot about Dance Dance Revolution, the PS2 game where players carry out dance moves coordinated with on-screen avatars. The game is lots of fun, but the buzz has been more about the fact that, with a dance pad controller (a pad on the floor you can actually dance on to control the game), players get a workout playing the game.

In the recent “platform wars” sparked by the simultaneous release of the Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii (both competing with the latest Microsoft XBox 360), talk as been about the PS3′s incredible computing and graphics power–how realistic the games look–and the Wii’s innovative controller. The controller requires you to move your body rather than just your thumbs–so you swing a tennis raquet by actually swinging your arm rather than just pushing a button. Hardly a week after its release, the Wii is getting press about how players are starting to get tired from playing with the new system.

So, score one for games moving off the couch. Score another for innovative interfaces and the simulated worlds they make possible. And score yet another for the ability to think about games–and epistemic games–in a whole new array of fields.