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Whatever Happened To The Joystick?
Ant writes "MSN UK has up an article that looks into the 'downfall' of the joystick: 'Sometimes technology disappears completely, but often it just fades into the background — still existing, still being used and sold and, occasionally, desired, but probably looking wistfully back on past glories. Which neatly described the joystick's steady slide away from its role as THE gaming peripheral to a fondly remembered also ran. But the joystick's tale is a long and convoluted one — and it is worth looking back into its often mysterious and ill-studied history before explaining why it will rise from the ashes like the mythical phoenix.' Seen on ClassicGaming."
It broke after playing the 100m dash in Summer Games.
The joystick met its Doom
Today's games require dual analog controllers and about 27 buttons. A decent joystick set that has all that functionality does exist - but it's primarily relegated to the flight sim community.
To have dual analog controllers in a large form factor, you'd have to have the joysticks mounted on something sturdy. Recall that back in Atari days, you used your weak hand to stabilize the thing while controlling it with your dominant hand. With two sticks, you'd need a base. And that would be big and not very mobile. And you'd still have to have some design where you could easily press all the buttons without moving your hands. Again, like a flight sim system, but those are very expensive.
So basically, the joystick got shrunk and put on a handheld controller.
Doesn't each XBox 360 and PS3 controller have *TWO* joysticks on them??
Joysticks were always a niche peripheral really - keyboard/mouse is much better for FPS, and though fighting games use joysticks in the arcade, it's a lot easier to combo with a digital pad (dammit Melty Blood, I pushed down three times, why isn't your dead zone large enough to notice?). I think what the decline in joysticks really shows is the decline in first-person flight sim-esque games - remember when X-Wing/TIE fighter/etc. was the big thing to play? What happened to those days? The last decent game of that sort I remember was Star Trek Bridge Commander, and I'll bet many people played through the whole campaign without even noticing the ability to control the Enterprise flight-sim style. It's a shame, because it seems like one of the genres that would really benefit a lot from modern graphics. So, what happened to it?
I am trolling
It was an inferior control device for home consoles. The joystick is only an effective controller when it's properly secured into a solid base. e.g. An arcade machine. When translated to home use, it tended to be detached from a solid base and thus suffered. The 2600 CX40s used a wide base to attempt to combat this problem, but a player still applied torque to his own hands when using the joystick. The CX24 Prolines that were included with the Atari 7800 were that much worse. It was physically straining to use the joysticks properly due to the narrow base.
The only company that produced a worse home joystick was Coleco. Their joystick was so small, you needed to palm it to use it. Palming the stick resulted in even MORE torque, thus making gaming very tiring despite the wide base.
At the end of the day, the gamepad was a superior control device for home consoles. It met the needs of the average game better, thus relegating joysticks to arcade and flight-sim use only.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Ever play one of the MechWarriors or similar giant bipedal war machine robot games? I found joysticks rocked for those, as well.
Unfortunately I game so little know, I hardly knew joysticks were out of style...
...TFA makes a rather grievous error when it refers to the "Nintendo joypad". The joypad was an early attempt at combining both control methods. e.g. The Atari CX78 was a joypad:
http://www.atariage.com/controller_page.html?SystemID=7800&ControllerID=24
The NES controller was properly referred to as a gamepad. Modern controllers blur the distinction by having both DPad controls as well as thumbstick controls.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
These thumbsticks bear stronger consideration - although they are reduced to joystick nubs - these have been integral to joypads since the original PlayStation...
As I recall, my N64 had a thumbstick smack in the middle of the controller before the Sony Dualshocks (or pre Dualshocks, if they had no vibe.) Am I remembering this incorrectly? In additon, I found the article to be a bit pedantic and with littel substance. No mention of force feedback or joystick hats, which are the real progenitors of modern day thumbsticks.
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
The IBM PC had no joystick ports and as it became the dominant gaming platform over machines from Commodore and Atari the inexpensive, simple 8-way joystick was abandoned to be replaced by expensive sound cards and complicated joysticks.
I find it sad that entire genres of gaming became extinct with it.
Only now are flash games reviving the idea of simple, but fun games.
