As a passionate gamer, I've had my fair share of experiences with different gaming peripherals. I still remember playing everything with joysticks on the Amiga 500.
When I switched to PC so did my habits welcomed the mouse and keyboard setup.
At some point I bought the PSX and that was my first serious encounter with the joypad, but the mouse and keyboard dominated for a long time.
The transition to playing games exclusively with a joypad wasn't the easiest for me. However, certain game experiences led me to fully embrace the joypad as my primary way of playing.
One such game that pushed me towards joypad-exclusive gaming was Omikron: The Nomad Soul. This ambitious title aimed to blend multiple gameplay styles, including exploration (TPP), fighting (Mortal Kombat like), and shooting (FPP). Attempting to tackle these diverse challenges with a keyboard and mouse resulted in constant failure. I didn’t get used to them. I just stopped playing.
At some point it became evident that this game was designed with a joypad in mind, and if only I had the chance to use one back then the game would be far more intuitive and enjoyable. To this day I don’t know whether the game has controller support. Not sure if David Cage cares about that, either 😉
To give you a point of reference, here’s the game’s intro. What David Cage was doing before he did Beyond and Detroit 😉
But the last straw was the infamous after-birth scene in Assassin's Creed II. The complex control scheme demanded precise movements to manipulate baby Ezio's limbs, a task that felt cumbersome and awkward with a keyboard. I simply got lost when thinking what am I suppose to press in the moment!
Switching to a joypad made the experience much easier. The entire game had a lot of controls, but with a joypad they become as easy as it gets!
I never returned to WASD again. I make the exception for games with heavy mouse usage. But mouse and keyboard? No. Controller support or GTFO!
Some games won’t work that well on a controller. Be it first person shooters or real time strategies (now that I think of it I do play less of these games these days 😉). But you can always try to adjust them, right?
I realized that if you can’t design game controls so they fit a joypad you might be making them too complex…
I’ve been thinking recently whether I should ditch “Gamedev Dairy” and get back to “Wannabe Indie Game Developer” as it seems to be more descriptive. What do you think?
Why is it called a "joypad"? Do we really get that much joy from it?
It's called a "joystick" as a euphemism for the penis.
"Playing w your joystick" becomes a double entendre.
It's really about the genre, isn't it? FPS on controller is okay but usually requires aim assist, which is fine PVE but detestable in PVP. And I can't imagine Beyond All Reason with a controller. But in most games, I prefer a controller. I'm glad more PC developers have embraced controllers.