What a superbly contradictory idea: a game that plays itself. No, not in the vein of the Passively Multiplayer Online Game or other Ambient Gaming experiences in which you are actually playing the game while doing other things, but a game that literally plays itself before you eyes.
Some might call that a movie. Shigeru Miyamoto, however, calls it Nintendo's latest patent.
Described by Kotaku, the patent outlines a hints system aimed at assisting casual gamers through games more complex than Dr. Kawashima:
The solution would turn a game into a full-length cut scene of sorts, allowing players to jump into and out of the action whenever they wanted. But when played this way, gamers would not be able to save their progress, maintaining the challenge of completing a game without skipping or cheating. It would also allow players to bring up in-game hint videos and skip directly to particular scenes in games.
But what would compel a casual gamer to do that? If they see their little character hacking, slashing, puzzling and generally doing some challenging things, they may be too intimidated to jump back in. Perhaps a tutorial mode, or some kind of on-screen indication of how the virtual player is winning, would support this hint system. Additionally, this could be a good way of showing concerned parents the content of the games their kids are playing.