It's funny that in 2008 there are tons of games being developed that play with.... a keyboard!
ASDF!
I've always considered those thumbsticks. When I hear joystick I look back fondly at the days of Tie Fighter or Falcon 3.0 where you grasped the joystick with your entire hand and it had multiple buttons built in on it and on the base. I really felt like I was controlling the aircraft when using a joystick. Nowadays when using thumbsticks I usually have to configure the game to inverse the Y-axis, something that seems so obvious to me since I grew up using joysticks but it must not be that common anymore.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
I for one love my X-Arcade joystick (link warning: some video game sounds present). Nothing makes for a better MAME experience short of building an entire MAME cabinet.
Oh gosh, mine are long gone. They were pretty worn out from RealSports Baseball and trying to time the jumps over the crocodiles in Pitfall. I had totally forgotten about the EVIL paddles. Why is it that they all seemed to develop that "stuttering" motion after a few uses? I hated using them because whatever you were trying to control with them never moved smoothly across the screen, so you'd end up overcompensating since you weren't sure where things were going to go.
I guess I'm just bitter that I could never get past level 9 playing Kaboom!
It got too expensive. I recently looked into purchasing an USB arcade joystick for use with 2D fighter games, and the only ones worth looking at (X-Arcade, Hori) cost about $100, for a single controller. In comparison, a new PS2 can be had now for $130. $100 is just too much to shell out for a gaming peripheral.
Anyone can "stand up for what they believe", but it takes a very brave individual to change what they believe. - Loundry
Joysticks have gone out of style because we haven't had a new Descent game in almost a decade. Similarly, the last great space combat sim was Freespace 2. There are probably some chicken-and-egg issues as well. You don't buy a joystick if you haven't a game to go with it, and you don't buy appropriate games if you don't have a joystick.
I was at some sort of huge fair along with my air cadet squadrons one summer many moons ago, and one of the other squadrons in attendence had brought along a 3/4 scale model spitfire, you could sit in it and everything.
There was a breakfast television crew wandering around filming and some hot blonde TV presenter was being shown said spitfire and helped to climb into it. Upon trying to sit down down in the cockpit she suddenly finds her way impeded and asks the cadet sergeant "Oops! What's this between my legs?"
Cadet Sergeant, with big grin: "That's the joy stick". Cue red-faced presenter and much laughter.
I don't think that bit ever made it on the telly...
There's something to be said about the fine motor control that the fingers are capable of that can't be easily replicated by the entire arm. Joysticks require a steady hand and a working surface you can rest your arms on so they don't tire, while the smaller analog sticks of today only require the thumbs to rest on them. They're best used in situations that simulate Joysticks in real life, such as in flying simulators. They don't translate nearly as well to the (mostly) 2D movement in an FPS as a simple crosspad does because most movement in those environments don't require analog sensitivity. A joystick requires much more of a response to achieve the same results.
That being said, the immersive qualities of holding the joystick while leading an enemy target is much greater than the simple twitch movements that most games rely on today, as well as improved dexterity when using both large and small muscle groups at the same time (see also: autoaim). If anything replaced the joystick it's the mouse, not the analog stick. It's much more comfortable to use, requires less effort to achieve the same sensitivity, and is much more ubiquitous (imagine trying to use a joystick to move the Windows mouse).
FlightGear - Linux and Windows, great modelling and strong developer community. Speech and beer free too. http://www.flightgear.org/
Of course, the first really good non-joystick action/puzzle game I played was Lode Runner. You used the keyboard. The left hand controlled movement with six keys, and the right hand controlled actions with six keys. You rested your hand on the keyboard. It worked sort of like xevil. It was surprisingly easy to get the hang of.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
(Looks down at lap) Thanks to Viagra, nothing. Same as it ever was.
Joysticks are still around, but for some reason they are not all left handed.
8/16-bit era joysticks were operable with either hand, so naturally being right handed I used my... right hand! Then Nintendo came along with the NES and it's left-handed gamepads, and everyone else copied them. Now modern gamepads have analogue joysticks, but they are operated with the left hand.
