I have to fully agree with you.



I really love Indies, I appreciate their work and effort, but I never understood why some of them choose that strange type of controls. Maybe its a way to push the retro-effect but all in all its more annoying than useful. Take this article from Wikipedia "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-handedness" as a reference, which says that 70-90% of the world population are right-handed rather than left-handed.

I remember that I used to play games on PC pretty exclusively using the arrow keys, whilst Alt, Shift, Ctrl and Spacebar were the interaction keys. Your statement about WASD for the past 30 years is entirely untrue. WASD hasn't always been the way people played.



Although I agree that games should support reconfigurable controls (even WASD doesn't accommodate everyone, as I've found through my own development), you've made this sound far more dramatic than I think the situation has been.



For most of the SHMUPs I've played, for example, arrow keys and zxcv were what they all used recently, pretty unanimously. Maybe this just comes down to the differences in the games that we play, as I play far fewer console games than you probably do.



Edit: Just as a sanity check, I decided to go off and check 2 of the bigger indie games of recent years. Braid and The Misadventures of PB Winterbottom. Both of them use arrow keys by default. In Braid, WASD works as well, and in PB Winterbottom you can configure the controls if you want, but in both games, the instructions around the place show hints that refer to the arrow keys, not WASD.



I decided to also ask people on TIGSource about this (yes yes, I know, I'm talking to indie people), and the response that came back was pretty much unanimous that if it's a sidescroller on PC, you use arrow keys. That wasn't just based off indie titles, because one response was "Why would you use WASD for any sidescroller that wasn't abuse?". That is, if it doesn't need the mouse, why is it using WASD? Another response was that for people who've never played games, the first thing they're going to try are the arrow keys, not WASD.



So again, I fail to see how this is every game for the past 30 years, as some known fact.

The obvious simple answer to this problem is customizable controls. However, I have to agree with Alexander here. Is it really that big of a deal? Besides, there's one obvious flaw here. You compare the WASD controls to console controllers. As stated in the post, console controllers you play with your thumbs, so unless you're holding your keyboard in a very strange way, they are not very close to being the same thing... I play all types of games, both console and PC and it usually doesn't take me more than a few minutes to adjust to a new control scheme. Ultimately, however, it falls to the developer. Allow users to customize their controls, because the true tragedy is if your game fails simply because someone doesn't like the control setup!

I'm with the comments above on this. Seems strange to assume the modern standard for mouse and keyboard control games should also be the standard for keyboard only platformers based a on tenuous argument about joypads as you're not comparing like for like.



If you actually look historically at PC platformers, I'll admit not a popular genre, titles like Commander Keen and it's ilk all went primarily for the arrows key for movement. Apparently even the original Doom has arrows as its default controls. Before we became mouse-look reliant this was not unusual.



While I agree with everyone that customisable controls is preferable I don't think asking people to use arrows keys is actually very tricky and to take the time to argue it's incorrect seems like looking for a reason to whine.

Yes, customizable controls would have been better. (I made FISHBANE, by the way. Not important right now.) I change my controls in any FPS game to my own crazy weird controls (well away from WSAD/WASD, thank goodness), so I understand. However, for all the comments agreeing with that, the point is Ian still has a problem with arrow keys and platformers.



Platformers (side-view ones, anyway) aren't FPS games, where dextrous aiming is often more important than fine movement.

The keyboard is not a console controller; the thumbs are rarely used on it for anything beyond the space bar.



If you want to play a console game so badly:

http://tinyurl.com/use-joy2key

or just get off of the PC :)





I grew up with Jazz Jackrabbit 2 on the computer (and then eventually a myriad of other PC platformers). Guess what controls it used! Need a hint? Didn't think so.

thanks for the insightful feedback, ian!



i'm a hobbyist game dev, and i lent a bit of help to my 18 yr old buddy who made this game. he's pretty excited to have his first sponsored game up! hopefully in the future we will make games that you don't find terrible, sorry about that. i can send you a refund if you'd like. hopefully someday we can work with a Big Company with meaningful creative ouput like gameloft or 'nerjyzed'.



