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Evening Reading: Under Control

by Garnett Lee, Jan 18, 2010 5:30pm PST

Of all the technical parts that go into a game, none may be more important than the controls. But while we seem to welcome extended discussions on the technical merits of things like graphics and sound in games, that doesn't seem to happen for controls. Part of that I think comes from the simple fact that there's jargon, especially for graphics, that makes it easy for people to throw around some words. I'm sure there's probably some sort of similar language for control designers but not being common we'd all just get lost in it anyway.

It's easy to stick to the safe side of graphics discussions and talk about how many shaded pixels get pushed around the screen without going out on a limb to say whether the resulting imagery makes it worthwhile. Without a similar shared vocabulary for controls I think we at times don't know where to begin the conversations. For instance, one thing about good controls is that the first time you use them they just feel right. Writers tend to describe this as "intuitive" (I'm not jumping into the semantics of the use of that word here but be my guest if you want to). That leaves so much open to interpretation, though, that it doesn't really say very much.

Besides better discussions amongst ourselves, improving how we talk about controls would also pay off in helping developers better improve their designs. While the overused intuitive won't give them much to go on, saying that the nervous behavior of the steering not being able to keep on a line at speed translates to some combination of sensitivities and other variables the person who designed the controls will understand.

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