By Alec Meer on March 16th, 2010 at 12:31 am.
As I believe I whined about last week, I’m suffering a nasty spot of RSI at the moment – nothing to write home about, comes with the territory and all that, but it has meant that once in a while I have to use my mouse with my left-hand while the tendons in the right have a right old moan at me. It was whilst doing this to try and play the mouse-controlled platformer 3114, made in four days for the Experimental Gameplay Project, that I remembered I used to be a left-hand-mouserman anyway. What with my being a left-hander and all, just like King of Americaland Mr Derek O’Balmer, who’s clearly drawing something naughty in the photo above.
In fact, the only reason I use a mouse with my right hand nowadays is (no) thanks to a really hideous bout of RSI back in 2000 or so that briefly rendered my southpaw entirely useless for mousing. How did I cope?
The RSI and the enforced ambidexterity alike were agony at the time, but ultimately an incredibly luck break – PC game controls are made with the right-hand in mind, as are most mice. After a couple of laboured weeks, with my PC usage fairly analogous to the spidery child-scrawl you’d get if you tried to handwrite with your off-hand, I clicked neatly into being a right-hand gamer. I’ve never looked back, and frankly I’ve been better at games since. It also means I no longer suffer the indignity of having rearrange the desktop and rebind all the keys whenever I go to play a game for a press briefing.
At the same time, I feel a little bad I’ve abandoned my place in the seven-to-ten percent of humanity who favour the noble southern paw. I’m not about to plunge into a big discourse about this (though I’m tempted to conduct a proper investigation into it down the line), but I’m curious as to how little I remember of what it was like, and how I did it. Did I really used to play FPSes with the cursor keys? That’s what memory tells me, because I’d found that WASD seemed too uncomfortably close to the mouse when it was left-positioned. Madness. What on earth did I use for jump, use, reload, lean et al?
I can definitely recall a certain bitterness about how many excellent-looking mice I was unable to use, because they were ergonomically designed for a right-hand only – something that’s still the case now, as I discover when trying to wield my nice Logitech rodent in my non-mangled left-hand. It’s a different world: thank heavens I seem to have some degree of ambidexterity ,or I fear for how short-lived my career in games journalism might otherwise have been. Oh, I also use my right hand to play frisbee, yet I always stroke cats with my left. Handedness: weird.
So, left-handers: speak out! How do you do it? What obstacles does it present? Are you frustrated at being overlooked by games and most especially gaming hardware? Are you ashamed of my betrayal? Have you made any cool modifications to your hardware or games to accommodate your clearly superior hand-preference?
Right-handers: you’re ordinary, and boring.
Hardware manufacturers: remember us, you stupid basts. A 2006 study revealed that we’re 15-26% richer than right-handers on average, so we’ve got more money to spend on your poxy products than those ten-a-penny commoners.
16/03/2010 at 00:41 Lambchops says:
“We don’t have any relevant tags for this” made me giggle.
I’m right handed but still remember having trouble adapting to good ol’ WASD when I first started gameing.
The games I initially played on the PC had simple enough controls that I used the arrow keys with my right hand to move and keys like space and alt for jumping and firing. In my first efforts at games using the mouse I still remember wanting to use the arrow keys and using a horrid system with my left hand on the arrow keys and and the likes of right shift, alt gr, and space for jump and the num pad for any sort of extra keys. Needless to say, this worked rather terribly and I think it was eventually Unreal Tournament where I finally learned to use the more conventional PC control bindings.
Since then I’ve never looked back.
At least in terms of FPS and third person shooters. Every so often with platformers I’ll revert to right hand on the arrow keys, VVVVVV being a recent example of this.
16/03/2010 at 10:42 SanguineAngel says:
@ Lambchops
My mate still does that. It’s odd because it’s hideously inefficient and increasingly more so as games become more complicated. We’re playing BFBC2 at the moment and there are not enough keys in the vicinity of the arrow keys to even use for all the actions available. Added to which they’re all in odd places- like crounch is delete. urgh. Whenever I’m over his gaff I can barely play the damn thing and whenever he’s over mine with the WASD setup he just can’t do it at all. And THERE IS NO CONVINCING HIM TO CHANGE!
sad face.
16/03/2010 at 15:58 Clovis says:
It seems like early games actually suggested that you use the arrow keys. I know I used them or a long time. If things got complicated I would switch to the number pad! Hmm… if not for the proximity to the mouse, the number pad really isn’t that awful, is it?
I’m WASD now, of cousre.
16/03/2010 at 16:14 jsutcliffe says:
@Clovis
Early games didn’t really let you jump. I wonder if the need for an obvious jump key caused the migration from cursors to WASD. I know I used to use the keypad when control schemes started to need more then just up/down/left/right (e.g. leaning, reloading, grenades), but I have no recollection of what I would have used for jump.
