Game Design Blog #2

Alright, time for Game Design blog numero two! Unlike the last blog I'm not going to talk about a specific game, rather I'm going to talk about a control scheme that has become so prevalent in a certain genre of game and put in some guesses as to how it as persisted for so long in gaming culture. What control scheme might I be talking about? Well...

That's right, I'm going to be talking about the First Person Shooter (and Third Person Shooter) control scheme on the PC! The above picture is for the game Team Fortress 2 so there are some parts of it that aren't going to carry across games, but the main things that you need to focus on are WASD, R, Ctrl and Space keys. Now first of all, what do these keys represent? Well WASD is movement in the 4 cardinal directions relative to the player, R is for reloading, Ctrl is usually for crouching and Space is used for jumping. This layout has been carried across many, MANY games in the past. Why might this be? 

Well if you look at the layout of the WASD keys, they're positioned in such a way that the player can leave their left hand in a position they normally have it on the keyboard allowing the fingers to line up in a normal and comfortable way. Another advantage is that the ring, middle and index fingers line up vertically with the 4 keys in to three distinct columns, allowing for easy use. Finally, the WASD keys form a sort of compass by which can easily be interpreted by the player. This analogy between the player and the game works incredibly well as the keyboard movement of forward, left, right and backward carries over perfectly between the players perspective and the perspective of the character in game.

Now let's take a look at the placement of the other keys:The position of the R key keeps it within easy reach of the player's index finger and it's also tied to a button that players can easily reach based on muscle memory as they only have to think about press R to Reload. The Space key would have been chosen as jumping is an action that players will end up using quite frequently which makes its size and position relative to the players thumb allows for easy and frequent use. Lastly, the CTRL key makes use of the players remaining finger while also staying within easy reach of a single hand.

Overall this layout allows the player to easily use one hand to perform all their movements and any necessary miscellaneous movements. However, shooters also rely heavily on the player's mouse which acts as a camera control through movement. This allows for rapid yet precise manipulation of the player's perspective. The left and right mouse buttons will also see use for a weapon's primary (left) and alternate (right) attacks. This works well as the left click on the mouse is often used for most primary actions such as selecting icons or pressing buttons, allowing the player to make an easy association between the click and the action. The same can be said for the right click which sees use for additional actions in day-to-day use.

Overall, the control scheme for shooters is one that allows the user to make many easy associations with the use of the keyboard and immediate actions in the game, as well as analogies which allow the user to perform actions with the keyboard without having to put too much thought into them. This scheme is very sensible and will likely be around for many more years to come.

That's it for now!