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Opinion: Why The Keyboard Is PC Gaming's Secret Weapon
by Phill Cameron
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July 16, 2009
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[Is the keyboard the perfect controller? This Gamasutra opinion column examines how unique and diverse control schemes in games like ArmA 2 still might make PC games a winning proposition.]
Tracer fire sails over my head, a visual reminder of the situation.
"Enemy gunner, to our front, close!" The amalgamated speech patterns add to the surreal atmosphere, but don't make it any less deadly. I search the horizon, trying to find the offending target, pinpoint him, then struggle to remember how to give the order.
It's 2, then 3, I think. No, first it's 1, then 2, then 3? It doesn't matter, the bullet has entered my brain, and my commands are as useless as my leadership. War is hell.
ArmA 2, the startlingly expansive army simulator from Bohemia Interactive, can only be a PC game. There's no way it could work on anything else, not least because of the attitude and unhindered ambition it possesses.
It mostly could only work on the PC, because the keyboard is the only thing with enough buttons to cover its complicated order system -- while at the same time allowing you such privileges as an entire button dedicated to climbing over fences, even when the fences aren't around.
It's a testament to the brilliant excesses of what makes PC great. The whole mouse-and-keyboard setup has been trumpeted by gamers as superior since it was introduced, not least for the versatility it provides when moving from word spewer to bullet dodger. It's perhaps the defining characteristic of PC gaming to the outsider, the thing they first encounter when sitting down at a PC to play the game.
It's not just a input device, however. It can also dictate how a game works, and how beautifully complicated it can become.
 As consoles become larger and larger, games are starting to use their control schemes to become fluid and simplistic in the way they handle, creating clever ways to use context sensitive buttons, so one press can mean many things at once.
In the name of saving your fingers a stretch, the same button for jump can also be used to climb ladders, run across walls, and cling to ledges. The confines of the controller dictate how the game plays, on a fundamental level, and it's producing some wonderfully inventive ways of interacting with your games.
The opposite, however, is true of the PC. With over 100 keys to choose from (back of the box quotation right there), the possibilities are near endless, if you start to think of shift and control functions altering the purpose of keys.
It means that, when the developers start to make their game, they don't have to worry about the limitations of the interface, knowing that, if all else fails, they can always assign the compass to K, even if that's a bit of a stretch to all but the pianists. The keyboard is the friend of ambition, and ArmA 2 is the testament to that, in all its surrealist, broken glory.
The example may grow tired, but ArmA 2 also demonstrates the flip side of the coin, where systems grow convoluted and counter-intuitive. Squad commands are assigned to each of the number keys, with each one tending to a different aspect of how your men can fight. Coupled with this is the quick menu, which resides in the space bar, which has the most simple and contextual commands accessible.
The problem is, with so much to choose from, in the middle of a firefight your brain shuts down, and you can hardly remember where your men are, let alone remember which number corresponds to sneaking around behind the enemy force to take them by surprise.
You just default to letting them take care of things, and hope you're not too useless. Perhaps it's an issue of technology. The single key presses I can remember with no problem, like how to climb over fences, or throw myself into the prone position. Little thought is necessary when it's my survival I need to think about, but when it's ordering around three slightly stupid bots, confusion sets in.
Playing with friends, and this problem disappears; I can tell them what to do using my voice, that wonderfully intuitive input device, and they can instantly understand me. Maybe Tom Clancy's EndWar was the step in the right direction when there's so much that needs to be said, but only so many buttons to say it with.
 The point that's emerging from the mist like the Flying Dutchman is this: ambition is hindered by limitation. ArmA 2 is the living proof of that, but it would've been even more heavily neutered if it had tried to fit itself to the considerably more limited confines of the Xbox or Playstation controllers.
That it exists is down to the keyboard, and the versatility of the platform that is the PC. In the coming months, as it's modded, patched and refined, it will undoubtedly become easier and easier to use, until it loses all those little quirks that pull you from the experience.