16/03/2010 at 19:06 Viskernus says:
Arrow keys: move – rightCtrl: jump – numpad 0: crouch
numpad 1: use – numpad 2: reload – rightshift: sprint
del+end+pgdn etc.: weaponswitch and various other stuff
+ a wealth of easy-to-feel numpad keys at your disposal for anything you want to map, with the letter keys always remaining available for less reflex-related things. The only potentially tricky thing about using the arrow keys is leaning, and that’s a rare necessity anyway.
Not trying to promote arrow keys over WASD, but making effective (sometimes superior) use of them really isn’t the stone age practice it’s often made out to be. I like how it’s easy to feel your way around. It most certainly doesn’t affect my performance, and it’s nice not having my pinky on shiftlock all the time.
16/03/2010 at 00:41 LewieP says:
I don’t like left handers. Can’t trust ‘em.
16/03/2010 at 00:58 Fumarole says:
That’s ’cause they’re sinister.
16/03/2010 at 01:04 Lambchops says:
Haha! I like it (it’s kind of sad that I only got that because of chemistry though!).
16/03/2010 at 02:20 Bret says:
Ah, puns based on terms with double meanings.
A blessing to silver age comic writers.
16/03/2010 at 08:27 Edgar the Peaceful says:
I only got it because of heraldry :)
16/03/2010 at 16:33 jonfitt says:
I only got it because of my Latin classes.
16/03/2010 at 21:42 GameOverMan says:
I got it because I’m from Spain :P
17/03/2010 at 03:42 Jaz says:
I got it because everyone’s always telling me that.
16/03/2010 at 00:42 Vinraith says:
On the occasion that the tendonitis in my right wrist has flared up I’ve been forced to switch to left-handed mousing, and it’s incredibly awkward. In my case it’s the awkwardness of using the “wrong hand” coupled with the awkwardness of left-handed gaming in general, and the net result is that I tend to stick to turn based (or very slow real time) strategy titles and RPG’s. Anything with the slightest twitch component is completely out of the question.
In short, you lefties have my sympathies. We’d probably all be better off if things were designed with a bit more ambidexterity in mind, if only so that we could comfortably switch back and forth until someone invents an input device as accurate and useful as a mouse but without all that pesky long term physical wear-and-tear.
16/03/2010 at 01:08 Wulf says:
Logitech makes an amazing ambidextrous trackball that I’m pretty fond of, one of their trackball models that they’ve used, and by and large it’s actually offset the introduction of RSI for me, since I adopted trackball usage early on. I still have healthy, young wrists which many gamers of my age (or possibly even younger) would probably be envious of.
If I have any advice for people, it’s use a keyboard with a wrist-rest and soft keys, and also use a trackball. And as I said, where left-handed types are concerned, there are great ambidextrous trackballs out there.
*is done furthering his pro-trackball agenda, for now.*
16/03/2010 at 03:51 Geoffrey says:
Just wanted to second the whole trackball thing. I started on Logitech’s, but moved to a Kensington Expert Mouse… over 4 years ago, and I haven’t looked back. Also completely ambidextrous (meaning symmetrical). I will say that the revision of my model that they brought out within months of my purchase is remarkably worse (I think they downgraded the optics, but I can’t prove it; I ended up with a spare through various machinations, and I’ve found that it refuses to pick up movement when you ramp speed too quickly from a standstill, which my original suffers from not in the least). I may suffer competitively against my mousing brethren in shooting-people-in-the-face-on-the-internet, but I’m okay with that.
16/03/2010 at 04:33 Vinraith says:
@Wulf
I have a trackball I carry around with my laptop, I have two problems with it. One, I feel like it lacks the stability and control necessary for twitch gaming. That might be my own lack of practice with it, of course, but it seems to move much more easily than a mouse and thus unwanted movements are more common. Second, it doesn’t have a scroll wheel (or equivalent) and I can’t find a reasonably priced fingertip trackball that does (thumb trackballs don’t work for me at all). Can I ask what you use?
16/03/2010 at 13:42 wiper says:
Vinraith: now, this is strictly for righty’s, and is no longer manufactured, but Microsoft’s Intellimouse trackballs were uniformly fantastic – ergonomic, heavy but accurate ball (I was /very/ competitive when it came to twitch-headshotting people back in the day), and with a wheel between the primary buttons. Also another two buttons where your ring and little finger rest, which I never use for games, but default to back and forward in most browsers, which is always handy. By far my favourite input device, though mine needs replacing after taking many knocks (still works perfectly, but the lmb-equivalent sometimes creaks when you click it, and there’s the sound of particles rattling around inside the trackball if you move it around).
