Killspeak

The latest podcast from the fellows at Idle Thumbs has a brief discussion of first-person games on consoles and how they’re different from those on the PC. The topic caught my attention because, recently, I’ve been trying to become better at FPS games on consoles. (I completed Mirror’s Edge last night, and am now starting on BioShock—late, I know.)

To me, the key difference between first-person games on PCs and consoles are the control schemes, how they map from intentions (move forward) to player actions (press W), and how the buttons, sticks, and etc. interact with the player’s body.

For example, keyboard control requires coordination of multiple fingers for diagonal motion (e.g. hold W and A), whereas analog controls have a more direct mapping of intention to action (the movement vector is the angle and direction of the stick from the centre).

Speed is also different. In Thief, the player using a keyboard has to toggle between discrete sneaking and running modes: there are only two speeds. On the console, the player has direct, analog control of their character’s speed: it’s up to the player how fast or how slow to move.

The keyboard also has a greater management cost: the player has to remember stuff like the keys to toggle modes, the mode she’s in, and has to coordinate two or three simultaneous actions across two or three fingers.

I think in these two examples, dual analog controls are less abstract and more closely related to what the player is trying to achieve in the game world than are keyboard controls. This might be why some players find it easier to pick up and learn console games.

That said, analog sticks are controlled by thumbs—they’re literally “all thumbs.” With the mouse, motion comes from wrist and arm movements. With the mouse, gross movements are easier to make (arm) and fine ones too (wrist, slow movement). Thumbs aren’t as capable as arms and wrists, and that makes the tradeoff between accuracy and speed harder to adapt during play.

The mouse is also not bound by an arbitrary magnitude as are analog sticks (which the player can only push so far). Instead, mouses are limited (at most) by the physical range of the player’s arm (or the mouse wire): I can move it almost as far and as fast as I can. This means that, in theory, I can whip around much faster in Quake, and snipe more effectively in Team Fortress, with a mouse than with analog sticks.

But, in practice, I suck at Halo and Team Fortress, mouse or gamepad.