About Author: Andy Tran

Designing for the Kinect is already a challenge with such impressive technology and the expectations of utilizing its power in a new way. Ryan Challinor of Harmonix has made two hit Kinect titles whose ingenuity rivals that of a first-party Microsoft game. While at E3 promoting the third iteration of Dance Central, Gamasutra snagged an interview with Challinor.

In this interview he covers a few challenges and attributes of developing for the Kinect. Everyone that owns a Kinect has seen how there’s a slight lag in the movement tracking and feedback from a game. Challinor masks this by “pulsing imagery over the player’s on-screen projection in time to the beat”. This is one innovative way to create a more fluid experience for players.  Another facet of Kinect design is showing the player feedback in order to let them know that the gesture recognition is working. This helps connect the player by showing them that their actions have an active part throughout the game.

Harmonix also came into the Kinect game swinging with their background of music games. This gave them the upper hand because the player is following along to a predetermined action. So the camera knows what the player will be doing instead of fumbling trying to determine a player’s capricious movements. His last bit of advice is to develop from a foundation that you are creating a Kinect game. “You need to start from the simplest interaction, and then build a game on top of this interaction that works.”

With developers like Harmonix advancing Kinect game design and mechanics we should begin to see many more studios become inspired by their innovations.

Source: Gamasutra