The Atari 2600 Video Computer System controller

In last week's debut of the Monday Morning Quarterback Highlight Reel, we cited some insightful comments made by Bill Harris over at the blog Dubious Quality. We first became aware of Harris' blog during the February DICE conference, where a longtime Nintendo employee suggested that we check it out, which we did. Soon thereafter, Dubious Quality became an essential addition to our RSS newsreader for the smart and often caustic assessments of the business of videogames and the personalities behind it as delivered by the 46-year-old Austin, Texas-based analyst. [Note: Harris--whose all-time favorite games include Guitar Hero II, Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly (Director’s Cut) and Ultima IV--does not cover the videogame industry professionally.]

After reading Harris' alternative explanation of why the critically maligned Carnival Games had become a hit--a "fundamental disconnect between how the people who review Wii games play them and how everyone else plays them"--we asked him to expand on his remarks for our guest post series P2P. He agreed, and the resulting essay is a thoughtful look at how the evolution of videogame controllers has contributed to the shrinking of the industry's reach, and why the Wii remote and nunchuk--even as the games built around them continue to confound the critical establishment--are beacons of hope for a stagnant medium. Enjoy.

Thanks to Sock Master’s Video Game Controller Family Tree (where the pictures in this post come from), and my good friend John Harwood's encyclopedic knowledge of gaming minutiae, we can take a look at the history of video game controllers. And that history raises some interesting questions.

For example, how did we go from the controller pictured above to this?

The Playstation 3 Sixaxis controller 

At the top of this post, we have a joystick and a fire button from the Atari 2600 in 1977. Here, we have the controller from the PS3 in 2007, which features two analog joysticks (both clickable, so they function as buttons as well), four directional D-pad buttons, four regular buttons, a start button, a select button, a "home" button, and four shoulder buttons. Oh, and it has tilt technology, so let’s just call that one extra stick/button whatever, for a grand total of 20 input options.

There may also be a port for rocket fuel.

So how did we get here? Well, let’s take a look.

*1977: the Atari 2600 controller. One joystick, one button. 2 inputs.
*1980: the Intellivision controller featured a 12-key keypad and two action buttons on each side, and included a “control disc” that essentially functioned as a joystick input.  Function overlays were included for most of the games and fit over the keypad. All told, it was 17 inputs.
*1982: the Atari 5200 was the gold standard for the early complexity era. A joystick, a 12-key keypad, four action buttons, plus start, pause, and reset buttons. 20 inputs. Incredibly, this controller had as many inputs as the PS3 controller—twenty-five years sooner.
*1985: the Nintendo Entertainment System reduced the 20 inputs on the Atari 5200 controller to a d-pad, two action buttons, plus select and start buttons. 5 inputs. The NES did, um, pretty well, and the NES controller marked a permanent break from the complexity of only a few years earlier.
*1990: the Super Nintendo controller added a third and fourth button, as well as two shoulder buttons. Both would become standards. 9 inputs total.
*1995: the Sony Playstation controller added a third and fourth shoulder button. They also made each d-pad direction a separate button. 14 inputs total.
*1998: in response to the analog stick of the Nintendo 64 controller, Sony introduced the Dual Shock controller, which featured two analog sticks in addition to all the buttons of the original Playstation controller. The analog sticks were also clickable, thus potentially functioning as two additional buttons. We’re up to 18 inputs now, if you don’t count the "analog" button (which really couldn’t be used as in input in games).
*2006: the Sony PS3 controller, which we’ve already mentioned, had 20 inputs.

That’s not every controller, obviously--it’s just an attempt to show a general lineage from where we were to where we are today. In particular, what I want to focus on is the second era of controller evolution, from the NES controller to the PS3--what I would consider "the modern era."

In the modern era, we’ve gone from 5 inputs to 20. Four times the complexity, and it can be argued that since some of the inputs are now analog, that’s additional complexity as well.

Why did controllers evolve this way?

I think the primary reason happened in 1991, and it was called Street Fighter II.

