Blog FeedControl Freak
Throughout the last two decades the progress in video game visuals is astounding. From 2d sprites made of a dozen pixels to the characters made of several thousand polygon in Half-Life 2. Graphics have come a long way in a relatively short amount of time. Audio and other aspects as well: 5.1 surround, complex AI, physics engine, vehicles, you name it. Why then have we left our means of input to these complex worlds in the stone-age? While games will continue to improve visually they seem to be at a halt when it comes to control.
Console games used a standard 2 handed gamepad back in the early 80s. Today’s consoles are no different. The keyboard and mouse are still the input for PC. Sure there have been updates to each generation, but the only thing we seem to do is add a few more buttons or make the controller easier to hold. Nothing ever revolutionary. While the games in the future will no doubt look better and sound better than the games of today will they feel different at all?
It is hard to think of a game apart from its controller. Controllers (console or PC) are so standardized to gaming that they hardly ever come into question. But if we are creating worlds so convincing and immersive why limit ourselves to such a rigid input system?
Most ventures into a different way to control a game are usually seen as “gimmicky”. They often stick to genres that are just as obscure as the controller. Things like the fishing controller for the dreamcast just can’t be seen as useful elsewhere.
However, there is some worth in these obscure projects. If anyone has ever heard of The Journey to Wild Divine they probably remember it only for its control set up. No mouse or keyboard is used for the game, in fact you don’t really have to “move” anything physical around your desk at all. The controller for Wild Divine is three finger clips that measure the “Bio Feedback” from your body. Things like heart rate and skin conductivity are measured and to progress through the game you have to control them. You are presented with different challenges in which you need to raise or lower certain body rhythms to complete. A truly unique take on a “game” indeed.
While the game itself is intended to assist people in meditating the extensions of the control scheme could have very interesting results. A competitive online game in which the players’ skill is measured by body rhythm control is really something intriguing.
Another, perhaps more mainstream, example of alternate control methods is the P5 glove by Essential Reality. “Gaming gloves” are certainly not anything new or unheard of. However this glove seems to be more of what the disappointed owners of the Nintendo Powerglove dreamed for. Using infrared technology this glove replaces a mouse. You can move your hand around (wearing the glove) in real space and have it react onscreen. It actually one-ups the mouse by having 6 degrees of motion. Each finger acts like a “trigger” or button that can be combined with other fingers to do certain functions. While the technology is apparently sound the real drawback seems to be the games. While you can use it as a mouse it really shines when custom rigged for a game (Essential Reality releases patches for the glove to work for certain games).
A very interesting case would be the glove used for the God-game Black and White. The black and white cursor is a hand itself and a lot of the commands in-game revolve around “drawing” symbols on the ground with the hand. The glove handles this perfectly as well as the movement around the world (just as the hand “grabs” the ground and pulls, you do the same with the glove).
There have been numerous other separate controllers that have attempted to improve gaming or a genre of gaming. While some may even succeed (long live the Microsoft Strategic Commander) they never get accepted as legitimate. Hopefully as we continue to push the other boundaries of gaming we don’t forget the number one way it connects to a player.
14th December | Reply
I think it comes down to the fact that no-one wants to have to buy extra peripherals just for games. If I can use just a keyboard and mouse for browsing, chatting, and word processing, I won’t want to spend the extra cash to buy tools to play games that my (rather expensive) keyboard and mouse can already do. It’s a waste of money, and it’d be better spent on upgrading my PC so I can experience those awesome new visuals and physics engines.
The only peripherals I’ve seen that debunk that idea is the joystick, but again I feel that these have become less popular as flight sims have become less popular. I’ve never seen any PC with a console-style gamepad on it, and only rich people I know have steering wheels and such for their racing games. And none of these things are of any use at all outside the game. No wonder they feel so redundant - and hence - gimmicky.
When I buy a game I don’t want to have to buy a new peripheral just for it, though I admit I did just that when getting a joystick to play X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter. But that was just once, and it was a long time ago. Nothing seems as intuitive and all-round useful as the keyboard and mouse. I can’t see any replacements or overly useful compliments coming our way soon. While that glove might be able to replace the mouse, who wants to slip into a glove when they sit down at their PC?