Surely since 9 out of 10 people are right handed, and precision joystick control needs more dexterity than simple button pressing, the joystick should be on the right.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
In the FPS genre at least joysticks are still going strong, although in a small niche community. ;).
Maybe I should replace "Joystick" with "Joystick + Trackball" because that is the basic
configuration. The first realization of this was the Mad Catz PantherXL ( I have 3 ).
After Mad Catz discontinued it, people moved to either (1) modded PXLs with a USB Panther DX
( basically the joystick part of the PXL ) in place of the old PXL parallel port joystick
interface and with the guts of a high end optical gaming mouse in place of the mechanical
trackball sensor or (2) just a regular joystick and trackball used simultaneously. Man this
really brings back the memories of totally dominating the mouse + keyboard crowd
Anyway, if you want more information, go here : http://stevehailer.com// .
jdb2
Tempus ut sagitta fugit et muscae pomorum bananam amant
When I read the title, my first thought was: "I thought most controllers for consoles have one or two joysticks." The joystick may be dead on the PC (with its superior mouse), but it's alive an well on controllers. It shrunk, that's all, but it's basically the same thing.
"With two sticks, you'd need a base."
This is exactly correct. I'm a bit of a flight game nut (I hesitate to use the word "sim" because while I do enjoy highly realistic games like Falcon 4, I still play a great deal of Ace Combat). While I've owned a number of sticks over the years, my current favourite is the Hori Flightstick II that shipped with the special editions of AC5. Before this I used a Microsoft Force Feedback 2, which had an extremely heavy base. You would use your weak hand for the throttle control at the base of the stick and your dominant hand for the stick itself. The weight of the base was sufficient.
The Hori sticks are quite light, and therefore come with suction cups on the bottom. This actually works quite well, provided whatever surface to which you intend to affix them is smooth. My coffee table and desk (both fairly standard Ikea fare) are "textured" slightly, and the sticks will not stay in place. The worst is the left hand throttle control. I prefer to adjust my throttle to have a lot of friction (there's an adjustment on the bottom of the unit), but this means that throttling up often results in me just shoving the whole stick forward instead.
My current solution is that I have both of them mounted on a pane of glass that used to be a door for an entertainment unit that I no longer use. I've stuck some rubber feet on it to protect the surface of the table or desk, and to keep it sliding around. This works perfectly while playing, but just as the parent post suggested, this hack of a base for my sticks is big, and not very mobile. They sit, always stuck to the glass, rather conspicuously beside my entertainment unit. It's an okay solution, but quite annoying.
I seriously doubt that anyone other than flight game addicts like myself would be willing to put up with it.
OK, everyone seems to be talking about THEIR joystick, and for some people it's "analog" whereas for others its "digital."
Both have been around since the dawn of modern gaming, and both had their place.
Digital joysticks, i.e. ones with four (or sometimes eight) discrete position switches, have mostly been replaced by gamepads of some form or keyboards. Really, they were no more than custom-purpose keyboards themselves. Moving in a direction consisted of "hold the button down until you're where you want to be." Most of the continued existence of these 'classic' joysticks is from nostalgia, although modern game controllers certainly can trace their lineage back to them.
Analog joysticks are a different beast entirely, with either pots or digital encoders on two axes, for continuous range-of-motion detection. These are essential for flight sims, and are not at all endangered. As long as we have (good) flight sims, we'll have analog joysticks.
As an aside, stick-less joysticks have been around just about as long as joysticks. Does anyone else remember the Intellivision controllers?
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
What about the paddle wheel?
The last time I used a joystick as the exclusive interface for a console was the Atari. Since then, games have grown more sophisticated, and require a more sophisticated interface, not because a more sophisticated interface is most appropriate to the game at hand, but because it's more versatile.
Take driving games, for instance. Using a steering column is a more natural interface for them. But you can only use that interface for the driving game, not for an FPS. So as a developer, which would you rather code for, a single-use interface, or one that bridges the game universe for a given console?
Sure, for nostalgia's sake I miss the good ole days of playing Star Command on a joystick. But I would trade that innocent fun for the immersive experience of GTA on a PS?/Xbox*/Wii any day.
