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Can New Game Control Schemes Hope To Match the PC Keyboard?

Posted by Soulskill on from the precision-and-complexity dept.

An opinion piece on Gamasutra discusses how, in spite of the fancy new motion control systems that have come to console gaming, the PC's keyboard and mouse setup is still unreplaceable for many titles and genres. Quoting: "With over 100 keys to choose from (back of the box quotation right there), the possibilities are near endless, if you start to think of shift and control functions altering the purpose of keys. It means that, when the developers start to make their game, they don't have to worry about the limitations of the interface, knowing that, if all else fails, they can always assign the compass to K, even if that's a bit of a stretch to all but the pianists. The keyboard is the friend of ambition, and ArmA 2 is the testament to that, in all its surrealist, broken glory. ... It's the same reason RTS games have found a home on the PC for so long, able to use the skills people accumulate moving around windows and clicking on icons to command troops and manipulate their battle lines. Developers taking advantage of what we already know to teach us something we don't is what gaming is all about."

3 of 202 comments (clear)

  1. i love the keyboard and mouse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I just wish it were taken seriously. Nowadays games are developed for console first, then ported to PC after many months, sometimes never. Even then, the ported games often have incredibly poor controls for moving, camera, and other things. PC gaming should be given the respect it deserves across all genres, not just RTS.

    1. Re:i love the keyboard and mouse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'm not a gamer so maybe I'm missing something here, but why couldn't game consoles support the regular keyboard and mouse in addition to the controller? It sure would make porting PC games to consoles easier, or the player could be given both options. Seems like the best of both worlds, no?

      Most console developers have waged a war to disassociate the fact that a console is basically a glorified, locked down personal computer. The current generation support keyboards (for text input), but go out of their way to ensure that they serve no other function in games.

  2. The reason... by MonkeyINAbaG · · Score: 5, Interesting

    that the keyboard is so hard to match is that it has been used and refined by humanity for such a very long time, compared to other interfaces. Think about it, the alphanumeric keyboard even predates the steering wheel by about 20 years!