Poll: Why are game characters never given the ability to be left handed?

Ainsley Bartlett

New member
Apr 27, 2011
71
0
0
Rocking Thunder said:
Well I can see for like swordfighting games, but what about shooters, I mean I dont think it would screw up animations if your cod character was lefthanded
In shooters it meant to make it more realistic. As the majority of soldiers will be right handed, the bullet shells come out of the right hand side of the gun. If you put the gun to the left hand side of the face you may get a hot shell in the eye... As it's a game i don;t think it matters but it's meant to reflect the realism.
 

Treblaine

New member
Jul 25, 2008
8,682
0
0
Rocking Thunder said:
Whenever I play first person games, from shooters to RPG's, every game character seems to be right handed. While I understand why that is the default setting for game characters, what I dont understand is why there can not be an option for characters to be left handed. I am sure it would not be all that hard to program (just flip it around), and it is really odd for me to see a character holding a sword in his right hand, so why not just have the option? I am fine with a couple of games not having it, but I just find it odd that you can not do that. Thoughts?
You got to respect the developer's decision, putting pressure on them to "just flip the animation around" doesn't work.

Look at Twilight Princess, it was developed on gamecube where Link is his traditional left-handed. But ported to Wii late in development thy couldn't just flip the character, they had to flip the ENTIRE GAME WORLD!

That's not a problem. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune actually has a cheat that let you do that any time on the fly, the whole world is mirrored right to left where not only is Drake Left Handed but so id pretty much everyone else. All the guns even fire from the "wrong" side. Of course all the writing is backwards (not subtitle overlays though).

But really, I'm afraid you will just have to get used to it. There is also a real life parallel. The standard issue rifle in the British Armed forces is the L85, also known as the SA-80:


Notice the ejection port is as far back as the face and ejects to the right. this weapon is impossible to fire from the left shoulder. That means all soldiers, regardless of their handedness, are taught to fire from the right shoulder and right shoulder ONLY!

And for people who have never fired a gun before this is not a major problem, both left and right handed people adapt well enough to right shoulder firing.
 

Kraj

New member
Jan 21, 2008
414
0
0
bobtheorc said:
I'm sure I have played a shooter where you can change your characters hand, can't for the life of me remember what it was though.
the unreal series, at least on PC, and some games using an unreal engine should have an option under graphical settings for which side of the screen your weapon shows on.
 

Sebster 105

New member
Feb 27, 2011
198
0
0
believer258 said:
Sebster 105 said:
bobtheorc said:
I'm sure I have played a shooter where you can change your characters hand, can't for the life of me remember what it was though.
Any Valve game.
How do you switch hands in Left 4 Dead on PC? I didn't know you could on Valve games...
Well, you can in CSS and TF2 I don't see why you couldnt.
 

thatcanadianguy

New member
Feb 15, 2009
137
0
0
because most video gams now adays use motion capture to take real world movemnts and apply them ingame. and the majority of the public are right handed.

as well. haveing that options means double the amount of codeing for weapons and reloading animations. which means longer dev time. which means more money spent on weapon animation, which emans less spent on enviromnt or gameplay or whathave you.

and to answer questions above. Quake and Unreal tournament are the only games i know of whre you can change the handedness of your player.
 

Tonimata

New member
Jul 21, 2008
1,890
0
0
MikailCaboose said:
Link. There, there's a pretty common lefty.
AW GODDAMN YOU NINJAS!

Also yeah, as far as I can recall, Link has been a lefty in every single Zelda game where it can actually be appreciated.
 

bam13302

New member
Dec 8, 2009
617
0
0
actually, some games do, see unreal tournament (if i remember correctly there was an option for your character to hold the gun left, right, middle, or invisible)
 

Kurt Horsting

New member
Jul 3, 2008
361
0
0
I know why everyone in tekken is right handed. Its because the buttons are assigned to limbs (left punch[1], right punch[2], left kick[3], right kick[4]). So having a left handed character would reverse the buttons to a lot of universal moves. Instead of a 1,2 jab string you have to do 2,1. A d/f+2 launcher would become d/f+1, which d/f+1 is normally a safe mid attack. u/f+4 launcher would be u/f+3 which usually doesn't launch and etc. Also, it would confuse people trying to side step the left handed character because of how moves track a side stepping character in that game. It would be less confusing to the player to just make everyone right handed. Fighting games have a steep and confusing learning curve already, why add a character that has reversed controls compared to the rest of the cast?
 

GiantRaven

New member
Dec 5, 2010
2,423
0
0
BoTTeNBReKeR said:
I believe Die Hard Nakatomi Plaza was also a shooter where you held every gun in your left hand =).
I should hope so, seeing as Bruce Willis (and by extension, John McLane) is left-handed.
 