16/03/2010 at 00:43 Dangerdad says:
In my case, I’m a righty, but learned to mouse with my left hand because of RSI. I now do all of my mousing left-handed, including games (strategy and FPS, etc.). Because the number pad is on the right you have to swing your arm out further to mouse with your right hand than your left. I think it’s been a win.
Games sometimes drive me nuts when they don’t recognize lefty mouse buttons (e.g. the Just Cause 2 demo right now) or hardcode WASD for movement. Oh, did I mention I use an ergonomic keyboard?
Lastly, my favorite mouse is the good old Logitech Mouseman optical. It’s symmetric, the right size for my hand, but has no drivers beyond XP. Grrrr.
16/03/2010 at 00:43 gulag says:
I’m left-handed, and I’ve never had a problem with WASD. I just shove the keyboard over to the right, use the heel of my hand to jump (spacebar) my right thumb to crouch (Ctrl) and my little finger to reload/interact/search bodies/throw grenades/turn on my flashlight etc. (It’s a very talented finger).
16/03/2010 at 00:51 matte_k says:
I play with the standard WASD and mouse in right hand configuration, even though i’m actually left handed. However, I do, as you say Alec, use my right hand for the odd thing, such as opening doors whilst carrying tea (doing it the other way round feels weird). I vaguely remember a teacher at primary school being concerned about the rubbishness of my handwriting, and so he performed a series of tests by making me carry out tasks such as put a cardboard tube to my eye, catch a ball, kick a ball, write, pick something up and carry it, etc. He found that although I favoured my left hand, I did carry out a sizable number of tasks with my right hand, leading him to believe that with practice I could easily be ambidextrous.
20 odd years later, i’m still a Southpaw and proud of it :)
16/03/2010 at 00:54 DesolationJones says:
I think that left handers are richer because they can’t use our nice shiny right handed mice. That’s probably not true, but it is scientific fact.
16/03/2010 at 00:57 Iain says:
I’m left-handed and I’ve always used a mouse right-handed. I think this mainly stems from when I first started using PCs at High School and it was just such a faff to remap the mouse buttons every time I wanted to use one of the computers (this was before the days of school networks with login profiles and quotas) that I just adapted to the way everyone else had them set up. That is, unless I wanted to particularly razz someone who was going to use the computer after me, then I’d totally remap everything (setting the left-click to minimize and right-click to left-click is particularly amusing) and screw the colour scheme to something absolutely hideous, to boot.
Once I was at university and bought my own computer, the only thing that really stopped me from using my naturally dominant hand (that phrase conjurors up odd Dr. Strangelove-type images for me) to control the mouse after my post-Half-Life move to mouselook control on FPS games was the fact that Microsoft never seemed to make a left-handed version of the Intellimouse Explorer 2.0.
16/03/2010 at 13:48 protospork says:
Same here, it’s always such a hassle to have to shuffle everything around if you want to mouse left-handed. On my home machine I’ll sometimes go left-handed for a time, but I’ve never tried gaming with it – it’s a G5 so awkward enough just on the desktop :\
If my right hand hurts, I just plug in the 360 pad and play GRID or something. Then again, whatever I’ve got isn’t very serious (“…yet”, or so mom keeps telling me :<).
16/03/2010 at 16:56 DMJ says:
I use my mouse and keyboard right-handed too, because I don’t want to the hassle of remap. Yet I ALWAYS invert Y.
I’m ambi-sinister.
16/03/2010 at 18:09 wererogue says:
Yup, me too. My dexterity with my right hand is plenty good enough for pointing, clicking and shooting – the only times I’ve ever needed to switch hands is for those fiddly “move the cursor through the maze without touching the walls” games that were popular half a decade ago.
I actually prefer to rely on my left hand for things like using the keyboard and guitar fretting – there’s less chance that I’ll miss the correct key.
16/03/2010 at 00:57 Enoch says:
I am left-handed, but I have used the mouse with my right hand ever since the first time I laid eyes on it. That’s just where it went on the desk for everybody else, and I didn’t try to fight it. Honestly, I think that the keyboard hand of the mouse-and-keyboard combination is the one that has the harder task– more muscle-memory based-keyhunting and doing different things with different fingers.
(Although I generally don’t find pure action games to be particularly entertaining. I want to say that this is because I am an intellectual elitist who prefers “figure it out” to “click on the man and he fall down,” but I’m not ruling out lack of fine motor skills as a contributing factor.)