14th December | Reply
I agree with cyrris. I dont even use a joystick for flying heli’s in battlefield, even though I know it is a lot easier. I just dont think its worth the money. I think a keyboard, mouse (and sometimes a joystick) should be sufficient for any game. However, more importantly, I dont think games NEED other ways of input.
How would I want to improve my UT2004 controls? mouse and keyboard is really everything that I need. I dont want to be waving my gloved hand in somewhere, its far too exhausting, not to mention the increased dangers of carpal tunnel.
I’d also like to point out that asians do go further with this than americans/europeans. Things like Dance Dance Revolution are far more popular there. Westerners just dont like to have to act ‘all goofy’ in front of a pc.
Also, you claim we’re still in the stone age. That the input technology has been left behind. Think about this. Essentially, a cpu works still the same. Same goes for ram and video card. Sure they’re a hell of a lot faster and have some new tricks, but there hasnt changed all that much.
Mice arent very different either, but just as the rest of your hardware, they have evolved. Remember the ball-mice? Do you know any gamer now who still uses a ball mouse? I dont. Everyone has gone optic. Some have gone wireless as well. Some have specialised gaming mice. Think of the keyboards with ergonomic shapes, and added media buttons.
The technology isnt more from the stone age than the rest of your pc is.
14th December | Reply
Well, no, I think he does have a point with the input devices not really changing over time, in that we still use them in the exact same way. Unlike games - which are completely different now than how they used to be, and we play them differently and expect different things of them. Tetris is one thing, a fully-fledged game like Half-Life 2 featuring all sorts of cool graphics, a captivating storyline, and multiplayer is something else entirely.
If you think of a PC as a block box system (wherein you ignore what happens inside the case and just take note of the input and output), the input has stayed the same over time, but the output has changed quite dramatically. We’re seeing 3D displays, all sorts of cool sound effects, and more and more immersive games.
Yes, we’ve gone from ball to optical, and we’ve had Windows buttons added to our keyboards, but they still do the same basic thing in the same basic way they always have. It’s just that they’re generally so good at what we expect of them, we see no real reason to look for something else.
14th December | Reply
The only reason we have 3D stuff and all the fancy shit is because our hardware got more powerful. That said, I’m still running a normal 32 bit cpu, which is basically still the same x86 architecture as we saw in the 80486 pcs.
I’m just saying that things have sped up, but not fundamentally changed. Like, for expample, mice have too.
Besides, it may well be so that the input devices were already so good they hardly needed refining in the first place. I certainly don’t need other input devices.
14th December | Reply
Eh, I can take extra controllers or leave them, it’s all the same to me. I’ve never owned a joystick, and I can’t say it’s really detrimented my gameplay style at all. Besides, it’s only a matter of time before we’re all using alpha-waves from our brains to control the game itself. Soon the keyboard itself will be redundant! Truly these are the end of times! Repent! Repent!
15th December | Reply
OK, here’s a remarkably simple idea that should fit well with PC gamers since its the main argument for using a mouse to aim (aside from one came tied to the PC, which is a new one for me):
An analogue keyboard
We all know that you can use a mouse to turn a bit or turn a lot in a game depending on the speed that we move the stupid thing, but how about a similar treatment for the controls that govern how you move forwards and backwards. I can’t be the only one that has noted that the lean/peek movement is a tad stupid since you always lean a fixed distance, so how about a key or something that governs how far you lean. Equally, when you move you are unable to specify how fast unless you start holding down combinations of keys or always run (bit of a no-brainer for something like UT2004 but go with me on this). How about a bit more control there?
Personally, I’d like to see lightguns used a lot more since, hey, they’re a darned sight more realistic that a pushing a mouse around. Stick a gyroscope or such like in them and I don’t see any reason why it can’t control where you are looking as well as your aim. Stuff like TimeCrisis and House Of The Dead is a blast and it just feels more satisfying than UT or Doom, particularly if the gun has recoil.
15th December | Reply
A multiplayer adversial light gun game would be amazing. I don’t see why a foot pedal couldn’t be used for more than just hiding like Time Crisis. If you set up one for movement that had 8 degrees of “tilt” I think you could become rather comfortable with it quickly.
I am all for games requiring more complex skills than point and click. I would actually welcome a control scheme that takes a while to master and being able to effectively use real life tatics that make sense. I find a lot of online game tactics take advantage of the game’s limitations rather than what would be possible in the world the game is trying to create.