I don't fault it; that I can't order my men around doesn't change the fact I'm in absolute adoration of the ability to complete military objectives with almost no restraints put upon myself, bar the ethical and legal ones a soldier faces. I'm thankful that it even exists at all, and that the PC is there to support it.
It's the same reason RTS games have found a home on the PC for so long, able to use the skills people accumulate moving around windows and clicking on icons to command troops and manipulate their battle lines. Developers taking advantage of what we already know, to teach us something we don't, is what gaming is all about.
[Phill Cameron is a regular writer at The Reticule, a PC gaming website. You can contact him here, and follow him on Twitter here.]
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Now I'll go back and read it.
I'm a beleiver in that everything I do doesn't have to be new or teach me anything. Sometimes I just want to plop my pole in the water and relax under a tree and listen to the crickets sing. And catch fish. If I learn something, cool. If I don't, I'm alright with that. I don't need to make progress all the time, sometimes I feel it's better to slow down.
Not everybody's brain freezes when fire fights start. Staying cool under pressure and giving quick and proper commands is what makes a good leader/player in this scenario.
especially deep menu trees are a sign of console limitations: unbearable at the pc. e.g.: bethestas fallout 3 pipboy stat / item/ quest management. while the idea is nice, the usability is bothering.
for fps there will never be a competitive use for controllers.
i really think that gamedevs need to develop multiple user interfaces if they really want to release games for multiple platforms (which i understand for economical reasons). dumbed down interfaces due to consoles are cutting the game experience.
Don't get me wrong I do enjoy my console games and controller, but I would always rather play them on my PC. I think games like God of War or Assassins Creed are ment for controller and should never be played with mouse and keyboard. But for example with the recent release of Battlefield 1943 I bought it for Xbox 360 just so I could play it til it comes out PC, in which the game would be returning back to its roots after a little hiatus, but games like Battlefield are ment for PC not the watered down versions you see on console, where there is no Command bars, minimal GUI and little to no Teamwork or voice communication.
Like when I played Lost Planet on PC, that before the last battle it was thrown at me a screen with a photo of a XBOX 360 controller (that in fact, is rather much more complex than a controller should be) with a text near each buttom...
Then I peered at my keyboard, at the mouse, and pressed the key on keyboard that maybe was "A" on XBOX...
Then a frantic final boss battle starts, me with a totally new gameplay (while the entire game you WALK, on the final battle you FLY... The gameplay change from 2D movement and 3D aiming to 3D movement and aiming...) in a control scheme that is already bad on 360, and even worse on a keyboard (that you don't know the buttoms btw...)
Conversely, a limited input device like a console controller applied to a game with complex input demands is going to feel like everything is crammed in... and if that same control scheme is ported vertabim to the PC, as many console parts do, then it's going to show.
However, used correctly, the PC keyboard allows the interface to grow to exactly the size it needs, but no larger. Most of the buttons SHOULD be unused, and context sensitive controls are usually a good idea, but having the freedom to set a new control when necessary is a good thing. There are also other functions you can get away with only on a PC keyboard... text chat is the obvious one, but chat systems like the venerable Tribes voice binds, where you'd input something like v-g-h (voicebind-global-"hi") to say hello, take advantage of the easy association in our minds between letters and words/concepts to make a more intuitive system.
Anyone can argue that playing such games won't help train to aim a gun correctly in the Army, but such point-and-shoot games help to naturally train steady-hand-eye coordination skills better than a keyboard-and-mouse interface. People may enjoy the accuracy better with the keyboard-and-mouse (especially since you can lazily rest the mouse without hurting your arm), but it's a lot more rewarding when that accuracy is earned naturally.
Making a good interface with the mouse/keyboard is easy. Making a good interface with a gamepad is hard, but when done properly can be infintely better.
Yeah, I didn't like GOW but there are games that are better suited for use with a controller, My favorite game Pro Fishing Challenge is best suited to the controller than it would be on a keyboard.