16/03/2010 at 01:01 Sweedums says:
its odd, i’m a lefty, but i do alot of things right handed… i write with my left, but i have always used a mouse with my right, i hold a tennis racket in my left, but hold a cricket bat in my right (with my left arm forward)…. i play pool/snooker as a right handed person would, but i throw balls left handed (i throw balls like a little girl right handed)….
im also right footed… its confusing…
16/03/2010 at 01:04 Eidolon says:
I use AutoCAD left handed on occasion. It’s amazing how much of a difference it makes to the ache that tends to grow in whatever mousehand I’m using. I only game right handed, though – might say something about my priorities?
16/03/2010 at 01:04 Army_of_None says:
“Right-handers: you’re ordinary, and boring.”
Damn. I’m going to play neptune’s pride with my left hand just to show you how ordinary/boring I am, sirs! Because it is ever so difficult!
16/03/2010 at 01:04 Yargh says:
Count me in as a southpaw who has always moused with the right hand although I do most other tasks with my left hand. Intriguingly I was nearly as good with each hand at both fencing and tennis.
I suspect it is mostly a question of training and muscle memory, at least for mice.
16/03/2010 at 01:05 Andrew says:
I’m left handed and always used right handed mousing too. Been doing it ever since i started computing so it feels natural. Though i probably do suck a teeny bit more in FPS games because of it. Strangely though i just cant bring myself to use a laptop touchpad with righty. Just feels so clumsy
16/03/2010 at 01:06 Klaus says:
Left-handedness is the work of the Devil. Alec is clearly a witch of some kind.
I have tried to use my left hand, but it leaves my right hand idle which is… disconcerting.
16/03/2010 at 10:48 Kommissar Nicko says:
You have discovered that HERESY GROWS FROM IDLENESS.
16/03/2010 at 01:11 Shrewsbury says:
I’m left handed. I switched over to WASD a while ago when I got a new keyboard (it’s small enough for WASD to be suitably far away from the mouse), but I use the mouse in the left hand. I’ve also played FPSes with touchpads too, my first playthrough of Portal was with one. I tend to remap the use key to the middle mouse button unless there’s a melee button.
16/03/2010 at 01:17 Inanimotioon says:
Left handed here. Never even thought about using the mouse left handed until I saw someone sit down at a computer and move it to the other side of the keyboard.
Don’t really see the mouse as being right handed. Not anymore that WASD is left handed anyway. Which means it doesn’t really bother me at all.
I’m somewhat ambidextrous from breaking my left arm and being forced to use my right for an extended amount of time.
I also throw a frisbee right handed lol
16/03/2010 at 01:17 The Dark One says:
Despite being a leftie, I’ve always used things like scissors and mice that were designed for righties. Maybe that explains my terrible aim in first person shooters. :I
16/03/2010 at 02:10 El Stevo says:
@ The Dark One:
Mmmn. When I was little my teachers at school would spend ages tracking down a pair of left-handed scissors before proudly presenting them to me. I was too shy to point out that I could use right-handed scissors fine.
16/03/2010 at 01:19 nhex says:
Suffering from RSI right now, and I’m using the right hand for the mouse. Even as a lefty, though, I’ve never switched the mouse buttons, never saw a need for it. Mapping WASD to cursor keys was something I’ve generally done, but now I do find it easier to just move the keyboard itself further to the right since so many games now use a ton of keys centered around that. I am annoyed that there aren’t more ambidextrous mice.
16/03/2010 at 01:22 Rive says:
Im left handed, and i still use the mouse with the left hand. I didnt reverse the buttons though. Too much hassle in school or at somebody elses place. I still play shooters with the arrow keys. r ctrl/enter = use, 0numpad is crouch, other num keys are usually weapons, gadgets etc., page down is grenade/similar, end is reload, delnumpad is usually inventory or something like that, sprint is usually on the thumbbutton for the mouse. Oh, and i use invert mouse.
On the consoles, most of the fps games are unplayable for me. For example: Gears of War. You can switch move/look on the sticks. Since you cant remap the buttons though, you cant press A to run AND the right stick to move without doing some form of hardcore finger yoga. It is getting increasingly hard on PC too. Back in the days you could remap everything. Now it is common, even in computer games to lock out certain functions. You could remap almost everything in Fallout 3. Except the button that toggles VATS. Had to fingeryoga my way through this one with WASD. This is really a topic that hits a nerve with me. Especially because the industry is developing backwards in this. I still remember when i could even remap every single function of a game on the controller. And i really dont think it is that much harder to do today, because some games still do it.
16/03/2010 at 02:32 Shalrath says:
You can blame TRC/TCR’s for that. You HAVE to make sure the prompt is correct for buttons even if you change them. So most publishes laze out and just give you a couple presets. PC is free to do whatever they want – but some places are just flat out lazy.