i'd like to point out that what you are observing regarding the control scheme is not an 'indie trend', but the accepted standard for these sorts of games. see, for example, capcom's 'bionic commando rearmed'.



those nice pictures of controllers you posted are pretty irrelevant since the 'wasd' keys are in no way a reasonable analogue for a d-pad, or a control stick.



also, when you show a computer game to someone who hasn't spent the greater part of their youth playing first-person shooter games on a pc, which keyboard button do you think they will expect to say, move the character right?



your suggestion also makes no consolation for users in other countries with different keyboards (azerty is a common layout, for example).



again, sorry that you find our game 'terrible'. good luck on your crusade in changing computer game control standards, i'm sure that will work out for you.

Im sure he don't mean that your or any other Indiegame that uses the arrow-key setup is terrible. I think he only ask the question "Why not?". Sure their are tons of different keyboard layouts what gets me closer to the previous named solution of customizable controls. I know if you only use the arrow keys + z and x to control the player why should you implement an option to alter this keys, the big old question of effort vs. usage. But seriously why not?



Many Indiegames are highly enjoyable and a large amount of them come up with tons of cool new ideas, but it could be kinda annoying if you first have to get familiar with the controls. Reviving the good old side-scroller genre is great but do we really need anything from it today?



And as i said before don't take this a criticism, i really appreciate any work and effort that gets packed into an Indie.

TO THOSE INVOLVED IN THE MAKING OF FISHBANE:



I feel bad for calling your game terrible. It was late and I was frustrated with my own programming issue at the time.



The reason I said so, apart from the control setup which I found annoying, was two reasons. 1. The very first jump is difficult to make because it requires you to throw the harpoon at the midpoint of your jump. It took me 3 or 4 tries to do this. 2. The very next jump over the pit of spikes revealed that making long jumps is INCREDIBLY finicky. If your character is standing halfway off a ledge, he can no longer jump. Regardless what you think about WASD, being able to jump when your character is standing halfway off a ledge is a gaming standard.



So yea my complaints were about the learning curve and my initial 10 minutes with the game. Maybe that's being shallow, but I think your game would have benefitted from more user testing to iron out those issues.

@allan offal, @Richard Perrin, @Alexander Bruce:



Saying that using the arrow keys, (and more generally using your right hand), to move your character is a PC gaming standard, is a little far fetched. Yes I'm aware of the PC platformers such as Duke Nukem, Commander Keen, and Jazz Jackrabbit. To compare the popularity of those games with games like Mario and Sonic would be like comparing the popularity of Mellow Yellow (does that still even exit?) with Coca Cola. I'm willing to bet the majority of Braid, Bionic Commando Rearmed, and Trine players are more familiar with Mario than they are of Jazz Jackrabbit.



You guys also mentioned using the arrow keys to move your character in the non-mouselook first person shooters. If you begin that era with Wolfenstein 3d and end it with Duke Nukem 3d, you have an era of just 4 years. Compare that to the 14 years of mouselook shooters (where you move with your left hand) and you tell me which is the standard.



You also draw a line between using your fingers and using your thumbs. I don't see the distinction. Whether you're holding a paintbrush, strumming a guitar, finger-painting, it's the hand that's important. Just try switching hands with the wii-mote and see how comfortable it is.

You should be able to jump at any time unless you're in the air -- not sure what this hanging off the ledge issue is, but I've never seen it or heard of it before now.



edit :: er, and that second level doesn't require any long jumping at all. Pit's way too big to be jumped across.



The controls require a bit of timing, but I had a pretty reasonable amount of user testing. It's not so bad once you get the hang of it!



A large number of people use emulators to play older games whose physical copies are difficult to track down (and also games whose physical copies are easy to track down, but let's not get into all that mess).



Default controls for emulators? Arrow keys.



~



I went out and did a little bit of research, checking default controls for five NES emulators (nothing better to do).

http://www.emulator-zone.com/doc.php/nes/



FCEUX ... No default?

Nestopia ... Arrow keys, comma and period.

Jnes ... Arrow keys, D and F.

VirtuaNES ... Arrow keys, Z and X.