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I have made an experiment with a trackball in the place of what whould be a nalog stick, that works hella nice. You can change your sensitivity from 5 to 50 an re-learn it withing 10 seconds, you have accuracy and it's feels even more fun than the mouse does... Everyone whatching my record said I was using a mouse.
Arma 2 is overly done. It fails greatly at creating an interface that is accessible to Users.
The typing class I took in high school has served me more in life than any controller use has. I do not look at the keyboard when typing nor when playing a game. I also do NOT want an OLED keyboard. I am not working at McD's.
The mouse is a completely different subject, but we are talking about the keyboard here not the mouse.
http://jonpeddie.com/blogs/comments/a_theory_about_pc_gaming/
Call of Duty on the Consoles has their lame little Auto-target + Autoaim. Which is not nearly as satisfying as the PC version.
At the same time, Halo is designed with the controller in mind. The average kill time for an opponent is a few seconds, as opposed to a single bullet to the head from any weapon.
Halo values headshots, but Headshots don't drive the gameplay. Shields take uniform damage, and only after the shields are gone does the headshot matter. Halo pushes emphasis of Grenades and Melees as methods to take down the opponent. Going solo with any gun works but takes longer to kill. No Scoping in Halo 3 takes skill, there is no auto-aim on the sniper rifle, at all. But then when you play Halo 2 Vista, you can see how the speed and precision of the Mouse and Keyboard make no scoping completely trivial. Halo 2 was designed for the controller, and balanced accordingly, weapons don't have random bullet drift on shots that are not zoomed in.
There are multiple types of skills in First Person Shooters, not every FPS game has to be a single bullet headshot = kill, and thus Speed and Accuracy is the only thing that matters. Look at CSS, players jump from around corners and get absurdly fast headshots. That is what the game favors. so I am saying this again, Speed and Headshots are not the only skills that can be the centric design focus of an FPS.
Skill is about decisions, and the ability to interface with the game better than other players.
The one thing I have noticed between CoD4 on the 360 and PC is just how people play the game. You get a lot of people constantly sprinting all over the place on the PC, 360 kids tend to sit back and lob grenades to try and flush the opponents out. These are just trends that I notice from playing Both, they are not Rules.
Scout: Quake Style fast running, plenty of bullets put out, double jump. (headshots not important)
Heavy: Lots of bullets put out, majority of bullets miss, somewhat unreal-esque but without the movement.
Solider: Rockets that take time to reach target (no headshots).
Sniper: Headshots and Speed, sits back and supports from afar.
Demo: No headshots, just banking grenades off of walls and setting traps.
Medic: All support, unless you are going Combat Medic, which is a good time.
Spy: Headshots matter with the Ambassador, and has caused a slew of gameplay changes because he can move quickly, cloak, and Headshot. (Head Shots matter but not the primary role of the class)
Engineer: Campers.
Pyro: Ambush with no focus on Headshots. (Flare gun has a solid effect, but not a focus of the class)
Team Fortress 2 is easily one of the best FPS games on the PC. (I don't think its fun on the 360). But Most of the classes do not require the precision that only the keyboard and mouse can offer.
I'd use a keyboard/mouse for the running/gunning, then pick up my PS2 controller for any vehicle controls (I had a PS2 controller -- USB converter).
It comes down the the most natural tool for the job. It's up to peripheral makers to find a generic controller setup which is balanced enough to use with existing genres, and even game genres we haven't even thought of yet. At this point, I don't think we are even close.
Other than motion sensing tech, Controller technology hasn't fundamentally changed since the Atari 2600 and prior.
I finally had to give up playing Blazing Angels on my PS3 because I just can't get the aiming precision I need with the controller. Real bummer...I've been wanting to fly a B-17 again for years, ever since "B-17 Bomber" for the Intellivision.
My little brother can aim in Halo 2 with amazing precision. I don't know how he does it.
