First Wii Boxing Attempt - Sat 23/02/08

This was Becky's first attempt at Wii Boxing. We had previously been experimenting with some of the other games within the Wii Sports package and methodically work through the list of games within the main game menu. Boxing was at the end of the use and by this time we had both gained some experience in using the controls - although this was the first time that the Nunchuck was used in play.

Firstly I should state that there is (hopefully) a better recording of this incidence of play stored on DV tape - this is a version captured on my mobile phone which was in MMS mode at the time. We were intending to send the video to Becky's brother who also has a Wii console, mainly as it was quite funny and to us novel but also to let him know that we were now part of the Wii playing community. So the quality is bad, but I am still not able to get my proper recordings onto my Mac. Basically there will be better quality images to follow tis initial post.

There are a couple of things that I find interesting about this recording. Firstly I think it needs to be acknowledged that Becky knew that she was being recorded, not just by the phone camera but also the DV camera setup so her actions may be a little more considered than if she was not being filmed. I am hoping that we will both get used to video being captured whilst we are playing Wii games.

The second point that I wanted to pick up on was that Becky says "Oww, he hit me!" (at about 0:10) or should I say "Oww, he hit Mii"? Although this cannot be analysed in great depth on the strength of one clip I think that there is an interesting relationship between the real life player and their digital avatar. The avatars, or 'Mii' were constructed to resemble our real selves in terms of physical appearance - as much as is possible with Mii editing capabilities! This seemed to be acknowledged by both of us and any defeat or knock that our character took we informally related to ourselves. When Becky referred to me being good at boxing she was now referring to me as well as my Mii. We automatically engaged in the whole avatar/digital representations of us within the game. We were able to relate ourselves to our avatars.

Lastly I would like to pick up on the action that Becky plays out towards the end of the clip. She counts out the knock out time with her controller, and this turned into a bit of a theme throughout Wii Boxing play. Whenever a computer character was being counted out we would both count with the computer. As I mentioned before, we were both engaged in play and experiencing the sphere of play even though only one of us was able to control the game.