Controller Evolution

Twilight_guy

Sight, Sound, and Mind
Nov 24, 2008
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The best part: gaming heritage. The fact that someone said that without using air quotes and without being called out on it is a victory for gaming as a an art form.
 

Retsam19

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Dec 6, 2010
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As to the tutorial discussion, it's a difficult place for games. The comparison to different reading levels is very apt. On the one hand, you don't want to publish everything in the world at a high level that many people can't read at and just expect them to immediately jump the gap. If everything were written in Shakespearian English, we as a society would have some problems, especially in the short run, but if I went into a bookstore to purchase a copy of Hamlet, and they handed me a 15 minute examination on how to properly read a book and wouldn't let me purchase it 'till I was done, I'd be rightfully ticked off.

The key to this analogy is that it's not the job of each and every book to introduce you to the English language. It's the job of the book to introduce you to its own unique details and quirks, but it assumes you're already competent enough to read it. We already have an external infrastructure designed to deal with this problem. Now, I don't expect controlling a video game to be a core part of elementary school curriculum any time soon (though if those sort of controls are integrated more into our society, they could be), but perhaps the consoles or developers themselves should put out resources to do so? A free downloadable "Intro to FPS" tutorial could serve this function, allowing FPS games to streamline their tutorials.

Ferisar said:
Wait. Wait wait.

Silent Hill 2 and Wii Tennis aren't on the same level of immersion because of controls?

Yeah, no.
Not buying that. That's a really -really- baseless comment.
Baseless? I thought Yathzee justified it pretty well. To be immersed in a game, you have to feel connected directly with the action on screen. The game should be about thinking "move left, move right, jump" (or insert other genre-appropriate paradigm here), rather than thinking "push the left thumbstick to the left". But Wii Tennis, fun as it is, is all about the motion. It's not a fun game because the game itself is the best tennis game out there. If you somehow played with a classic controller, Wii Tennis would be destroyed easily by other tennis games, as it would mostly come down to single button presses. (With perhaps tilting a stick to indicate swing angle)
The game is fun because the physical experience is fun. But that's not very immersive, by most definitions.
 

RA92

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Thorvan said:
My only answer to this is... so? Just because we get simplified controllers does not mean that A; we lose the more complex ones, or B; it will result in necessarily worse experiences. There are significant markets for both the simplified and the complex input devices, for a smattering of reasons; and if we pressure game developers to provide a conduit for both of these in their games, what exactly is the downside?
Easton Dark said:
Start a new gamer onto S.T.A.L.K.E.R SOC and just wait a few hours.

Heck, even I get flustered by the number of hotkeys sometimes. Can't remember what's bandages and what's medkits.
In Dragon Age II, you can either take the whole hack-and-slash route (which is more oriented towards console gamers) or the whole finely-tuned micromanaging tactical route (which is suited better for the K&M setup). Then again, it's Bioware we're talking about, who's not known for shitty ports and actually makes proper multiplatform games. But what's to say that other devs will go through the trouble to cater to two entirely different fighting mechanisms?

Take a look at Tiberium Twilight. The game was trying to cater to both PC and console (though everyone was fired before they could finish a port) through radical changes in gameplay. The result of the more console-oriented gameplay was that it destroyed the C&C series for the PC community.

For all you know, the next Ace Combat iteration might just have QTEs for performing kulbits and pugachevs to make it more 'accessible' and to become the next 'CoD-killer'... '-_-
 

Eclectic Dreck

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Sep 3, 2008
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I think that the problem that people tend to overlook (or gloss over when they do mention it) is simply that managing an avatar in 3d space is a non-intuitive process. It doesn't matter what apparatus you use to do this. With a mouse and keyboard, the accepted standard is that I use the mouse to control the camera (that is, I look up and down and rotate my character about their z-axis) and the keys control my physical motion in the world space (forward, backward, left and right). Consoles simply replace the keyboard and mouse with a pair of joysticks. The problem is, since the movement in 3d space is divorced from how we view 3d space (the spatial motion controls represent a spanning set of vectors for the record meaning you can traverse anywhere in a plane using only these inputs, in case you wanted to pick apart this argument on the basis that you use your camera control as part of motion), a person is suddenly required to manage these two features simultaneously in order to efficiently navigate and observe the game space.