16/03/2010 at 20:18 Jens says:
@ Rive:
I gave up years ago on remapping controls ingame. Instead I just bought a keypad. Now I can remap the buttons of the keypad to whatever I want – not to mention macros and stuff. Also it is easier on the hand (left in my case) then using a keyboard. The only drawback is it is rubbish for typing, so you need to have your normal keyboard handy for that.
16/03/2010 at 01:26 Anaphiel says:
I’m a righty, and I play every FPS with the standard WASD setup except for the ancient Bungie classic Marathon. Marathon I play with the arrow keys, with the control key held down perpetually as the “run” key, and using the keypad 0 key as my alt-fire. I blame a) starting off as a keyboard-only player and b) the days when Mac mice really did only have one button.
Oddly, to this day, 15 years or whatever since that game came out, I cannot bring myself to play with the keyboard layout that I use for every other game in my library… gotta use the weird arrow-keys-and-keypad setup.
16/03/2010 at 10:39 Hmm-Hmm. says:
Thank goodness you use control. For a moment I thought you were using caps lock. That.. would have been unforgivable.
http://marathon.bungie.org/vidmaster/vidrules.html
16/03/2010 at 01:27 TheDextriarchy says:
I’m in the same boat as Andrew–I vaguely remember trying to rearrange the mouse on the first computer I used so I could use it with my left hand, but I think because the only desktops I ever had were public/family machines, I quickly switched to right-handed mousing. Using a trackpad with my right hand feels utterly unnatural, though, which leads to some weird situations where I plug a mouse into my laptop and end up trying to use both it and the trackpad simultaneously.
Obviously this opens up my mouse options exponentially; the only serious difference I’ve noticed between myself and right-handed gamers is that I’m disinclined to use anything except a standard three-button mouse. It feels a lot more natural to coordinate turning/ducking/reloading with my left hand, and save the right for nothing but point-and-click stuff.
16/03/2010 at 02:14 El Stevo says:
I’m another lefty who’s never used a mouse with anything but his right hand.
16/03/2010 at 02:15 jarvoll says:
I’m right-handed, but a few years ago I decided that I wanted to really test my co-ordination and switch to doing everything left-handed. I believe the prompt was a New Scientist article that suggested brushing one’s teeth left-handed to make oneself “smarter”, by encouraging cross-corpus-callosum activity. Anyway, since about 2005, I have done *everything* left-handed (yes, even that). The hardest was probably hand-writing – that’s taken me about a year and a half, and I’m still slower and my script is noticeably different.
The second-hardest was probably gaming, but I found it only took about a month before it was just as comfortable as right-handed gaming. One of my proudest achievements is finishing Far Cry on “realistic” with no quick-saves and mousing left-handed. As far as keyboard controls go, my movements are OKL;, which I find superior to WASD since there are more keys around OKL; for mapping to weapons, chat functions, etc… The only problems I’ve encountered with this are 1) Bioshock didn’t let me use my left-handed mouse-button set-up; it turned out this was Bioshock’s least sin, but still, screw you, developers; and 2) Quite a few games hate the semicolon (;) for some reason, so I’m forced to shift my hand one key to the left, to IJKL. This makes crouching with rAlt a little uncomfortable, but still manageable. My biggest problem is I have to remember which games are I and which are O, and sometimes my hand comes down on the keyboard in the wrong place for a particular game, so I end up rushing from behind cover instead of leaning out of it, for example.
16/03/2010 at 11:27 Okami says:
Little historic info: IJKL were the keys used by the C64 versions of the Bard’s Tale games for movement, since the little Commodore didn’t have any arrow keys (well it did, but there were only two: one for up/down and another one for left/right, they were situated next to each other and you had to use the ‘shift’ key to switch from one funtion to the other. In short, they weren’t really suitable for navigating in a computer game).
16/03/2010 at 13:31 sfury says:
Hmm I doubt I’d be trying handwriting with my left hand – my right is bad enough already and I’m having very few instances where I have to write something by hand.
Gaming or mouse-ing in general – nah, not for me too.
But ambidexterity is a pretty cool thing so I might try that myself for other daily activities, dual-wielding katanas for example (a dream of mine since playing BG II) :)
Anyway, congrats on your achievment!
16/03/2010 at 02:28 Shalrath says:
I taught a guy in school to use p l ; ‘ instead of WASD, and put the mouse on the left side. He looked at me like I’d just invented fire. To this day I believe he still uses it.
One of my sons is a lefty, and I was ADAMANT he learn left-handed. I wont break him of it just because people who make games don’t give a shit.
