I know I am not the average person when it comes to games, but in many cases I would prefer to socially play board games because you explain them to everyone first and the learning curve is usually lower. It takes much less time to catch on to Settlers than it does to Soul Caliber II and one often has more fun if they lose at a board game than if they get pummeled to death in mere seconds in a video game. (Guitar Hero is very different, and though it made me anxious for a brief moment I had lots of fun the first time I tried it.)

In response to the question of whether ratings boards like the ESRB will have to take physical play control into consideration, my guess is: doubtful. No board currently takes narrative context or any non-visual stimuli (say, sounds) into consideration, so it seems unlikely that the Wii would make them start. (And, in response to a brief note here about the ratings process, the ESRB has started to recruit actual players for games.) Also, let’s not assume that the effect of more violent control schemes is certainly going to be to fill people will violent feelings. Committing acts of violence on the Wii may actually feel more disturbing in some contexts.

As the author of this article suggests, I think the trick will be whether game developers actually plan for how the violence should feel, or whether they just port controller-driven games to the Wii without consideration for how that might change the play experience.