Games that require movement in 3D space will be difficult for a non gamer for as long as this act is abstracted (i.e. there is a controller of any sort involved). If you look at the motion games that have reached a level of success that would depend upon a great many non-gamers participating, you find that they tend to have something in common: they do not expect the player to navigate their avatar through a world space. Wii Sports rarely asks the player to move their Mii at all and instead the controls are used to perform actions while the avatar maneuvers of it's own accord or, if they can move the avatar, they are never asked to manage both the movement of the avatar and a camera at the same time.

The large numbers of buttons and later complexities are all but irrelevant most of the time when a non gamer player could not, without significant effort, even manage to perform the most cursory feat required to interact with a game where they are expected to manage movement and camera. People are perfectly willing to play a complex game that takes ages to master if they individual steps they learn along the way are manageable but only someone dedicated to learning is going to take the time required to overcome that first enormous step
 

daftnoize

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Korne said:
Bob brought up that GH might not even work if it didn't have the controller. I disagree with this. Harmonix had made 2 fantastic rhythm games before Guitar Hero using basically the same highway of notes (Frequency and Amplitude). Everyone that I have showed the games to have become immediatly hooked, since they are really fun games (just like Guitar Hero). What the guitar controller did was serve as a hook and took out the foreign nature of a video game controller (people kinda get the guitar motion).
Thank you so much for mentioning those games. I am a massive fan of pre guitar hero harmonix and actually completely disagree with bob. I play all the guitar HERO GAMES WITHOUT THE SILLY GUITAR!!!! Argghh I rage so much (probably cos i don't really like the music in the guitar hero games) but wish they'd make a true sequal to amplitude. I suppose i'll just have to stick with gitaroo man from now on....
 

qou2600

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Oct 20, 2009
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First of all, I think "Extra Consideration" is great. I really value all three of your opinions and it's great to see a constructive discussion between you.

Secondly, Your comment's about game tutorials got me thinking, why don't consoles come with various tutorials on them? They all come with internal hard drives, why not include a program where you control a person with a couple of different perspectives such as first person and third person to have the player get used to basic camera control and movement. It could even be something the avatar/mii could be used for, as a way to teach people new to the industry or the console in particular.

About the tutorial being skippable, this is mostly due to people who have played the game previously and don't fell the need to re-learn the control scheme.

Movie Bob said:
Right now, it's both easier and slightly less-expensive to familiarize oneself with comic-book continuity than it is with game-to-game continuity...
That is a very arguable point, because I have tried to familiarize myself with both. It's quite difficult to say which one is more expensive because of the time that some of the comic book characters have been around it's quite expensive to purchase all of their comic books, even as re-prints. Where-as some console game's that aren't re-printed are considered "rare" and then relatively expensive but still available on places like amazon.


Sovereignty said:
Point: Movie Bob.


Seriously why isn't there a voting for who won this discussion!?
Because it is a discussion not a debate or argument.
 

qou2600

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Oct 20, 2009
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Also about the Guitar Hero Guitar controller, the game could have been made without the controller or a game similar but the controller played a key role in generating sales and helping it stand out in the public eye as a unique experience. It also adds to the immersion of the player because it give's them the feeling of holding an actual guitar.
 

Dice Warwick

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Nov 29, 2010
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I already put my say on "motion controllers vs button controllers" and I stand by it. (that motion controllers need to take a more support role)

The hand-held (DS, PSP) make a good start for new gamers, most games on them are much more simple and forging.
 

Lex Darko

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Aug 13, 2006
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Raiyan 1.0 said:
Thorvan said:
My only answer to this is... so? Just because we get simplified controllers does not mean that A; we lose the more complex ones, or B; it will result in necessarily worse experiences. There are significant markets for both the simplified and the complex input devices, for a smattering of reasons; and if we pressure game developers to provide a conduit for both of these in their games, what exactly is the downside?
Easton Dark said:
Start a new gamer onto S.T.A.L.K.E.R SOC and just wait a few hours.

Heck, even I get flustered by the number of hotkeys sometimes. Can't remember what's bandages and what's medkits.
In Dragon Age II, you can either take the whole hack-and-slash route (which is more oriented towards console gamers) or the whole finely-tuned micromanaging tactical route (which is suited better for the K&M setup). Then again, it's Bioware we're talking about, who's not known for shitty ports and actually makes proper multiplatform games. But what's to say that other devs will go through the trouble to cater to two entirely different fighting mechanisms?

Take a look at Tiberium Twilight. The game was trying to cater to both PC and console (though everyone was fired before they could finish a port) through radical changes in gameplay. The result of the more console-oriented gameplay was that it destroyed the C&C series for the PC community.

