People wised up, and now developers design games and control systems around the peripherals that people own. NFSU 2 handles perfectly on the Playstation’s analogue controller, and Freelancer was deliberately designed with a far larger target market in mind than the typical simulation - whether peripheral takeup died with space and flight sim sales or vice versa would certainly be an interesting investigation.

PistolMouse FPS

What I was thinking is if such a pad would be able to be tilted and have the tilting with, perhaps, the joystick-like effect. It might hurt your wrist after long periods of gaming, but damn. I should file a patent…

On the PC however, you mainly have mouse dependent games. The entire FPS genre is a good example, the entire RTS genre an even better one. A mouse can simply provide far more accuracy than any gamepad can ever hope to achieve and for these types of games, it’s accuracy you need.

So the mouse is the PC’s primary game controller.

However, you also need some extra buttons (for walking in FPS games, for shortcuts and stuff in RTS games) and you have a hand free. So people use the keyboard for that. Lots of buttons and it gets the job done. The mouse adds where the keyboard lacks and vice versa. For the most part there really isn’t a lot to improve in this area.

There have been a few controllers aimed at keyboard-using gamers, but they mostly consisted out of seperately placed WASD keys. No full keyboard. People already have a keyboard, so why get a seperate controller which is essentially just a few seperate keys?

Still, improvements are possible and precisely for that reason I’m personally quite surprised nobody has made a gamer-oriented keyboard yet. There simply hasn’t been a keyboard with the focus on gaming (and WASD) instead of (and in addition to) typing. Kelmon’s suggestion of analogue keys would be a nice possible feature in this respect.

On to the subject of joysticks and racing wheels. These are two types of controllers designed pretty much specifically for two types of games. Flying and racing.

Flight sims aren’t really popular these days, but there’s still a reasonably big group of fanatics who don’t play anything else and can’t imagine flying with something other than a joystick.

Racing games are still quite popular though, but face the ‘problem’ that most people don’t feel buying a wheel is really worth it. I, however, feel that it’s entirely worth it. Having a racing wheel only adds to the fun of racing. So yes, I have one. And while I still play more FPS games than racing games, I do enough racing to justify my purchase.

There should be a universally usable controller (though really, that’s nigh impossible). Gamepads are great, but lack accuracy and will continue to lack it with the current gamepad design. Simply impossible the way gamepads are now. The mouse and keyboard combination has extreme amounts of accuracy, but aren’t nearly as good as gamepads for button mashing, which is, incidentally, one of the best ways to play sports and fighting games: (controlled) button mashing. Still, IMO, the keyboard/mouse combo gets a lot closer to being a potential “ultimate control system” than gamepads do.

However, when it comes to games trying to simulate real life environments like flying and racing (as opposed to actually controlling things, like in RTS or RPG games), the only good controller is a controller modelled after the inspiration of the game. DDR and that fishing rod thing are also good examples of this. Light guns also have some real potential, but player movement isn’t included yet. Until they get that included as well, they simply cannot compete with the mouse/keyboard combo just yet (at least, concerning FPS games).

And Cyrris, I’m not rich. I’m no controller freak and simply wouldn’t want to have a seperate controller for each gametype. But for racing games, I like to have a wheel. And for the forseeable future, a racing wheel will be the absolute only other controller besides the mouse/keyboard combo I’ll have.

I am all for games requiring more complex skills than point and click. I would actually welcome a control scheme that takes a while to master and being able to effectively use real life tatics that make sense. I find a lot of online game tactics take advantage of the game’s limitations rather than what would be possible in the world the game is trying to create.

Analogue keys would be extremely cool. It may take a little while to adjust to it but it would definitly add a lot to gameplay. Esspecially online games where your movement speed determines how much noise you make.