If only they'd write PS3 games that allowed a keyboard/mouse control. I'd buy a ton more PS3 games if they did.
I could see a wiimote-esque controller with about 5 buttons near the thumb area, 5 near index finger area, 5 near middle finger area, then 3 or so near pinky area, basically make it the ultimate mouse that can be held like a wiimote. Aim it at the screen and move the cursor around like you would a mouse. A controller like this would make RTS games very possible to be just as accurate and fast as an RTS on a PC. Add a second part to the controller that can be controlled by the other hand, an arcade-like stick or analog stick for movement and FPS games can also be played at the same level as PC with more comfort. It would really just take the big clunky keyboard and simplify it into just an arcade stick while putting a bunch of buttons on the mouse. Most top mice have tons of buttons already, and most pro gamers map the most important functions to those mouse buttons already.
Problem with mice is that you need to set it on something, with a wiimote-esque mouse you wouldn't since the X-Y plane isn't based on being on a flat surface it's based on the TV coordinates. Movement is a rather important task, but a rather easy task mentally, 4-8 directions, so having a dedicated side peripheral for the sole purpose of that is important, but it isn't important that it be this big clunky keyboard sized thing. I've never used the wii so I'm not sure how accurate it really is (even with that upgrade thing they did), so maybe I'm totally off with this if it really isn't all that accurate. It has to be more accurate than an analog controller though.
With the Wii, the sensor bar placement, screen size, and where one is standing, make a noticeable difference on its performance. On my 14" crt, it feels about as accurate as a 200 DPI mouse -- so good enough, but with a tiny bit of lag. It's almost 1:1. On my 42" plasma it has a bit more lag -- which was really noticeable prior to picking up a Nyko sensor bar, which lowers its accuracy even more. It's a better option than an analog stick when properly setup for one's screen, since it can track one's arm movement fairly quickly with more accuracy, so one can actually quickly draw a circle instead of a polygon, but it's no mouse.
I like the Wiimote quite a bit. It's the best thing to happen to consoles IMO, as no developer seems to want to support the PS3's mouse... But Nintendo needs to improve the settings screen and rethink the sensor bar for larger screens. I think this would sway many of the negative comments some reviewers have given to the Wii, since they were probably too lazy to figure out how to get it tracking right for their setup
And on the comfort comments. I work day in and out on my Macs and PCs. My office chairs are very comfortable and my mice and keyboards are ergonomic to my preferences. I even have a N52te SpeedPad for my PC gaming, which gives my left hand the same comfort as my right hand -- these are great, really worth their price. My couch on the other hand is a different type of comfort, it's for relaxing, doing "casual" things. It all comes down to preference, but really, if your office or work setup isn't comfortable, you should rethink your situation and make it so. If PC gamers weren't comfortable, I'm sure many of us would not stick with it, but from my experience that's really not the case.
Am I misinterpreting what your saying, cos it sure as hell sounds like your saying Gears of War on 360 has no head shots....which is wrong....so very very wrong. Of course if your not saying that, then all is well.
Also, while the keyboard has more options, it's a poorly designed interface for gaming, it hearkens back to typewriter era when all a keyboard was used for was for typing text. While through culture, and learning (every game using WASD for example) these things have come to seem natural, they're not.
While there are some newer keyboards designed specifically for gaming, they still need remarkable improvements to become even nearly as comfortable or intuitive as a console controller.
A lot of people mention the accuracy of a mouse over a thumbstick, which is a pretty silly argument, considering an optical mouse uses an 18x18 array of pixels (324 degrees of motion) [note thats a stock standard optical mouse, there might be some mice that have greater accuracy], while a (360) thumbstick has 360 degrees of motion. Ultimately the difference between the two is negligible anyway as the human eye cannot tell the difference, and they both just use a software layer to interpolate their end location. As for sensitivity, both are capable of extremely high sensitivity, it's merely a matter of programming, and I've rarely seen a computer game have inbuilt functions to send its sensitivity any higher than does a console (sure on a computer you can usually change your mouse settings independently, but going higher than the highest game settings usually results in loss of precision anyway). As for auto aim functions, they can be turned off in most console games, and are usually there as a form of aid for people who lack the finite control to move a thumb stick accurately (muscle memory anyone).