CrystalShadow

don't upset the insane catgirl
Apr 11, 2009
3,829
0
0
Rocking Thunder said:
Whenever I play first person games, from shooters to RPG's, every game character seems to be right handed. While I understand why that is the default setting for game characters, what I dont understand is why there can not be an option for characters to be left handed. I am sure it would not be all that hard to program (just flip it around), and it is really odd for me to see a character holding a sword in his right hand, so why not just have the option? I am fine with a couple of games not having it, but I just find it odd that you can not do that. Thoughts?
What I want to know is why this is still ignored on the Wii.

You can't begin to realise how awkward it was trying to play red steel in the natural inclination for me, which is to hold the remote in my left hand.
It proved way too awkward, so I had to give up and swap hands.
Lots of other games have given me similar problems to greater or lesser degrees, but almost none give it any consideration.

And what's with Legend of Zelda?

I mean, I found in practice, that having Link be right-handed didn't really matter much in Twilight Princess, but I'm thinking it's going to be a big headache in skyward sword.

But, when asked about it, representatives of Nintendo said they had no intention to give the option to swap the controls around.
This suggests they don't think it matters...

But, if that were true, why is Link Right-handed now?

He's been left-handed in every single game where you could work out which hand he held his sword in...
And Twilight Princess on the Gamecube still has him left-handed.
Yet, to make the Wii version, he became right-handed, and to do this, they felt they had to mirror the entire game world.
(And as a result, the sun rises in the west, and sets in the east.)


But the same thing goes for different games.

We have some games with hugely detailed character creators, where you can change the fiddliest little detail of a character's appearance.
Yet, we can't make a left-handed character?

Ugh.

PhiMed said:
Well, the gun aiming, I can understand. But the swords? In medieval times you either learned to be right-handed or got murderized. So there's that.
Lol. Depends on the culture, and what period in history you're talking about.
There's some suggestion that some of the most dangerous swordsmen around were left-handed.

(And hints that a lot of famous artists, such as Leonardo Davinci were as well. But that's difficult to substantiate beyond some anecdotal evidence.)
 

Penguin_Factory

New member
Sep 13, 2010
197
0
0
Oh hey, someone brings up under-representation of a minority group and is immediately answered by tons of people who are not part of that group explaining why it's not actually a problem. Shine on, you crazy diamond!

The fact that you can switch hands in a tiny minority of games doesn't make the situation any better. That Unreal Tournament is just about the only game series anyone can think of demonstrates exactly what the OP was talking about.

Where possible, I would like the ability to switch my characters handedness, particularly in RPGs and MMOs where you can customize everything else about yourself. I know it's not always feasible to do this, and that's cool. FPS games in particular are becoming more physical, and I'm sure you couldn't easily have two different animation sets for every melee strike and neck snap. That's fine. However, I would like to present a novel solution to the problem:

Why not just make more games with left-handed protagonists? The vast majority of games don't have any left handed people in them at all.

I'm not trying to claim this is anywhere near as big a problem as under-representation of non-white/homosexual/female characters. Handedness doesn't define a person nearly as much as race or sex or sexuality. But it would be nice to occasionally see the trend getting reversed.

(Yes, I know Link used to be left-handed. Again: naming a handful of games with left handed characters doesn't make the problem go away).

In shooters it meant to make it more realistic. As the majority of soldiers will be right handed, the bullet shells come out of the right hand side of the gun. If you put the gun to the left hand side of the face you may get a hot shell in the eye... As it's a game i don;t think it matters but it's meant to reflect the realism.
I will consider this a valid excuse when "realistic" military shooters stop pretending that fighting in a war is like being in a James Bond movie.
 
Sep 14, 2009
9,073
0
0
Rocking Thunder said:
Well I can see for like swordfighting games, but what about shooters, I mean I dont think it would screw up animations if your cod character was lefthanded
there are lots of shooters i have played (not necessarily fps's, as i dont care for those really) where you could switch between left and right hand (granted it mostly switched shoulders, but it still technically is making you left hand dominate in the view)

gears of war i believe you can, there are a bunch i have played they just aren't coming to mind right at this moment.
 

LGC Pominator

New member
Feb 11, 2009
420
0
0
The original Unreal had a gun placement option, aside from that (and quake 3 as previously mentioned) I can't think of any
 

Lokithrsourcerer

New member
Nov 24, 2008
305
0
0
Rocking Thunder said:
Whenever I play first person games, from shooters to RPG's, every game character seems to be right handed. While I understand why that is the default setting for game characters, what I dont understand is why there can not be an option for characters to be left handed. I am sure it would not be all that hard to program (just flip it around), and it is really odd for me to see a character holding a sword in his right hand, so why not just have the option? I am fine with a couple of games not having it, but I just find it odd that you can not do that. Thoughts?
lol there are quite a lot of fps's that you can change between left and right handed-ness in the options i've played 3 or 4 at least and i have seen people playing others.
 

baddude1337

Taffer
Jun 9, 2010
1,856
0
0
I'm left handed, and If there ever is the option, for some reason I find it really awkward to have the weapon on the left side. Even the camera in some games, prefer having the character on the left with the weapon in the right hand.