16/03/2010 at 02:34 ohnoabear says:
When I first started using mice, I used my left hand, but it wasn’t worth the bother so I gradually became a right-handed mouser. I’m still fairly ambidextrous at the mouse; although I wouldn’t play games with the mouse on my left, I can do most other tasks easily. I think it has something to do with the mouse not needing fine finger control for most tasks.
As an aside, I’ve found it pretty easy to learn to do things right-handed, provided I don’t already know how to do them left-handed. I consciously learned to play guitar right-handed, for example, after being frustrated to no end over the lack of ice hockey goalie gloves for my right hand, and knowing left-handed guitars were similarly rare. Other than a slight lack of precision when picking, I’m no worse at guitar than any naturally right-handed person.
16/03/2010 at 02:35 Alistair says:
Not just Obama, but Clinton, Bush and Reagan were left-handed, plus a few more US presidents. Crazy world.
16/03/2010 at 13:39 sfury says:
Not bad – 8 out of 44, that’s about double than natural occurring percent of lefties.
btw I’m getting such a kick calling Reagan and Bush “lefties”, nazi commies all of them… ;)
16/03/2010 at 03:00 HPew says:
I’m left handed, but for reasons long forgotten I have always moved a mouse with my right hand. This is incredibly useful when mixed with a pen tablet–pen in left hand, mouse in right, equal skill with both.
16/03/2010 at 03:00 Lethal Jelly says:
I’m left handed but just always used my right hand for the mouse, never really thought about it until I watched a fellow lefty move the mouse over in order to play.
16/03/2010 at 03:19 Saleck says:
I hate games that insist in using the left mouse button to click in menus (BioShock, BioShock 2, UT3, S.T.A.L.K.E.R and don’t get me started on GTA4′s ludicrous system including key bindings). Configuring Keys is always a small annoyance (the whole WASD setup doesn’t apply to me).
Also, there are a few games out there that allow me to have the gun on the left side of the screen as opposed to the right. The Unreal series has always had this feature. Valve added it to Team Fortress 2 a while back too which was nice. I sent Gabe Newell an e-mail thanking him and got a nice response back :)
Outside of Gaming: I’m also into bugging my university tutors.. I always have the mouse set to left handed there and every time they try to use my mouse they will right click…. then right click again… then sigh and smile because they remember my annoying habits :P
I still want to learn how to play an Electric Guitar too.. but because of, in my opinion, DISCRIMINATION… left handed guitars are usually double the price of right handed ones :( its not fair! I cant afford any kind of good guitar because of stupid prices. Its the same chunk of wood just wire it the other way damnit!
Anyway, being left-handed has minimal effect for me in games and I can screw with people’s minds outside of it. It’s fun! Up The Southpaws!
16/03/2010 at 03:42 AgentHH says:
I’m right handed, but I started mousing left handed many years back when I had an RSI in my right hand. I am now a convert to IJKL. Strangely enough, I don’t swap the mouse buttons. There are many games that I can rebind all of my controls nicely in, but there are a few that still won’t let you do that fully. Bad Company 2 multiplayer completely reserves the enter key for the spawn menu, which is my usual crouch key. Shattered Horizon doesn’t seem to support any of those very-right-hand-side keys as well :(
Also, nobody makes a left-handed mouse and it drives me bonkers. I would totally buy a G5 if they made a lefty version.
16/03/2010 at 03:57 A-Scale says:
Allow me to begin by thanking you for speaking about us. Along with mouth breathers we are some of the most openly discriminated against people in the world today.
Secondly, being almost entirely left handed, I mouse exclusively with my right. My left hand is more dexterous, and my right is steadier. I think I prefer the steadiness when gaming, though it’s not like I have much choice in the matter (I couldn’t change now). However, I do everything else lefty. My hands are always slightly inked, scissors kill my hands, and I shoot my guns left handed as well. I almost lost an eye thanks to my leftiness when a round exploded out of battery in my 22 rifle and a piece of shrapnel soared just inches past my eyes and landed on the tarp next to me ten feet away.
We do however have advantages. We’ve got a funny style of fighting and hitting balls, which is an advantage. Moreover, we can shake hands and wield a weapon at the same time! Truly in the land of the right handed man the left handed man is king! Except for scissors.
16/03/2010 at 04:18 drewski says:
I’m a righty, but I play pool left handed.
I have an old Intellimouse around here somewhere which is ambidextrous, so I may try some lefty experiments. Certainly my very first impressions of IJKL are nothing but positive. It feels…natural. So does WASD, of course, but there will at least be no hand positioning issues. I do notice that with IJKL my little finger defaults to ; whereas my left pinky likes LSHIFT. A relic of my typing positiong, perhaps.
16/03/2010 at 05:01 Grey_Ghost says:
I use an Orochi mouse (Razer) in wired mode for my desktop. It replaced my old MouseMan from circa 1992. It’s neither left-handed or right-handed. Thank heavens I finally found a comfortable modern mouse!