For all you know, the next Ace Combat iteration might just have QTEs for performing kulbits and pugachevs to make it more 'accessible' and to become the next 'CoD-killer'... '-_-
Actually when I was playing the DA2 PS3 demo the first thing I thought when the gameplay started was, "this combat system has been dumbed down for the PCs." I had to pause a moment after I thought that; and asked myself why I thought so.

And then I remembered how a truly good console style hack/slash combat system feels. I thought about the combat in Jade Empire [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJm6VXQYcfk], Demon Stone [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOG6ifU1_FM], and the Kingdom Underfire Series [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzhvu91_A0w].

DA:O's combat (played on the PC, and modded to hell and back) literally put me to sleep. DA2 is better but it's hampered by the vestiges of the old PC point and snore combat system it still has.

As for motion controls:

The only game I've played/seen/heard of that's made really good use motion controls have been on the PS3 using the Sixaxis. Those games being Folklore and Lair (post patch). In Folklore [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ozxFA0r8Dk] (Folksoul in Japan) you use the sixaxis to actually capture the different folks (monsters) in the game after you beat them into submission.

To me the wii/mote is a gimmick validated by those who know not what they do. Like the people who buy overpriced Apple computers because they think their Macbook says something about them other than, "they probably know less than dirt about computers and probably don't play computer games."

To be fair I gave the Wii a fair chance I even bought NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams for the Wii. I had it for Saturn way back when it helped introduce the analog thumbstick. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-27Txc5xc9g] NJoD with the wiimote was a nightmare I spent so much time just trying to get the controls to respond in a predictable way I ended up thinking to myself, "I could playing Demon's Souls right now;" and 5 mins later I was.

I tried on 3 different occasions to play that game with the Wiimote but always end up using the analog stick attachment ignoring the motion control all together. If there was ever a game that could take advantage of the wiimote I would have thought it would be a game like Nights the fact that it doesn't should in itself tell us all something about motion control and games.
 

RA92

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Lex Darko said:
Actually when I was playing the DA2 PS3 demo the first thing I thought when the gameplay started was, "this combat system has been dumbed down for the PCs." I had to pause a moment after I thought that; and asked myself why I thought so.

And then I remembered how a truly good console style hack/slash combat system feels. I thought about the combat in Jade Empire [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJm6VXQYcfk], Demon Stone [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOG6ifU1_FM], and the Kingdom Underfire Series [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzhvu91_A0w].

DA:O's combat (played on the PC, and modded to hell and back) literally put me to sleep. DA2 is better but it's hampered by the vestiges of the old PC point and snore combat system it still has.
Well yes, I know what you mean. Like I always said, arcade combat was always suited to the controller. And it's not wrong of you to expect some good ole fashioned hack n' slash (which isn't all mindless button-smashing and can include real time tactical aspects, as Kingdom of Heaven shows).
 

Fanta Grape

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Aug 17, 2010
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Just posting to say keep this up! It's just as good as any of the video series on this site and I want it to last.

I think getting into gaming can be considered for different types of people. People with iphones or whatnots might want to start playing stuff like mirror's edge or doom to get a feel of what the experience is similar to. Someone who spends a lot of time on the computer should be started off by getting a free steam account and purchasing a copy of Portal or Half-Life 2. Maybe just buy a 16-bit console on eBay for a small price. If I were to recommend gaming to my friends, I'd let them borrow my gameboy or DS. Relatively simple controls and some excellent games. All of these can be very inviting to a new comer so I think the assumption that the people who are outside our current demographic should start off by playing Wii's is poor.
 

Revolutionary

Pub Club Am Broken
May 30, 2009
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Great Stuff! very interesting, this column gets my big rubber stamp of Approval *stamping noise*, I'd like to see more of this. James, especially intrigues me with his ideas.
 

Razhem

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Anacortian said:
I would just like to cast my vote in favor of continuing this series. An expert opinion is great, but an expert discussion is greater still.
Though this is a nice change of pace, lets not go overboard. The only real speciallist in here is James, Bob can at most be considered a movie specialist and both Yathzee and him just happen to be game dorks that have gotten the ability to be listened in the videogame media, but both have no bloody idea about the industry or it's inner workings. Hell, Michael Pachter would be more interesting in here simply because James, an idealist and Pachter, a businessman would be a pretty interesting clash of ideas and concepts.
 

