A Personal Experience with the PlayStation Controller.
A few gaming sites have alraedy beaten me to a section of this blog but most of it is about my experience with the controller. This blog has been on my list of blogs-to-do for months. I should have done this earlier. This is also a series or just two or three blogs (hopefully I can keep my word to that) to celebrate the PlayStation's 15th birthday, which was on September 9th 1995. Happy Belated Birthday and Thank you so much for all the happiness.
A Very, Very Brief History
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The PlayStation Control Pad - retail availability 1994 / discontinued 1998
Brief Description/Experience: The handles seem longer because of no analog joy sticks. Techinically this was the norm: The handles were always that length, it just got shorter.
The DualShock - retail availability 1997 / discontinued 2006
Brief Description/Experience: Heavier than the first, due to the aspect of being the "DualShock", it had weights for the vibration feature. Length of cord (1 metre). The length of the cord couldn't accommodate to the positions of the way I played sometimes.
The DualShock 2 - retail availability 2000
Brief Description/Experience: Not much experience, as I didn't own a PS2 but it handled exactly like the DualShock. But! The buttons were pressure sensitive. Racing games were the only games that I remember actually gently pressing the buttons on the controllers. It was Gran Turismo 4, if I'm not mistaken. Yet that habit of pressing gently or hard on the buttons started with the PSOne with Gran Turismo (1) but I do not recall that game having that feature, nor the DualShock.
The SIXAXIS/DualShock 3 - retail availability 2007
Honestly, this isn't about the history of the controller. For that we could just look up wikipedia (I miss real sources of information) or other game sites that feature an article on PlayStation's 15th Birthday! This is about my experience with the controller.
I will be referring to the SIXAXIS & DualShock 3 as just DualShock, I will let you know if I change reference of the controllers (Note: I actually don't own a DualShock 3 yet).
Like all young gamers, they wouldn simply pick up the controller and begin playing. Sometime later they would feel tired and hands would ache, I would even get that weird painful sensation of when you push down on the nail of your thumb (did any of you get that?).
Being this age and with a controller that I can take almost anywhere, I begin to appreciate it's design and it's feel. Maybe it took long because I didn't mature fast as a gamer or maybe because I recently held the Xbox 360's controller and just felt something very new and had to compare it. I had both my hands flow over both controller. I let them fill my hands. And let my hands feel the curvature.
DualShock. Where do I start? The face of the controller. This is where a few sites have beaten me to this section, namely Kotaku. Here's the article:What Do The Buttons On The PlayStation Controller mean?. I have an old best friend, a great gamer friend. We usually have conflicting interests in the gaming world but a great friend to talk about games and the industry. We'll call him Runer. We discussed why the random but simple use of shapes and colour on the controller of the DualShock.
This is what we came up with. Since he's Japanese and raised that way, he practically grew up in culture of where the PlayStation was created.
The X and O (circle)
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There has been a lot of squabble between these two buttons. In Japan, O means yes or correct. Runer went to a Japanese cultured school where they marked right answers with Circles and wrong answers with ticks. This isn't really a big deal, the ticks just indicate "attend to this and correct it". So, O means "yes", "enter", "go" and "correct". The X button obviously means "No" (or "back", etc.). Even X in a western culture would mean Wrong.
For the Western gamers, X and O are switched. X being "Yes". This is because western gamers "associated the bottom button as the main one". Would it make a difference if the symbols were physically switched? Would you, western gamers, still press the X button if it's placed where O is?
The Square and Triangle
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We didn't have a better explanation like Teiyu Goto had in the Kotaku article. Who's opinion is the right opinion, since he is the guy who designed the controller. Even reinforces his decision by saying "that's what I wanted!".
Runer and I decided that the reason behind Square and Triangle and the rest of the shapes on the controller were used because you have to see it at an infancy level. These are the most basic shapes we had learn when we were young. Thus, implanted into our minds forever. A cognitive process of simple shapes used in a complex environment. It's easier to visualize and store these shapes into our memory rather than letters.
Teiyu Goto explanation is that Triangle "refers to viewpoint... represents one head of direction." Fits perfectly well with the Assassin's Creed puppeteer concept. Triangle using Eagle eye. Square "refers to paper", representing menus or documents.
What perplexed me was the use of colours. Especially the colour, pink. Not because of that immature debate of pink being a girly colour but because it closely related to the colour of O, red. I would've picked the colour yellow, without thinking, for Square because it would've been easier to differentiate the two.