Nesticle ... Didn't run properly ):



I agree that most people use their left hand to move on consoles and in FPS games, but fortunately I am making neither and I'm not really breaking any standards here.

Arrow keys are not a PC gaming standard -- but they are certainly a standard for -mouseless- PC gaming.

As an indie programmer, I hadn't thought about it. I was about to go off and have a person moved with the arrow keys instead of the WASD, although honestly, a few lines of code and they could both be compatible. But really, you can't exactly compare the keyboard and controller when it comes to controls, because we don't actually hold the keyboard up in the air, especially on a laptop. If we WERE forced to hold it, then of course we would move with the WASD, but until then, it's really just a matter of preference.

Fact: Most if not all keyboards are based around ASDF touch typing.

A = Back

S = Forward

D = Strafe Left

F = Strafe Right



Works perfect for FPS'ers and beyond.



In Golden Eye I'm pretty sure a lot of people used the control stick to aim with their left hand. Keyboard/Mouse has proven that controllers suck for FPS'ers so the point is mute. Anyone using Arrow Keys, Controllers, WASD or ESDF are n00bZ IMHO ;)

The main point is allow me to make my own hotkeys. And allow more than two buttons for one command.



id Software/s Quake engine and Valve's Source are perfect examples of the best config system.

It's really interesting to see how we have evolved the keyboard. Going back to the EGA 286 / 386 days, I remember playing Stargoose (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargoose) on the directional keyboard buttons.



Along came the mouse, all those Right hands got too busy aiming, and next thing we knew WASD had just become an involuntary d-pad.



The real fun, is to figure out what the next 'evolution' that PC gaming input will take. Will someone create the perfect input device? Will we then adapt it to be used our way (such as WASD)?

"I'm willing to bet the majority of Braid, Bionic Commando Rearmed, and Trine players are more familiar with Mario than they are of Jazz Jackrabbit."



Pretty sure the default expected controls for both Braid and Bionic Command Rearmed are arrow keys. Trine uses the mouse so isn't a fair comparison.



I think the point with mentioning both those old and new games isn't about the popularity as your strawman has it, it's more that where mouse isn't required there is a long and well defined history of using the arrow keys for tons of PC gaming.



They make sense as a control scheme as for one thing, they're arrows. And to just about anyone who's used a PC for any period of time has using them down muscle memory.



Comparing it to the gamepds doesn't make sense as it's a entirely different interface. You said the hand is more important than the distinction about using thumbs, you try playing a gamepad using any of the three fingers your put on WASD instead of your thumb. It's not a fair comparison.



Basically you've come up with an arbitrary thing to dislike with no real historical context other than you choosing to compare apples and oranges and shouting at the oranges for not tasting like apples.



I think many of us have conceded configurable controls are great but you are being very stubborn about a very silly thing to get worked up about.

Actually, it's one of the main things to get worked up about. Video, Sound, Controls.

One thing to keep in mind is that Flash (a source of many "indie" games) has traditionally limited input to arrow keys + a handful of others for security reasons. So that may be a major culprit right there.



That said, cherry-picking past DOS platformers and/or current console ports in order to argue some sort of "PC platformer input standard" is crazy talk IMHO. That's like me forcing you to play the Playstation port of X-Com, and every time you mention mouse controls I say NO WAY MAN WHY YOU HATE ON THE D-PAD THAT'S SO "ARBITRARY" OMG LOOK AT THESE OTHER TOP-DOWN STRATEGY GAMES ON PLAYSTATION USING THE D-PAD, DON'T BE SO STUBBORN*.



Conventions are cultural. Platformers have had their conventions bred in the console space for decades now, across hundreds of games and multiple systems. Much in the same way that input conventions for strategy and FPS games have established themselves on the PC. To say that none of that matters is just ignoring statistics, and the punishment for that is having to play Street Fighter IV using the arrow keys with the right hand. An extreme example, yes, but that's the point; the arrow-keys-are-natural argument doesn't scale IMHO.



Anyway, to Ian: Just do what I and many other console devs do... Cross your arms while playing :) It's annoying, but if you're playing a console-type game on PC that requires some semblance of dexterity, it's the only way to go!