Moffman

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May 21, 2009
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Love this column! Really interesting arguments. I suppose with motion controls it really does depend on what you want from you experience, like Yahtzee I am more inclined to lay back with my video games and use them in this way, if it sucks me in great! But the Wii does offer another (as yet a little flawed) experience that I'm glad exists in the gaming culture.
 

Venereus

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May 9, 2010
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MovieBob said:
Hardcores will benefit from developers being less able to re-press the same game as a "sequel" when the last one is sitting right there online.
I'm not so sure about this point. I think hardcores are actually the ones expecting a sequel to be very similar to the previous iteration. A recent example is the unsong Civilization V fiasco, as in, a lot of hardcore fans were really disappointed with the game, but you wouldn't know about it unless you're part of the franchise's online community, since sales have been good (we're guessing the explicit casual appeal worked) and "professional reviews" praised it across the board (Tom Chick being the only mainstream exception).

What basically happened (appart from the buggy release) is that the sequel didn't built upon the previous game's strengths, and instead started from scratch keeping only the core aspects of the franchise, throwing away lots of mechanics and features we liked and were used to having.

Another lesson to be learned, is that we shouldn't underestimate the power of hype. We knew of the many drastic changes being made, but not only we had hoped and trusted the developer (never again), we also bought right into the hype. Even if publishers tried to re-press the same game, if the hype is built well, we'll buy it anyway. The fact that "hardcores" don't fall for mere graphic updates like "casuals" do doesn't make them impervious to other hype tactics.

Now, many disappointed fans did turn back to Civilization IV, but then it was too late. The only thing that comes close to Bob's point, are the players that bought Civ V as their first Civilization ever, and then went for Civ IV, having tasted blood but suspecting there was a sweeter source. But as far as I know there are not many of those.
 

Ruptuk

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Nov 6, 2010
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Movie Bob! How you have dissapointed me.

A - Skippable tutorials are functionally more important than you realise. Beyond the argument on whether someone has a cetain level of experience, any game needs to cope with every day life, you know those 'Murphy's Law' situations. What if your PC or PS3 dies and you can't recover the save of the game you are half way through? What if there the tutorial takes an hour to complete, at a QA level of the production cycle that an hour per tester of potentially wasted time! It's not just the player at the end some disicions are made! The cloud may help this but personally I like owning a shiny box of new experiences...

B - Movie Bob - 'That'll be a win-win: Newcomers will have, say, GTA 1 through whatever to take a swing at before they dive into the newest one, and hardcores will benefit from developers being less able to re-press the same game as a "sequel" when the last one is sitting right there online.'

Now, I am not excusing the PUBLISHERS (after all its the people that hold the purse strings that decide these things and not the developer unless they also publish) that decided to cut a few corners in order to get a game development cycle in to a tight time frame for little cash. This is an awful practice and does nothing but harm.

Speaking from experience, a sequel will generally share code with it's previous version and the aim will always be to look at what went wrong and get those fixed. A game may have had massively broken code that public would never see, however those issues would HAVE to be resolved and take a certain amount of time and money to fix before they even start 'making' the new game. The less money left equals less time and resource that can be used to make the new features. It's not such a cut and dry argument when you take this type of issue in to account.
 

Captain Underbeard

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I've been enjoying the discussion, both in the article and on the forum, so much so that it's got to the point where I joined just to join in. So congrats all round :) To begin with, I think it's necessary to state a point everyone knows but no-one (I think) has really mentioned.

The universal controllers we use are a necessary compromise. In an ideal world, every game would have a controller suited specifically for playing it, and learning how to use these controls would be the best way to play the game. But games would then be very expensive to buy, and to a lesser extent, to manufacture. BTW this doesn't preclude that similar games would have vastly different controllers - after all, if two games are similar then undoubtedly they will have similar control schemes. But yeah, the controllers we use on consoles are an economic compromise - having one controller with multiple different buttons allows for a great diversity of actions to be done by the player without them having to create stacks of very specific controllers. That's why the keyboard and the PS3/360 controllers (the two are essentially the same) are built the way they are.

A lot of people seem to believe that this means they are optimal in some way, however. For those who are used to these schemes - yes, they very well may be optimal as they are suitable. Such people have a wealth of previous experience with these controllers, or previous and slightly less complicated incarnations. Let's think of current generation FPS's. I know that to aim on a PS3 controller is to press R1 then move the right analog stick. This simulates me looking down my sights then looking around through them. Now step out of your gaming bubble. Is this really the optimal way to *aim*? What about the light-gun way - you have a tactile gun controller with its own sights down which you can aim? I know this isn't perfect, as it requires calibration, but surely this a better way to *aim* a gun in an FPS. But you wouldn't use a light-gun in something like CoD, as light-guns have a very limited (and so far shit) capacity for moving the player around. To my mind, an ideal controller for an FPS would be one that would allow you to aim down-sight whilst retaining all the movement capabilities currently available. That would be a far more 'optimal' way to play these games.