16/03/2010 at 05:10 Melf_Himself says:
I’m a lefty.
I remember playing Jedi Knight online using the arrow keys, comma and period to strafe, Force powers were insert/delete/etc.
My friends played quake using the mouse, and I was sort of like… lol? Looks so imprecise. Then I didn’t play any FPS games for a few years, and mouse/WASD defaults became ubiquitous. I discovered that my previous negative perception lasted for about 10 seconds, and now it feels about as natural as breathing.
You have to be able to exercise control over both hands when doing mouse/WASD, but it’s not especially imprecise control. I don’t think it would be difficult for right handers to switch to arrow keys + left-hand mouse, for example (if mouses (mice?) weren’t curved to favour the right hand, anyway).
It’s not like we’re doing rocket surgery here.
16/03/2010 at 05:11 Melf_Himself says:
*not especially PRECISE, I meant
16/03/2010 at 11:17 Jebediah Adder says:
It’s funny how it’s sometimes really hard to let go of something you’ve got used to. I remember ditching the all-keyboard-controls in shooters only when my previously very even Quake matches against a couple of my friends took a nasty turn when they managed to master mouse controls.
Damned grappling hook mod was the last straw…
17/03/2010 at 00:55 Will Tomas says:
I think I first completed Half-Life using arrow keys and control to fire, rather than the mouse. Crazy. But it was on Easy, and a hold-over from playing the only other FPSes I’d ever played at that point (Dark Forces at home, Wolfenstein and Doom at school) with a keyboard only. Of course, that was over 10 years ago now, but still…
16/03/2010 at 05:10 MaxFrost says:
I’ve actually run into this problem myself more and more recently with hack n’ slash games like ninja gaiden, bayonetta, and darksiders. The controller layout is designed for righties, and while the control stick/buttom mapping works for the most part, trigger layouts are what get me, as my brain is hardwired to pull my left index for block (I blame smash brothers for this, they had a good control scheme). Having to use my right hand for everything just gets old, let me remap keys dammit!
This is why I’m still predominately a PC gamer. While I do use the mouse right handed, my left hand by far has the more complicated job, and is actually quite practiced at finger yoga. The more buttons the game needs, the better I play. So in other words I suck at FPS, but I rule at WoW or any other game that abuses keyboard controls.
16/03/2010 at 05:10 MJS says:
*Hugs his Razer mouse*
Not quite on the leftie/ evil right handed subject but todays old PCG toilet reading was issue120 and had a nice devils advocate by Steve Brown (?) about why the cursor keys are superior to WASD.
Anyway more on the leftie rightie stuff, I’m decently ambidextrous when it comes to some things, instinctively picking up stuff/petting the kitties with whatever hand is closer, most DIY/kitchen tools, im completly happy using either hand for basketball dribbling or shooting and general desktop mouse usage among other stuff.
The only things im really left handed are things thats need a decent amount of accuracy/hand-eye/skill/small movements, like writing (the only major thing I’m awful at right handed), throwing balls smaller than basket/football size accurately, one handed catching, pool (though im not much worse with my right and im pretty poor eitherway) and of course mouse gaming. When it comes to any game faster than the likes of Civ or X-Com if I don’t use my left it feels unnatural and for accurate and fast aiming I would probably suck with my right.
90% of the time I still use the cursor keys, in its own little separate shrine from the rest of the common keys and the excellent surrounds of enter, r shift, r control etc as well as the num pad and depending on the layout either handy or not so handy pg up/down end ins etc. It all seems far better spaced out and planned compared to the WASD set up using a tight knot of random letters (W for forward? what?! :p) , the number line that stretches all the way over the length of the keyboard just seems odd in some games and the shift/ctrl just doesnt feel natural to hit if I’m playing rightie.
Still for some games (I’m looking at you ARMA/OFP) due to the huge amount of keys and already complex key layouts I usually (always on a laptop for such games due to the missing num pad) end up with having to use WASD or on the rare occasion the preferable IJKL for hand spacing reasons. Apart from these games, which I can’t grumble about, I have no problems using cursor keys apart from the rubbish (anti)bindings on BF2/BC2 than lock some keys out.
As long as I can keep on getting decent ambidextrous mice and the type of keyboard I like, flat keys with a good positioned righthand side, I’ll be happy with left handed pc gaming.
And on a slightly worrying note, I don’t think my Mum likes me, last time I came home and went to use the family PC I found that she had replaced the universal microsoft basic mouse with a strange right handed gaming monstrosity…apparently it was the only one tesco had in stock (even with using my right hand, I dont understand how some of you use these weird shaped rightie only lumps of a mouse! I will again hug my razer lachesis *hug*), she loves it though.
