The youtube comment thread, so often excoriating, is absolutely baffled. And for good reason; the We Dare trailer, online for around a month now, seems to raise far more questions that it answers. At what point on a romantic double date does it seem like a good idea to fire up the Wii in the first place? What does spanking have to do with flying through hoops? Why are those men taking their clothes off? How much are these people supposed to have had to drink?
To go into depth about why this particular piece of promotion is utterly risible would be too easy (I've spent literally days doing it). To be charitable to Ubisoft, I imagine getting We Dare off the ground would have represented some pretty significant challenges of a very particular kind, and I am genuinely interested to see how they overcame them, difficult as it is to discuss the matter even semi-seriously without riddling this post with double entendres, or coming across as a prude.
So, challenges. Like I said, they're of a particular kind, and it's nothing to do with the general hesitance of the videogaming world to level-headedly depict sexual content. They all come from the same mistake, which is getting people to play in a way which has absolutely nothing to do with what's going on in the game. I'll take it as a familiar epiphany to anyone who's played Wii sports; once you realise you don't have to stand up and hold the Wiimote like a golf club, all contests devolve into sprawling on the couch and casually convulsing when you have to take a swing at the virtual ball. The We Dare trailer doesn't give much away, but what's plain is that there really is no need to have a wii mote in a woman's pencil skirt so that you can hit it to fly faster.
Obviously that's not the point. The point is that it's in the spirit of the game to use the controller like that, just like it's in the spirit of the game to pass a playing card round a circle without using your hands, or to get up close and personal in a game of Twister. But the problem is that it's really not intuitive to use those controllers in such a suggestive fashion, and the game is asking a lot of someone when it requires them to throw inhibitions to the wind, just so they can get through the next digital challenge. That thing doesn't need to be in my back pocket for you to hit it - what need is there for me to sacrifice my dignity? If I'm reluctant to lay on your lap, saying that I need to so that we can fly through some hoops isn't going to change my mind. The host could have pointed to a self-made laminated card with the words 'Fondle your fellow dinner guests' and given these people as much of an excuse to touch each other. Maybe it's just me; as IGN points out, apparently hoop-flying and apple-biting send people so buckwild that they'll dance lasciviously even when there's no obvious need for them to do so in the game.
I'm all for getting creative with the Wiimote, and post dinner flirtation has been fun since dinners were invented, but I've really got to ask: If you're lucky enough to be in the company of someone who is willing to jointly nuzzle a wipe clean oblong for the sake of a game, why bother playing the game in the first place? Why not forego switching on the TV and a potentially awkward startup sequence and skip straight to the foreplay? Maybe you're repressed. Maybe you're really into video games. I'm not sure We Dare will appeal either way.
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