*Those were not angry caps :P

platform games on PC always used cursor keys. I've never ever played a platform game with WASD on my 286.

Your statement makes no sense, configurable controls would be better but cursors + ZX or AS works well

Interesting debate. I recently popped open an old game I had made that was wsad controlled (needed the mouse to aim) and realized in a second it was going to be impossible to play with my current Dvorak keyboard layout with out reverting to the qwerty setting in windows.



There really should be more custom controls and not just in the flash gaming scene. 99% of games AAA or indie, console or PC should have re-mappable controls these days. Its not that much extra work and as pointed out by Ian, if the player doesn't like the concrete controls assigned to the player it can ruin their play experience. As a designer I want to keep frustrations to an absolute minimum, if they want to jump with "" let them.



I have played a ton of Jazz Jackrabbit, Duke Nukem, Commander Keen etc. in my past but now a days I prefer all movement on the wsad or ,oae in Dvorak.

The difference between platformers and FPS/MMORPGS/RTS/etc. is pretty moot. The left hand is *the* keyboard related hand for movement or other controls. Just because your game is a different genre doesn't mean you can just ignore that convention.



Including arrow-key or custom key support is fine, and really the optimal way to go, but I think skipping W-A-S-D is just not a smart decision. Almost every PC gamer today is going to be pre-conditioned to think WASD = movement or left-hand = movement by whatever other games they play.



I know that personally the first thing I'll try to do in any game that revolves around moving an avatar is try WASD. Even if the instructions say arrow-keys, I'll give WASD a try to see if both controls were programmed in.



Also consider this. When a player loads up your game there's a very very high probability that one hand is around the left side of the keyboard and the other is on the mouse.

Actually, until the early '80s, I-J-K-L and I-J-K-M were the standards before either W-A-S-D *or* arrow keys, since many computers (most notably Apple II/Apple II+) did not have up/down keys.



The first game I know of that used W-A-S-D was the computer version of Robotron 2084 when playing in full keyboard mode. That game used QWEASDZXC and UIOJKLM<>. :-)

> Yes I'm aware of the PC platformers such as Duke Nukem, Commander Keen, and Jazz

> Jackrabbit. To compare the popularity of those games with games like Mario and Sonic

> would be like comparing the popularity of Mellow Yellow (does that still even exit?) with

> Coca Cola.



Um... don't mean to state the obvious, but to find out what controls are standard for PC games, surely you have to look at games that are actually on the PC?



(Personally, ever since Duke Nukem 3D came out I've used RFDG - which provides more keys under your little finger.)

Thi sentence sums it better up than anything else... "As a designer I want to keep frustrations to an absolute minimum, if they want to jump with "" let them."

Eeep. I had no idea that people hate arrow keys for platformers that much. I suppose at some point we (the programmers) just get used to using one method. Personally, I find that it's has more to do with context. In my own games designed on the PC, the arrow keys seem more natural, but then again, I've never been too involved in PC based FPS games. At the same time, using the arrow keys for an emulated NES game feels really unnatural, like playing with my feet, due to being hardwired to want to control those games with the left hand.

In any event, I think it is a bit of a moot point, since the best way to play a platformer is with a controller. Everything else is a poor substitute.

Are you serious? You're letting the existence of the mouse, which you don't use in those games, dictate where your movement keys are? WASD is for DATA ENTRY, and the keyboard is an atrociously bad device for game control.



It's bad enough that all console FPSes default to aiming with the right thumb, just because of the stupid mouse paradigm, when for years, console gamers were aiming with their left thumbs.



Playing with your thumbs is entirely different muscle memory than playing with the tips of your fingers.



The arrows are the closest thing to any sort of standardized control we have on keyboards. This arrow means go that way, this one means that way. Why would 'A' mean left? 'D' mean right? It's all just ghetto conventions for getting around the PC's input devices that are utterly independent of and irrelevant to gaming.

I entirely agree with Ian's post because of one single reason: Ergonomy.