Why yellow? Because yellow is one of the basic colours of life. Yellow being one of the primary colours of nature (Red, Yellow and Blue). Then you would say Green (Triangle) is out of place? Green is also a primary colour but of of light (Red, Green and Blue). So now the controller with it's simple shapes and natural colours is complete and can be referred to the basic structures of life.
I felt a new sensation after holding an Xbox 360 controller. Something that was very comfortable. I can't remember when my first experience was with the Xbox controller but I brushed it off quickly. It was bulky. It was weird but the Xbox 360 controller was like holding both hands with somebody. It felt so right. It did have it's faults thought. The rounded buttons were... mmm. It felt like it would get lodged in it's own hole. The directional pad was just horrible.
This isn't about the Xbox 360 controller but where else would I get to use the awesome photoshoped photo of placing a translucent Xbox 360 controller in my hands but also just a small comparison.
In this first photo this is how I would put my hands around the DualShock to feel comfy.
The DualShock is lower down into my hands. My thumbs, indexes and middles are wrapping around the top of my controller and my rings and pinkies are are slightly higher up the handles.
Next photo: Game Mode. Ready for action.
My thumbs are in the normal position of L3 and the command buttons (or mostly on R3). The controller is now higher up in my hands. Notice the handles, the middle fingers is now deemed useless and joining the bottom two fingers. Which are lower down on the handles, barely gripping on.
The next two photos are another view on relax mode and game mode, respectively.
In relax mode, you can see that controller is lower down filling the palm but the thumb and fingers are way over where they can't reach game mode position.
In game mode the handles are half way up the palm. Quite uncomfortable it you look into it but bearable. The corner of the rounded handle feels like it's trying to gently pierce your palm. Fingers try to grasp onto the handles for their lives! Even looks like they're going to slip off.
For the next photos, I pretend I have the PlayStation wireless keypad (which I highly recommend for um... it's uses). The photo after those, I pretend I have an Xbox360 controller and it has the wireless keyboard.
Since I don't actually have the accessories and Xbox 360 controller, all I can do is based this on past experience.
The PlayStation keypad is located north of the controller and I think it is placed properly. To use it, you'd have to lower the controller so your thumbs would be able to reach it. Lowering down the controller gives a comfy position.
Yes! Two thumbs up!
These next photos obviously don't contain my hands but he's showing the idea.
Above: Game Mode
Below: Typing Mode
Remember, PRETEND! Next it's the Xbox 360 controller with the keyboard. It is located south of the controller. There are two ways to use it. Move the controller higher up, resulting in the edge of the handles slightly piercing your palms or bend your thumbs downwards also resulting in slightly moving the controller up in your hands.
Sigh... Two thumbs down.
What do you think of the position of the bent thumbs feel like? For me, Quite Uncomfortable. That's enough of the Xbox 360, that's for another time. When I actually have one.
Next up is just something quick about the L2 and R2 buttons of the DualShock. Lots of complaints have been about it's convex shape, that our fingers slip off or more of the case of accidently hitting it when the controller is on our lap or simply on a table. I only experienced these accidents a few times. I have nothing against it but because of it's analog pressure feature and it's shape, I think it's suited for racing games. Simulating the feel of the accelerator and the brake.
For shooters? I think not. The only game that I used the L2 and R2 for shooting is Red Dead Redemption and I'm used to it now (but thank you RockStar for letting us switch the button map). When I play shooters, I need to feel a click. With Red Dead Redemption and the R2, all I needed to do was tap. Didn't feel very much like a gun and the R2 acting like a trigger, I sometimes I had to press R2 all the way and the resistance of the pressure feature didn't feel very good in that situation. It didn't feel fast for the sharp shooter in the west.
Sometimes I wonder what would've happened it they used the Boomerang design instead. That would've been a ride full of weird. As for the future, PlayStation 4 (not anytime soon, please), I hope they keep this design or tweak it a bit.
The PlayStation controller has held it's own since Sony released it's first console. It is a truly wonderful and iconic controller, with it's shape and design and becoming a "second" logo for the PlayStation consoles. I would like to dub this the origin and norm for all future controllers.
It may have it's faults. It's design may be flawed. It may not fill my palms the way I'd like it to but I love this controller. May it never change.
Happy Birthday, PlayStation.
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