Regardless of how the silicon powering our gaming devices continues to advance, and despite the marginal acceptance of motion controls and cute quirks like the PlayStation’s touchpad, the way we interact with games has been pretty static since roughly the arrival of the original PlayStation DualShock in 1997: two thumbsticks, a d-pad, four shoulder buttons, and four face buttons housed in a pretty rigid format that’s resistant to change. But one very cool DIY project from YouTuber PyottDesign shows one possible evolutionary path the modern gamepad could take if we were willing to move beyond standard input setups or embrace more modular build designs.
This project builds off of the ideas found in PyottDesign’s “Ultimate FPS” controller from last year. That project included a trackball in place of the right analog stick and a mouse wheel for easy navigation of lists and menus in games. PyottDesign’s new “Valence Gyro Touch” sticks to a more familiar form factor, keeps the mouse wheel, adds a touchpad in a more comfortable-looking place than the Steam Controller had one, and makes use of “mixed input” techniques on PC to allow for gyro controls to capture the finesse of aiming with something like a mouse while harnessing the analog input of a joystick for movement.
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As you can see in the video, the design makes for a very twitchy, high-performance set of inputs that are particularly effective for first-person shooters (after a steep learning curve, I’m sure). It’s also an impressive build (though it’s kind of a bummer that AI was used to finalize some of the code that makes everything come together). But I have to wonder what kinds of complex gaming experiences we’re missing out on when everything needs to be designed for the analog stick input and dozen or so buttons of the modern video game controller. Even this cool DIY project is limited by the fact that so many modern games aren’t built with a more sophisticated set of inputs in mind.
I’m not saying we all need to embrace the Steel Battalion approach to input design, but damn would it be a fun challenge for the games industry if, say, the next PlayStation controller resembled something more like a Formula 1 steering wheel. And it’s not just because more buttons equals “more cool” (though maybe it does, a little), but because I want to find new, challenging ways to interact with games. As PyottDesign comments at the end of his video on the Valence controller, he’s “really excited to see how [he] can push [his] skill level with it.” That kind of invitation to master a new physical input method is exciting to me, and if games were pushed to demand more inputs and attention than what the same set of buttons I’ve been using for over 20 years allows for, I wonder what kinds of immersive new experiences we could be enjoying.