If you rest your hand on WASD, your 3 middle fingers should rest exactly on the WAD keys. Your thumb should rest on SPACE, and your pinky on SHIFT. This configurations has been designed to prevent hand strain. It's perfect for long gaming sessions, and honestly the indie game trend has been very bad for my wrists. On the other side, the arrow keys are all alone, not near any other key, severely reducing the control options without using a second hand. Most indie games are simple enough that they can and should allow playing with one hand, especially for browser games. Personally, having to let go my mouse is a bit annoying.



Also notice that your hand resting on WASD is aligned with your armrest, contrary to the arrow keys, which are aligned with your right leg (if your mouse and keyboard share space in front of you). Then, accessing the arrow keys requires you to bend your arm inward, and then your wrist outward to align properly. It makes using the arrow keys very painful for some people on long sessions.



Finally, notice that the macs (macbooks especially) have absolutely atrocious arrow key design, essentially condesing the 4 keys into the space of 3 and don't intend fixing them. I don't use Macs, but i've seen fellow game design students using them scream in rage at those keys and the games using them. While a large percent of young students are switching to macbooks, and laptops are becoming more widespread, the arrow keys become unusable for a growing part of the population.



Edit: BTW I stopped playing at the second level of Fishbane. The concept is good, but the difficulty curve need some improvement.

Attacking, jumping, and running around, all with the same hand, is always a frustrating experience for me unless I need to do none of these with much dexterity.



I agree that arrow keys on some keyboards are cramped and uncomfortable (I have seen macbooks, and have experienced it on my own netbook which suffers from a somewhat cramped selection of arrow keys). However, if people are playing such long sessions in such an uncomfortable way, one would think they would have the common sense to MOVE the keyboard, or themselves so as to retain an ergonomic position.







~ only read the rest if you are interested in FISHBANE ~



Germain, there is no way you could know the entire concept (even the most basic 'entire' concept) without making it past the second level. If you meant the second Quest, well, that's a different story and a choice I'm still somewhat conflicted about.

Oh well! A perfect difficulty curve for some will always be too slow or too fast for others. A bad player can always get better, but a good player can't simply ignore the boredom inherent in slow hand-holding difficulty curves.

I babbled on a bit there, sorry. Still gonna hit the Submit Comment button, though.

@ Alexander:



Yes I agree that sometimes using one hand for every action can be frustrating. But on the other hand, a lot of people cannot move their keyboards. My desk space is extremely limited, and I do not have room to move the keyboard.



But it's a matter of opinion, let's put that aside from now.



Regarding Fishbane, i'm sorry you're getting so much flak from us. It's a really interesting game, and now I certainly will consider playing it a bit more seriously. But I took the position of a gamer instead of a game dev.



Browser sidescroller are dime-a-dozen. And with the attention span of the regular web gamer, you really need to capture their attention. Getting stuck on the second screen for more than 2 minutes is a sure way to get them to quit (even 1 minute is too much). You may have built the best sidescroller ever, but by the second screen, I don't know that yet, and i'm not willing to give the game a chance because it hasn't proven itself to me yet.



So that's why some hand-holding is required at the beginning. There's no such thing as a innately hardcore gamer. He is only hardcore if he thinks the game deserves his attention.

It's really funny that such a discussion should come up now. I'm working on my own little game on flash at the moment and planned to implement the WASD control scheme only to find out........Actionscript doesn't allow you to receive keyboard events for letter keys (for example WASD keys), without using Adobe AIR).

I really don't know why oh why they put that limitation. I don't think it's a technical one, but one to push developers towards AIR?



If I'm wrong (I'm a newbie in AS3.0), please correct me, but maybe this could be the reason why some flash developers use the arrow keys instead of WASD.

Oh I fixed my little WASD issue. Found a workaround by explicitly comparing for ASCII key codes as uints lol. So my game is gonna have WASD after all hooray.



To contribute to the topic at hand (haven't played fishbane yet):

I think WASD keys for character movement are good pretty much only for games where your other hand is busy moving the mouse. In my mind it's more appropriate using the arrow keys for movement for keyboard-only platformers. Comparisons to gamepads are invalid simply because you can't use your thumbs as the main keypressing finger (thumbs aren't "fingers" i know) when using the keyboard.