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."

Comments

What happened to the joystick?

[suso]

It broke after playing the 100m dash in Summer Games.

Re:What happened to the joystick?

[morgan_greywolf]

Yep. The last joystick I owned was one of the popular 'Thrustmaster 3D' joysticks, with the hats and the buttons and so forth. After a particularly intense session of Doom II, it broke. It was the the third one. After that I got a gamepad-type controller and never looked back.

Re:What happened to the joystick?

[Notquitecajun]

Now that we're done comparing each others JOYSTICKS....

Re:What happened to the joystick?

[bughunter]

The sisters and nieces to this comment really have hit on what was wrong with the joystick in my anecdotal experiences: It broke too often.

Mind you, the models being praised for durability were indeed up to the task of gaming, but most joysticks sold were not. I went thru three Gravis sticks in two years before giving up and switching to a trackball.

Generalizing this leverage theme, the length of the lever arm of a joystick poses two problems 1) the mechanical advantage of the users' force leveraged onto the innards made it expensive to make a durable device, and 2) this mechanical advantage also made it difficult to perform precise control movements.

Starting in the mid-90s, games emerged that required players to do things like select units, lasso groups of units, click on targets and waypoints, aim FPS weapons, etc. The joystick really was not suited to these actions. The much shorter lever arm of a control pad allowed more precise control for aiming FPS weapons, and an absolute displacement interface (mouse or trackball) works better for selecting and commanding RTS units.

I really have never had better controller than a good mouse. I've used trackballs, control pads, joysticks, touchpads, and wiimotes -- the mouse is still the most natural, least RSI-inducing controller I've used. The touchpad comes close, but it lacks precision and has a higher error rate. Of course, I make exceptions for automobile and aircraft simulators, where mockups of the actual vehicle controls can't be beat.

Good ones are expensive

[Mr. Underbridge]

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.

Re:Good ones are expensive

[gstoddart]

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.

And that, is why the Wii is selling more games.

Most of us old geezers don't have the manual dexterity to run those damned controllers. Whereas we can whistfully waggle our Wiis nowadays whenever we wish. ;-) ducks

Cheers

Re:Good ones are expensive

[AKAImBatman]

Did you ever actually use some of the pre-gamepad joysticks? I expanded on the issues in this thread, but the problem can be summed up in one word: TORQUE.

There's nothing more "fun" than fighting one's self for stability of the controller. Some of the controllers were extremely hard on the wrists and caused tiring rather quickly. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the console joysticks were unnatural control devices. When playing my classic game machines, I often do things like hold the joystick sideways in an attempt to find a better grip. (Or at least get gravity on my side. ;))

Joysticks always worked best in an arcade environment where the rotational forces were absorbed by the heavy machines rather than your hands.

Re:Good ones are expensive

[nschubach]

As far as I'm concerned, the Joystick did evolve, into what you called an Analog stick. Now every Playstation/XBox on the planet has two joysticks for every controller and the Wii has one on a "dongle thing."

Joysticks are everywhere.

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't each XBox 360 and PS3 controller have *TWO* joysticks on them??

Re:Joysticks are everywhere.

[Lust]

> A true joystick is much bigger, and is grasped in your entire hand -- usually, fairly comfortably.

That's what she said.

Re:The joystick is alive and well.

[hansamurai]

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.

Happy Memories

[kieran]

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...