Controlling The Godfather: Blackhand with an interview and screens

Newsweek‘s Alt-Ctrl division was recently able to post an interview they had with Electronic Arts regarding The Godfather game of theirs heading for the Wii. Much to say, what’s on everyone’s minds is how the Wii remote and Nunchuk would be used – besides, what’s a mafia game without all the thug-slappin’ fun?

The dev team actually really put some considerable effort in coming up with the control scheme for The Godfather: Blackhand. They wanted to make sure that the motions used to control your Corleone character will be realistic, and to do that, they even called on a focus group. The team asked a couple of people what it would look like if they themselves were to throw a punch, swing a big, strangle a thug.

The problem lies, however, on the “margin of error” a given move has because people might throw a molotov or slap a bum silly in their own specific way. So, EA had to be generous in mapping the controls, making motion-sensing a bit lenient to recognize certain possible movements. It had to be “tolerant of a lot of variation in the player’s moves.” But that’s the thing, see? Making control-recognition too open makes a certain move overlap with another.

How did they deal with this? The full interview is behind the “Via” link. Meanwhile, behind the “Full Article” link are the controls for the game as seen in screens.

Check ’em out screens after the jump!

Newsweek‘s Alt-Ctrl division was recently able to post an interview they had with Electronic Arts regarding The Godfather game of theirs heading for the Wii. Much to say, what’s on everyone’s minds is how the Wii remote and Nunchuk would be used – besides, what’s a mafia game without all the thug-slappin’ fun?

The dev team actually really put some considerable effort in coming up with the control scheme for The Godfather: Blackhand. They wanted to make sure that the motions used to control your Corleone character will be realistic, and to do that, they even called on a focus group. The team asked a couple of people what it would look like if they themselves were to throw a punch, swing a big, strangle a thug.

The problem lies, however, on the “margin of error” a given move has because people might throw a molotov or slap a bum silly in their own specific way. So, EA had to be generous in mapping the controls, making motion-sensing a bit lenient to recognize certain possible movements. It had to be “tolerant of a lot of variation in the player’s moves.” But that’s the thing, see? Making control-recognition too open makes a certain move overlap with another.

How did they deal with this? The full interview is behind the “Via” link. Meanwhile, here’re the controls for the game as seen in screens.