Dance Central 3 dev cites testing as key to Kinect success

Dance Central is a Kinect game that works as advertised, something rival titles haven't quite pulled off. Harmonix's Matt Boch thinks it all comes down to testing.

Speaking to Kotaku about the motion tech's hit-and-miss catalogue of games, the Dance Central 3 project lead said successful Kinect developers can't just sign off when a game works in the studio.

"Design isn't about thinking your template works because you can implement it. You can't stop at ‘Oh, it works for me,'" he said.

"Put the user experience first and figure out just how much of your game is playable. It can't just be people working at the studio who step in front of the Kinect. We have a lot of people come in to play our games."

Boch also said designers need to think about how people interact with Kinect naturally - as opposed to hoping people adapt to the game's demands, I guess.

"Kinect experiences change depending on people's awareness of their own movements and you need to tune for that. You can't just take a standard game concept and bolt it onto Kinect. Embrace what Kinect can do," he added, pointing to Double Fine Happy Action Theater as an example.

Dance Central 3 launches in October, and has a pretty amusing story mode.