Until Street Fighter II, most popular arcade games were still of the "pick up and play" variety. Controls were still fairly simple for most games, even if the strategies were complex. SF II, though, totally stood that convention on its head. It used six buttons and a joystick (identical to the later revisions of Street Fighter after the "squishies" were replaced), and certain punches required multiple joystick movements (in the correct sequence and within a narrow time limit) as well as button presses. This combo system was unique. It also meant that, for the first time I can remember, button presses and joystick movement didn’t immediately move your character. In Street Fighter II, a four- or five-move combo would result in only one movement onscreen.

It was a game that featured both complex controls and complex mechanics. In other words, it was doomed to fail.

In 1991, I still went to an arcade in Northcross Mall in Austin every few weeks, even though I was spending much more time playing games on an Amiga 500 by then. The arcade demographic back then, at least in my limited experience, was 99% males in the 16-34 age group and 1 percent female. Roughly.

In the early '80s in the arcades, the demographic had been 99 percent males in the 16-24 age group, but we’d gotten older. Still, that was only about 14 percent of the population as a whole.

If you’re wondering if I can actually remember what it was like when Street Fighter II came out, here’s your answer: hell, yes. Nobody who went to arcades in that era could possibly forget, because it was a thermonuclear blast. There was no reason to have any other machine in the arcade, really. There was a seething mass of kids around the Street Fighter II machine from the minute the arcade opened until it closed eleven hours later. And they poured in quarter after quarter after quarter for eleven hours straight. Every single day. At one point, I believe the arcade at Northcross had three Street Fighter II machines, and they were still being played all day, every day.

With the success of that one game, I believe game design philosophy went from accessibility to complexity. The definition of play changed entirely. There was just way too much money being made to ignore.

Street Fighter II, in the video gaming world, was a disruptive technology.

There was a momentous shift in terms of how developers approached the gaming demographic. Street Fighter II went deep instead of wide--it drilled down into that 14 percent instead of trying to broaden it. It drilled way, way down. Street Fighter II didn’t convert a bunch of non-gamers--it just made the gamers who were already playing spend a hell of a lot more money.

In the short term, that was a great way for Capcom to make money. For everyone else, though, not so much. Instead of playing multiple games at the arcade, people would just play Street Fighter II. It was the WoW of arcade games, and it was a giant time sink if you wanted to be good.

There were several Street Fighters, and Mortal Kombat ("FINISH HIM!"), and Virtua Fighter (a 3-D fighting game) and Finnish Fighter (powerful characters, but dour), and a bunch of other games that I’ve forgotten. (Okay, I made Finnish Fighter up, although the idea of seeing "FINNISH HIM!" on the screen is strangely appealing.) These games were huge and absolutely dominant in the 1992-1995 period. I don’t think it’s an accident that the PlayStation controller (1995), then the PlayStation 2 Dual Shock (1998), ramped up the input complexity so quickly.

What happened, though, is that a gamer's idea of play began to diverge even further from everyone else’s idea of play, and that’s continued through to the present day. Hand someone who’s never played video games a PS3 or 360 controller, and they’ll just stare at you. It might as well be the controls of a helicopter--good grief, it kind of looks like it should be the controls of a helicopter. In all kinds of games, doing even seemingly simple movements often requires a movement combo.

Surprisingly, the genre that most represents this philosophy is sports games. Many team sports games have adopted a kind of Street Fighter mentality to movement. The levels of complexity involved to do one-on-one moves, in particular, is pretty staggering, at least to me. Having 50-plus possible actions using combinations of 10 different inputs is overkill in the highest degree. It’s not really fun anymore--it’s just hard.

Not all console games are like that. Most publishers make at least a few games that play in a simpler manner. Still, it’s hard for them to let go. Take Viva Piñata, for example. It was a game that was supposed to skew toward a younger audience--there was even a children’s cartoon series released before the game--but the final product was far too difficult for most children to care about.

For so many developers, for so many years, the mantra has been "more complex = more rewarding." What that means, though, is that even as the number of people who play video games continues to grow, we’re still largely ignoring the people who aren’t already gamers. And controllers certainly reflect that philosophy. Well, except for this:

The Wii remote and nunchuk