There have been a number of interesting
developments into new types of controllers in
recent years, however, including the footpad stage
of Dance Dance Revolution, the touch screen for
Nintendo DS and, of course, the ???Wiimote??? control
for the Wii. These advances in control technology
are opening up a brand new audience for games:
Players who are interested in the active, social play
of the Wii, or the simple, intuitive play available on
the DS.
Designing Control Schemes 227
8.8 Spacewar on the DEC PDP-1 and
custom controller
8.9 Clockwise from top le , controls
for: Nintendo DS, Xbox, Wii, and
PlayStation 3
One of the key tasks in designing any digital game
is developing good, intuitive controls. In a technical
sense, digital games are about three things: input,
output, and AI. Controls are the input part of this
equation.
When video games were ?¬? rst invented, they
were limited in terms of controls. Steve Russell
and several other students at MIT programmed
Spacewar in 1962, which is o en credited as the ?¬? rst
digital game, and in doing so, they found the toggle
switches built into the front of their DEC PDP-1 to
be too cumbersome, so they built their own special
controller to go along with the game.
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