{"id":819,"date":"2017-09-27T22:48:00","date_gmt":"2017-09-27T22:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/306650"},"modified":"2017-09-27T22:48:00","modified_gmt":"2017-09-27T22:48:00","slug":"sounds-like-playtesting-gamepads-is-as-tricky-as-playtesting-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2017\/09\/27\/sounds-like-playtesting-gamepads-is-as-tricky-as-playtesting-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Sounds like playtesting gamepads is as tricky as playtesting games"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

“Nobody knows what they want, and everybody wants something different.”<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

– Razer’s Chris Mitchell, speaking to Kotaku<\/a> about the process of designing video game controllers.<\/em><\/p>\n

These days most people play console games with something that looks, at least vaguely, like a gamepad. Two sticks, maybe a directional pad, some face buttons,\u00a0and some shoulder triggers.<\/p>\n

So how do you improve on that?\u00a0<\/p>\n

That’s one of the core questions of a new Kotaku feature<\/a> on video game controllers, which includes comments from folks at Microsoft as well as video game peripheral makers Scuf and Razer.<\/p>\n

It’s an interesting read, not least because there’s a few\u00a0parallels between how manufacturers fine-tune\u00a0new gamepad designs\u00a0and how developers figure out what works (or what doesn’t) about\u00a0new games.<\/p>\n

“Nobody knows what they want, and everybody wants something different…it\u2019s just a lot of iteration,” Razer’s Chris Mitchell told Kotaku.\u00a0“A lot of people will not be able to sit there and say, the reason it\u2019s not comfortable is because the curvature of this has to be rounder, or whatever it is, right? They sit there and say, ah, \u2018This is not comfortable.\u2019 Or, \u2018I don\u2019t like this.'”<\/p>\n

Sounds a bit like the playtesting process for games, which often challenges devs to take feedback from playtesters (like “this part isn’t fun”)\u00a0and try to interpret what, if anything, should be done to address their issues.<\/p>\n

The article doesn’t delve\u00a0too deep into the development process for new controller prototypes, though it does touch on the topic of controller patents and suggest that gamepad makers take a lot of cues from the way elite players in games like\u00a0Call of Duty\u00a0<\/em>use\u00a0their controllers.\u00a0\u00a0They also evidently take cues from each other.<\/p>\n

“Competition is so very very useful,\u201d said Mitchell.\u00a0\u201cBecause everyone is experimenting with new things, and then we see what is well-received, what isn\u2019t well-received, and that makes it into every controller like half a year or a year later. And then we keep going.”<\/p>\n

The full article touches on everything from the value of paddles (on a gamepad) to the history of the saxophone, and is well worth a read over on Kotaku<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Nobody knows what they want, and everybody wants something different.” – Razer’s Chris Mitchell, speaking to Kotaku about the process of designing video game controllers. These days most people play console games with something that looks, at least vaguely, like a gamepad. Two sticks, maybe a directional pad, some face buttons,\u00a0and some shoulder triggers. So […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":820,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}