In like fashion I long ago abandoned the paddle wheel used for Pong. It carries fond memories, sure, but after Breakout it ceased to be relevant.
Fun and playability are the constants, to my mind. Focus on those, less on eulogies for lost interfaces.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
It's not that I have a problem reaching the left stick. The problem is that I have to reach at all. Like I said, with a gamecube/xbox/360 controller, the way your hand naturally rests on the controller places your thumb directly on the left thumbstick. On the DualShock, your have to keep your thumb at an angle in order to operate the left thumbstick, thus not keeping your hand in a more neutral position.
To me, it's a simple and stupid design flaw that they will never fix because people are used to it. Being used to a bad design doesn't suddenly transform it; it's still a bad design.
Living With a Nerd
Lack of joysticks these days is one of the reasons I gave up on consoles (until the Wii). Those...things that you control with your thumb are not joysticks. I can't understand how in the hell that was supposed to be better.
My thumbs are.. all thumbs. I mean seriously, that phrase came about because thumbs just aren't very precise in their movement. But all you kids who had NESes before puberty all have that "mutation" that was talked about here on Slashdot a while back which allows you to use your thumb as a precision input device instead of your index fingers. Which also explains how in the hell you manage to text from a cell phone.
Oh and what is it with you folks who say FPS games were best used with "keyboard and mouse"? I was never much into FPS games, but the only really usable configuration was "joystick and mouse". You suction-cupped the joystick onto your desk (your joystick did have suction-cups, right?) for your left hand and mapped the trigger and/or top buttons to things like jump or crouch (the buttons on the joystick base were clearly unusable). Then you put the mouse under your right hand, as usual. This way, you had good coarse analog control of your movement with your left hand, and fine precision analog aiming with your right hand.
Now everyone get off my lawn.
I personally can't stand those little thumb joysticks.
Why? Because they have no precision. Your thumb is very poor at making small changes, especially when targeting someone. Try playing Unreal Tournament for instance on a console and then with a mouse. Your thumb also doesn't move in all directions as easily, so there's another problem.
There's a reason all of the serious online gamers use PCs - a console controller won't cut it. When the difference between headshotting someone is 3-4 pixels in hi-def, well, good luck on a PS3.(note all PC games and monitors are already more than 720P capable unless the programmers sucked) 1280*1024 is considered medium resolution in fact by most PC gamers.
I have dozens of games that require a joystick - a real one. I also have a dedicated steering wheel. They have specific uses that can't be replicated with any other controller. Need for Speed alone is night and day on the console versus a good force feedback wheel with a clutch pedal and shifter. Yes, there are two wheels that have an optional clutch pedal.
You also can't possibly play a game like Mechwarrior or X3 without one. Not unless you want to die over and over again. There's a reason why fighter planes use them and it's also why even 50 years from now, there still will be games that require them.
I personally hate articles like this. Maybe to the author it seems like they are outdated technology, but they still exist and there is no substitute for them, just like there isn't a good one for the mouse on your PC. Each serves a specific role that's not going to be served by another device.
A quick search Best Buy turned up 5 models alone. Dead and gone? Hardly.
P.S. I just played Tie Fighter in XP last night for some nostalgia. LucasArts released a patch in 2004 that makes all of the old games work perfectly with XP and 2K. You need the latest versions of the game(X-Wing Trilogy) and a patch, but it all works perfectly.
I got a copy myself so that my son could play the Star Wars titles to get up to speed as it were.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000050I88?tag=thearmchairem-20&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=B000050I88&adid=1KBTT1SXX3J1M796A6WE&
Worth every penny.
http://www.lucasfiles.com/index.php?action=file&id=653
Here's the patch. Technically it will work with the W95 collector's editions, but they aren't as polished and the 3D engine they added to the trilogy edition makes it actually look good - perfectly playable, in fact. 640*480*32bit color with texture mapping. If you never saw the original X-Wing with the rendering engine from Alliance, do yourself a favor and check it out.
And between the "G", "H" and "B" keys on ThinkPad keyboards.
---anactofgod---
"Equal opportunity swindling - *that* is the true test of a sustainable democracy."