What is the point of a controller? It's to allow the player to immerse themselves in the game, to go from cognitive thought to visible action with as little thought about how they are doing this as possible. On a micro level, a controller is 'optimal' if you can do this - hence I'd argue that, for me, a PS3 controller is optimal. On a macro level, a controller is 'optimal' if ANYONE who plays a game can do this - hence the reasoning behind the lightgun/FPS mash-up above.

This brings me to Yahtzee's point - "It's just I've never seen anyone get as lost in Wii Tennis for hours like I do in, say, Silent Hill 2". I'd argue that has little to do with the controller. Silent Hill 2 is a game built to be played over hours and hours and hours (or maybe just hours and hours, or even only hours). SH2 is made to be played immersively over a long period of time - it wouldn't work as a horror game otherwise. As for Wii Tennis - it's designed to be played in smaller, more discrete chunks. It's immersive for as long as a match lasts - events don't tie you from one match to another. You finish a game, then start a new one. No wonder no-one doesn't get lost in it for as many hours as they do in SH2.

So Yahtzee - the controllers have nothing to do with the duration of immersion, it's more the games they're played with. What about another important factor, the intensity of immersion? How 'immersed' in the game are players? Although that's difficult to gauge, I'd argue they are equally immersive experiences for me (hence on a micro, personal level) though on a macro level, I'd say Wii Tennis is, as more people can become immersed in this easier than SH2 precisely because of the controllers - swinging a Wiimote to mimic a tennis swing has more fidelity to the real-life experience than pressing X, an action not requiring you to move your legs, to run - and that's why Wii Tennis is arguably more immersive as far as controllers are concerned (NOTE: I'm not saying it's a more immersive game overall).

Going along these lines, there seems to be an idea that motion controls are rubbish and will always be rubbish. Games made for them tend to be simplistic, or not make great use of their controls, or when they try to be complex they are miserable experiences.

Well, duh. Try playing CoD on a NES controller. See how much fun that is.

Numerous contributors have mentioned that us growing up, and controller's evolving with new consoles, has gone hand-in-hand. That's a very valid point. I'd like to take this argument further though, as I alluded to with the above sentence.

Veteran gamers love to wear rose-tinted glasses. I know, I'm one of them. But think back to the NES, one of the earliest precursors to today's controllers - how many playing buttons did it have? 2. 6 if you count the D-Pad. How many did the Mega Drive have? 6 (10 with D-Pad). And so on. Games for these machines had to be relatively simplistic, as there were only so many combinations of button you could press - there were only so many inputs. Now? The PS3 has 12 buttons (including the D-Pad), and at least 360 degrees of rotation (or button presses) per stick. The amount of commands available to a PS3 controller compared to a MegaDrive controller is probably a billion times more (don't make me do the maths).

Why am I telling you this? Because the Wii controller is comparable to the NES - it's the first generation, the most simplistic, the most basic. Games with it are simplistic. The Move and the Kinect are MegaDrive/SNES equivalents.

I can gaurantee you, the PS3 equivalent will allow for games equally complex and deep and immersive and impressive as PS3/360 games. But you'll have to wait 20 years to see them. But it's short-sighted to write them off because their NES equivalent produces mostly rubbish games (and I'd argue they're rubbish because we've been spoilt by the PS3s/360s/PC games, and not as stand-alone).

Phew. Sorry that took so long. A thumbs-up if you stayed to the end :-D
 

KEM10

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Raiyan 1.0 said:
Oh dear...

Console gamers already see PC games being brought over to their platform being 'dumbed down' because of the constraints of the controllers. If the industry tries to cater to the novice to expand the market, won't they be simplifying the controllers even further if the current ones appear 'daunting' to a rookie?
I think what they were going for was more games that are simplified and just not using the whole controller for the sake of using the whole controller. I think a Prince of Persia game where all it is would be patforming: analog for moving, analog for camera, button to jump, trigger to go back in time. More games that don't feel obligated to use all 10 buttons, dual axis, and d pad. Besides, I doubt the computer gamers that issue that complaint on a regular basis would pick up said game...then again, Super Meatboy sold really well.