5 Ways To Use A Microphone Besides Blowing On It

The DS and later models of the PSP both had built-in microphones, but no developer ever seemed to take advantage of them. Every time the microphone was used in a game, it seemed like just an excuse to have the player awkwardly blow on their handheld. You were either blowing out candles, or blowing dust off a tablet, or creating wind by blowing into the microphone. No one ever seemed interested in doing anything else other than making players exhale heavily.

Surely there are other things that could be done with that microphone. Here are a few ideas as we move into the 3DS and PS Vita era.

You Have To Be Quiet
I recall playing the original Splinter Cell. I had my night vision goggles on, and I was comfortably huddled in a dark corner. I swung the camera around, and suddenly there was a guard standing right next to me. I let out a surprised shout, but remembered that he couldn’t see me, and he just kept on walking. My brother laughed and said, “You would make a terrible secret agent.”

What if while playing a stealthy game that required sneaking, the microphone would pick up your talking and shouts? Manhunt for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox experimented with this idea a little bit. If you wore the headset while playing the game and you spoke into the microphone, you would alert nearby enemies to your location. It made the game harder, but it also made the game more intense.

Real Conversations
I wouldn’t expect the game to allow me to have full-on conversations, but I don’t think the ability to recognize yes and no would be too much to ask. Nintendogs could recognize their names (sometimes), so I can’t imagine this would have been too much of a stretch. It would have been nice in a game like Golden Sun to simply say out loud, “yes,” or, “no,” to the numerous questions the game asked you. Phoenix Wright played with this a little bit by allowing you to shout, “Objection!”, but I never saw much expansion on that idea outside of the realistic lawyer simulator.

Mass Effect 3 seems to be experimenting with this idea a little bit using the Kinect. It may end up being a forgettable feature added to the overall experience, but at least BioWare is trying to create a stronger character connection by having the player do more than simply blow into a microphone.

Music And Idle Animation
Just about every game you have ever played has idle animations. They’re the animations that play when your character is doing nothing. They usually involves heavy breathing, belt adjusting, stretching, looking around, and in the case of Super Mario 64, sitting on the ground falling asleep and dreaming of famous Italian pasta dishes.

I would have liked to see a game where, depending on the music you have playing in the background, the character can take on a different idle animation. Maybe a consistent head bob if it hears hip-hop playing in the background, or some wild thrashing during metal. It wouldn’t have to interrupt the game. The animation could always be canceled once the player starts playing again.

Profanity Difficulty Scaling
Blowing on the microphone may have been less of a creative brain freeze by developers and more of a technical one. Maybe the microphone simply wasn’t capable of registering much beyond a stream of air, but if it were capable of understanding language, this is something I always thought would be interesting.

When the game begins to hear profanity in short loud bursts, it could scale the difficulty down a little bit. Maybe dropping a loud F-bomb during a game of New Super Mario Bros. could have made a fire flower or a mushroom suddenly appear from the sky. Just the simple recognition that a game is getting difficult would be enough. Some sympathy during my Rhythm Heaven play sessions might have made that game a slightly less grueling experience – maybe.

I’m In Public
All of the above ideas would be great additions to games we’ve played before, and games we haven’t yet played on handheld devices, but they are all worthless without this tiny, but important little addition. Being portable as these systems are, it’s important that the games distinguish when we are in a public place. If the system hears bus noises or the idle chatter and plate clanking of a restaurant, all voice activated controls should be disabled. No blowing on the mic, no reception of yes or no, and definitely no alerting of guards in stealth games based on a bus passenger’s wild religious propaganda shouting.

The profanity difficulty scaling, however, should always stay, because sometimes video games inspire passionate profanities, and there is nothing you can do about it.