Analogue keys would be extremely cool. It may take a little while to adjust to it but it would definitly add a lot to gameplay. Esspecially online games where your movement speed determines how much noise you make.
15th December | Reply
As stated before, people don’t like to buy new controllers for new games. However, different games require different controls. This is pretty much the main reason why consoles (which rely heavily on gamepads) have more sports and fighting games than the PC. Gamepads are just best suited for exactly those games. Sports and fighting.
On the PC however, you mainly have mouse dependent games. The entire FPS genre is a good example, the entire RTS genre an even better one. A mouse can simply provide far more accuracy than any gamepad can ever hope to achieve and for these types of games, it’s accuracy you need.
So the mouse is the PC’s primary game controller.
However, you also need some extra buttons (for walking in FPS games, for shortcuts and stuff in RTS games) and you have a hand free. So people use the keyboard for that. Lots of buttons and it gets the job done. The mouse adds where the keyboard lacks and vice versa. For the most part there really isn’t a lot to improve in this area.
There have been a few controllers aimed at keyboard-using gamers, but they mostly consisted out of seperately placed WASD keys. No full keyboard. People already have a keyboard, so why get a seperate controller which is essentially just a few seperate keys?
Still, improvements are possible and precisely for that reason I’m personally quite surprised nobody has made a gamer-oriented keyboard yet. There simply hasn’t been a keyboard with the focus on gaming (and WASD) instead of (and in addition to) typing. Kelmon’s suggestion of analogue keys would be a nice possible feature in this respect.
On to the subject of joysticks and racing wheels. These are two types of controllers designed pretty much specifically for two types of games. Flying and racing.
Flight sims aren’t really popular these days, but there’s still a reasonably big group of fanatics who don’t play anything else and can’t imagine flying with something other than a joystick.
Racing games are still quite popular though, but face the ‘problem’ that most people don’t feel buying a wheel is really worth it. I, however, feel that it’s entirely worth it. Having a racing wheel only adds to the fun of racing. So yes, I have one. And while I still play more FPS games than racing games, I do enough racing to justify my purchase.
There should be a universally usable controller (though really, that’s nigh impossible). Gamepads are great, but lack accuracy and will continue to lack it with the current gamepad design. Simply impossible the way gamepads are now. The mouse and keyboard combination has extreme amounts of accuracy, but aren’t nearly as good as gamepads for button mashing, which is, incidentally, one of the best ways to play sports and fighting games: (controlled) button mashing. Still, IMO, the keyboard/mouse combo gets a lot closer to being a potential “ultimate control system” than gamepads do.
However, when it comes to games trying to simulate real life environments like flying and racing (as opposed to actually controlling things, like in RTS or RPG games), the only good controller is a controller modelled after the inspiration of the game. DDR and that fishing rod thing are also good examples of this. Light guns also have some real potential, but player movement isn’t included yet. Until they get that included as well, they simply cannot compete with the mouse/keyboard combo just yet (at least, concerning FPS games).
And Cyrris, I’m not rich. I’m no controller freak and simply wouldn’t want to have a seperate controller for each gametype. But for racing games, I like to have a wheel. And for the forseeable future, a racing wheel will be the absolute only other controller besides the mouse/keyboard combo I’ll have.
15th December | Reply
An analogue WASD controller is an excellent idea. My friend Tigzy has a Nostromo gaming pad - which is just basically common keyboard buttons for FPS games strapped on a special hand thingy which can tilt for a comfortable angle with your wrist. It’s also got a few little other dials and switches for whatever.
What I was thinking is if such a pad would be able to be tilted and have the tilting with, perhaps, the joystick-like effect. It might hurt your wrist after long periods of gaming, but damn. I should file a patent…
17th December | Reply
Nostromo SpeedPad V2.0
PistolMouse FPS
18th December | Reply
Ah, the sweet days when people would actually fork out a packet for peripherals with 25 programmable buttons just to play another mundane Microprose flight sim, with a recommended retail price of £45, a ripoff only topped by the UK launch of the Nintendo 64.
People wised up, and now developers design games and control systems around the peripherals that people own. NFSU 2 handles perfectly on the Playstation’s analogue controller, and Freelancer was deliberately designed with a far larger target market in mind than the typical simulation - whether peripheral takeup died with space and flight sim sales or vice versa would certainly be an interesting investigation.