Full Control

What makes video games so very special compared to other forms of media is that they allow viewers to interact with them. The ability to control the actions of characters or shape the world around always made video games more entertaining than films to me personally, and the way we do this is through all sorts of input devices.

It should be clearly be obvious when you play a game you need some sort of input device. There's the mouse and keyboard which is commonly used on PCs and the there's the standard gamepad used on consoles, simple. Lets look at an example of a controller from the early days when home entertainment systems like the Atari 2600 were knocking about:

http://www.axess.com/twilight/console/detail/2600.jpg

You're probably thinking: "thank god someone invented the d-pad n' face button controller", cus' I wouldn't blame you. The very old gen stuff had terrible controllers, no ergonomic design was ever was considered. But as soon as we thought the days of the old joy stick controllers we gone, well would you look at that... an analogue stick in addition to to the d-pad and face buttons. While Nintendo beat Sony to implement the analogue stick on their console controller later they were to learn that they had to have at least two sticks, one to control the movement of the character and the other for the camera. It is now pretty much a necessity to have this kind setup for all gamepads and controllers at this day and age (though it looks like Nintendo forgot that lesson with the Wii...), while the layout and placement is down to the manufacturers understanding of ergonomics and player preference.

Now onto the the use of keyboards. When I started playing games on the PC I primarily used the arrow keys to control movement. I was completely surprised several years later when I discovered the extreme popularity of the WASD setup. I looked into the origins of WASD, though answers seem pretty vague, a lot sources point at the game Quake. I don't think it was Quake that was first to use WASD as its default setup but due to the game's popularity the control scheme was probably quickly adopted by the FPS crowd at the time and future FPS games went with it.

Speaking of FPS, before I purchase a shooter (be it first or third) for a console I always have to go thought the trouble to find out whether a game has inverted camera controls as an option. You see, I'm a bit of an oddball when it comes to console FPS. I need to play in inverted controls otherwise I become an unco-ordinated mess as I play. Most of the time the games always have the option, however on occasions they partially have it. It really puzzles me... why bother giving the option for y-axis alone to be inverted but not the x-axis, it actually makes the game almost impossible for me to play as fumble about with partially inverted camera. Of course I have no problem playing FPS on the PC, the keyboard and mouse just seems so normal and intuitive.

While we have the standard controllers for playing games, this generation seems to have produced quite the number of alternative or simply different controllers. While I have to admit the NES produced a large number of peripherals to use, it really seems more apparent that this generation various controllers has done many things to the gaming culture. With the Wii it's unique ability to perform like a mouse and read movement gestures has created interest and opened up gaming to a wider audience. Sony and Microsoft set to follow suit and produced the Move and Kinect, the latter being the more interesting of the two.

Just type down Kinect Hacks on youtube and discover the craziest and yet potentially groundbreaking things that can be done with the device. Who knows, one day we may achieve the ultimate goal of complete virtual reality which doesn't necessarily have to be implemented in games. So many industries would benefit from this, such as the medical industry as this could provide many trainee surgeons a simulation as closely accurate to the real deal as possible.