Most of it is preference and learning, it's hard to coax a PC gamer away from his computer because he's had so much time perfecting his skills there (muscle memory again), that as soon as he encounters a control schema he hasn't spent as much time on he will claim it's "inaccurate, not as sensitive and awkward to use", even when he has auto aim enabled, his sensitivity down at 4/20, and hasn't played much with a thumbstick before.
Anyway just to prove (belabour) a point, get your mouse and move it with your thumb. You'll notice with a little practice you can move it quite accurately. There is no reason whatsoever, a thumbstick cannot do the same thing. It's just about learning fine muscle control with your thumb as opposed to compensating with you other fingers.
As for RTS games, they're slowly but surely popping up on console as well. Unlike their awkward console forefathers, they're being cleverly designed to be easily played on console, rather than following the old PC RTS "Rules", the latest console Red Alert proves this. As for large numbers of commands, ever seen a radial dial, in fast paced game you get good enough to make use of a radial dial with no more interruption than having to move one of your fingers off WASD would normally cause. I don't think there's anything a keyboard and mouse combo can do that a controller cannot replicate, and in fact improve upon, perhaps we're not there yet, but I don't doubt the day will come that a keyboard and mouse are completely redundant.
Games that require more twitch control you need a gamepad.
I play a lot of fighting games and platformers, a controller is a must with some of those games.
Nowadays does it even matter?
You can buy a gamepad for your PC, consoles could add a keyboard peripheral if the demand
became great enough.
Do games really need to use all those commands?
I want to think about playing not which key is for what.
Thanks for the fix. I was trying to say "I played on PC only, tried to play in hard difficult, but the weapons you use most of the time didn't showed difference in where you aim on the enemies", or in other words "precision didn't matter too much, you can kill a grunt without getting shot back (a lot) with that weapons".
Something else, the issue about Analog Sticks and Mouse (and my previous Trackball test comment):
Precision and sensitivity are not the real diferences that make FPS (and other pointer games) work better with mouse. Instead comes the following:
- Mouse --> Movement = Space.
- Analog Stick --> Movement = Time.
It's that simple. With the Controler, you stuck into accuracy if you set a high sensitivity because you should move your stick too ticky/quick. If your enemy is away from your aim, you lose agility if you set a low sensitivity. IF you have enemies moving around with different speeds the stick is going to struggle you sooner or later, unless you're totally concentrated in playing the input system instead of the game.
- Screen/POV Angle --> Movement = Space
For the human brain, it's simply easier to convert mouse movement to screen movement with accuracy and comfort. Even with pure Math it is easier. Considering and Analog Stick as PS3, with 2 sensitivity levels (how much you move the stick):
Mov(Screen) = Mov(Mouse) * Sensitivity
Mov(Screen) = Sens.level * (Mov(Stick)) * Sensitivity * Time
In Supreme Commander, crtl A gives me all of the air units. They both start with an A. On a gamepad, would it be secondary stick down?
Also, mouse wheels make scrooling through text or weapons much easier.
in first person shooters, analog sticks control rotational velocity, while mice control rotational position. the fundamental difference here is that the basic task of "aiming" is to move the reticle's position to the correct.
the mouse interface simply provides a more direct mapping of controlling the position of the reticle, so it is more responsive (working directly with the quantity to be manipulated instead of the derivative of the quantity) and natural for first person shooter type games.
It also depends on the target age bracket. If we're talking about kids, they're likely going to grasp the controller's controls much faster than a keyboard+mouse, because less options is easier to learn, and all options are literally at their fingertips.