What makes good play control "feel right"?

[J T]

I often find myself at a loss for word when trying to describe good play control. It's one of those things that you know it when you experience it, but it's difficult to quantify or describe what makes good play control feel right. Why does Super Mario 64 feel great, but Bubsy 3D feels atrocious? What is it that makes Street Fighter II feel awesome, but Pit Fighter feels unbearable? Why can a game that looks as simple as VVVVVV still be amazing to play, but a game that looks as nice as some of the Assassin Creed games can still feel clunky and dull?

Is there a way to improve our vocabulary when describing play control so that we can rely less on nondescriptive phrases like "tight controls" or "wonky controls"?

[BogusMeatFactory]

Well first off, I think the most important thing about good controls is that they do what you tell them to do. Games with tank controls, like Resident Evil are a great example of what NOT to do, as the tank controls confuse the player as to what input makes the character move in what direction.

The second think and I feel the most important thing, is input buffering. For those unfamiliar with the term, input buffering is allowing the player to input a command or movement during the animation of the previous movement. I would consider Mario 64 to be a good example of this. When trying to do a long jump, or doing a side jump, the sliding animations of Mario allow for a lot of leeway in when to jump so that the player does not have to rely on pinpoint accuracy.

When a game requires you to be 100% accurate in your input, then you actually have bad controls. You need the buffer to allow players to play at their own personal rhythm.

[dsheinem]

Is there a way to improve our vocabulary when describing play control so that we can rely less on nondescriptive phrases like "tight controls" or "wonky controls"?

Sure, mostly coming from communities where that kind of attention to detail is most important (e.g. competitive gaming, fighting game communities, shmup communities, etc.)

So, for example, you can start talking about mechanical things like input lag, negative edge, frame rate or frame counting/skipping/etc., etc. A discussion of how a game controls that includes these sorts of a descriptors is more robust and descriptive, but really only for more specialized audiences.

Another option is, perhaps, to take it in the direction of discussing the relationship between aesthetic or emotional experiences and tactile movement. So, for example, you might comment on how a game like Rez gives you a series of visual stimuli that correspond meaningfully to the buttons you are pressing and the sticks you are moving and how you do those things. You might explain that, instead of a game having "wonky controls", that the things you see and control in the game don't seem to have a natural or clear correlation to the movements of your fingers, that they were mapped poorly given the expectations for movement, etc.

From the academic side, there is actually quite a lot out there on the term "gameplay" and the depth of concepts that can be considered within the term's (admittedly loose) confines. Bogost's work on procedural rhetoric, for example, is an excellent starting place. Juul's recent(ish) book on The Art of Failure is also quite good, I think. There's a great discussion on the origins of the term in 1980s European magazines in the recent book by Graeme Kirkpatrick (Computer Games and the Social Imaginary). I just wrote a review essay that included the latter two books in the Sage journal New Media and Society you can check out if you still have academic journal access in your current position...

If you want some more stuff from this angle I can provide you a ton...

[MrPopo]

Well first off, I think the most important thing about good controls is that they do what you tell them to do. Games with tank controls, like Resident Evil are a great example of what NOT to do, as the tank controls confuse the player as to what input makes the character move in what direction.

I disagree with your opinion of tank controls. Forward moves the character forward, turn turns the character. Are people not paying attention to their character on the screen that they can't see what forward is?

Heck, FFX implements the now standard absolute movement but they now have to implement tricks due to the fact that the game likes to change the camera angle on you as you move and so if I stop moving and start I'll be going in a wrong direction; it basically stops actually reading your input and just goes with "are you still holding the same input?" At least with tank controls it would all still make perfect sense.

[Ack]

Input lag is an important concept you ought to be considering: how long after I press the button does the action occur? Is it immediate, or does the game have a delay before the command goes through? Figuring out such timing is a crucial aspect to any game that requires a level of precision.

Sensitivity is also a concept in controls, primarily for motion controls: if I press in a direction, how swiftly does the control respond to change my view or orientation? Is it slow, does it chunk or feel fluid, is there a way to adjust depending on my needs? Sensitivity is especially noticeable in first person games, and high level players in any FPS will generally play on a much higher sensitivity-level.

[Cronozilla]

I think fundamentally it's about a threshold of positively reenforced feedback to the player.

Expansion:

If some button press is physically comfortable and results in a slightly more complex reaction on screen, and it continues to progress in that manner it produces a very complimentary sensation to people.

I wouldn't be surprised if a game with "good controls" has some brain stimulation cross section with an activity like coordinated dancing or even playing an instrument.

It's just the concept of simplistic actions combining together to result in more complex interactions and stimulation. Our brains seem to find contrast and complexity interesting, as long as it's within our threshold of individual comprehension.

Not all games get it right. You can have a game where results on screen are ambiguous and you're beyond the learning period for the game. You can have a game where when you press a button or give some distinct input and the reaction on screen is simpler or less pronounced than the actual input (I would wager this might be why some 1:1 input games seem boring, depending on what it physically relies on). Similarly if too little input results in a lot of reaction on screen (A 30 second combo that took 1 second to physically pull off, for instance), it won't hit that nice ratio of input to feedback. Whatever that ratio, or range of ratios, is for that specific player.

There's is the issue of the individual player familiarity with these patterns and how developed it is in their brains. Some people will get enjoyment out of simplistic controls, others need some complexity layered on to get the same sort of stimulation.

There's also the issue of game playing literacy.

Does everyone find the same sorts of interactions enjoyable? For the most part the answer is yes. But you can find many examples of genres that don't give the feedback some players trained their brains to react to. Or even different hardware interfaces that fundamentally change the type of interaction and timing.

That's what I think it is mostly about.

[CRTGAMER]

Even the term Tank Controls can be misleading to Battlezone twin stick aficionados such as me.

I am used to calling good controls in a game as "tight" and bad control as just bad controls.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I'm still amazed by how fantastic the controls are in the original Super Mario Bros. Most games released today don't feel that smooth.

[Xeogred]

3rd person:
Uncharted = Bad
Dead Space = Good

I like that tight heaviness when it comes to 3rd person controls.

[BogusMeatFactory]

I disagree with your opinion of tank controls. Forward moves the character forward, turn turns the character. Are people not paying attention to their character on the screen that they can't see what forward is?

Heck, FFX implements the now standard absolute movement but they now have to implement tricks due to the fact that the game likes to change the camera angle on you as you move and so if I stop moving and start I'll be going in a wrong direction; it basically stops actually reading your input and just goes with "are you still holding the same input?" At least with tank controls it would all still make perfect sense.

Well let me rephrase. Tank controls in a 3rd person perspective with fixed cameras is a bad control scheme as you lose site and perspective of where your character is in space. Sure right makes your person turn right, but the camera switches to a fixed perspective making your character be in a position you are not familiar with. How many times have you been in a situation where you get hit by a zombie or dog or whatever and the camera changes, making you have to stop to think about where your character is. That is bad control scheme.

Other tank controls in reality aren't bad, we just call it out when they are implemented poorly.