So the other day on Reddit I came across this image simply titled: “The problem I have playing multiple FPS the same day.” Grammar aside the poster makes a very important point I’d like to go into in more depth. Something which has plagued the consoles for a long time and something which is long overdue for change. I'm talking specifically about button mapping, or more clearly the lack of choice when it comes to mapping your buttons the way you’d like.
The Redditor who posted this (KyleGlen) clearly has a problem adapting to the different controller layouts of the different games he plays. It’s understandable, we’re creatures of habit. I've already talked about how difficult I found adapting to a new keyboard layout, and I still trip up if I have to switch between layouts several times. It’s especially difficult if all the games are of a similar genre, and so all the actions you can perform are the same. The obvious solution that spring to mind is simply to allow users to set the controls any way they want. I'm about to explain why more freedom is always better.
So a few weeks back I came across this post on reddit, basically telling the tale of a game of Minecraft gone terribly terribly wrong. Like putting a bunch of kittens in charge of a tank kinda wrong. The story tells of a minecraft game between friends, where the one rule of the server is to not leave the play area, which was only a few hundred blocks long. Since the world of Minecraft is infinite, and resources (even rare ores) aren’t that hard to come across, normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but make that infinite world into a finite one, and the problems you eventually face will be very similar to those the real world faces. Needless to say, once there was a demand for scarce resources, a power struggle broke out and the group descended into factions, using open warfare, subterfuge and trading to get what they needed.
Now I’ve been on reddit long enough to question the validity of this guy’s story. I’ve also been on reddit long enough to know that crazier shit has happened. Either way it’s a nice story but regardless of the truth it raises an interesting question. Can we use video games like Minecraft to simulate real world occurrences, and predict the outcomes of potential events via such a method? This played on my mind for quite a long while, so I decided to do some digging. (excuse the pun)
So the other day on Reddit I came across this image simply titled: “The problem I have playing multiple FPS the same day.” Grammar aside the poster makes a very important point I’d like to go into in more depth. Something which has plagued the consoles for a long time and something which is long overdue for change. I'm talking specifically about button mapping, or more clearly the lack of choice when it comes to mapping your buttons the way you’d like.