16/03/2010 at 06:19 Zerotonine says:
My girlfriend is a left-hander, but she’s been a computer user for a long time and has become accustomed to using her right hand for mousing. I don’t think she’s ever complained about not being able to use a left-handed mouse.
It wasn’t until she started playing The Witcher that I had to teach her of the ways of WASD, especially since the different combat styles are mapped to Z, X & C, and employs mouselook in the over-the-shoulder view and she’s now a pro!
She used to play WoW and she could get away with using the arrow keys to move and turn, she wouldn’t strafe, and wouldn’t use the mouse to look unless she wanted to change the viewing angle. I don’t think she’s ever going to go back to arrow keys on a regular basis now that she’s comfortable with WASD.
16/03/2010 at 06:31 DarkNoghri says:
Not really a righty/lefty issue, but more of a keyboard thing that I thought was amusing. Some of my first PC games were racing games, where I played with a keyboard. Steer with arrows/numpad, shifting and so on with a/z/whatever. I also played some shooters, with mouse + WASD. I was able to swap back and forth with total abandon.
And then I was at a friends place once, and he had one of the early Tony Hawk games. It was played on a keyboard. If I recall correctly, controls required WASD movement and numpad keys were used for special moves. Jumps and so forth. Somehow, that setup completely boggled my mind. I was unable to play it with anything resembling competency. I kept trying to use the wrong controls for the wrong thing. I’m sure I could have gotten over it in time, but in the half hour I was there, it was horrendous.
I can only imagine how hard it is for lefties in our right-biased gaming world.
16/03/2010 at 06:53 Ravenger says:
I’m left handed, use the mouse in my left hand and the arrow keys for movement, right shift for jump, right control for duck, and enter for reload or melee depending on the game. I use the left mouse button for shooting.
I have to use my right hand to use a joystick because originally there were no left handed flight sticks, so I taught myself to fly right handed.
My biggest probems are a) Non rebindable movement keys (I’m looking at you, Dead Space) where I can’t use the arrow keys for movement, and b) Finding a decent ambidextrous mouse, as all the decent mice with lots of buttons are right handed only.
16/03/2010 at 07:05 smokingkipper says:
Somebody earlier mentioned the previous Presidents of USA all appeared to be left handed.
The study Alec linked to (and a quick web search) also mentions:
Michelangelo
Isaac Newton
Albert Einstein
Leonardo da Vinci
Pablo Picasso
Bach
Napoleon
Alexander the Great
Not a bad list. Being a lefty myself I am not sure if I should be proud, or guilty for my lack of any obvious talent!
16/03/2010 at 07:16 Benjamin says:
I’m left handed in absolutely everything except using the mouse. I just use it on the right side, and have never bothered to switch it over. It never felt weird at all. Plus I can write notes on paper and use the mouse at the same time. ;)
I think left handedness is something of an unrecognised minority. Society doesn’t consider us as being disadvantaged in any way. But, a lot of manual tools are designed for use in the right hand, and even something as simple as scissors are painful to use for a long period of time (due to the shape of the finger holes… plus you can’t see where exactly where you’re cutting because of the way the blades are placed). I wonder if you were to look at a history of injuries and accidents whether left handedness leads to an increased chance of injury?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m perfectly happy with being left handed. :)
@Yargh: Hah, I used to fence when I was younger as well! Left handers have an extreme advantage in fencing – most of the people we fight (right handers) are not experienced fighting against left handers, so we have the upper hand (hah!) there. And when we fight left handers, both of us are in the same boat, so there’s no disadvantage.
16/03/2010 at 07:20 Grunt says:
(raises left hand) I’m yet another leftie who’s always used his right hand for the mouse. Just like scissors. I’m grateful, frankly, that my right hand found itself something to do in life.
Er…something else useful.
Nice to see the bloke in the picture holding his pen the exact same way I do. Makes me feel that tiny bit less of a freak.
16/03/2010 at 07:29 Mungrul says:
I don’t get why left handed gamers use the massively constrained arrow keys, when just to the right of those on 98% of keyboards there is the numeric keypad. IT BOGGLES MY MIND!
Like someone else mentioned here, I used to play the first Marathon, but I used to play it solely with the keyboard. The default bindings involved the use of the numeric keypad for movement and a few keys to the left of the keyboard for looking and shooting. Since then, I’ve always thought that the numeric keypad would be ideal for left-handed gamers.
Saying that though, I write left-handed, play most games right-handed, except Wii games which I play left-handed, and my eyebrows meet in the middle.
Clearly I’m not to be trusted.
16/03/2010 at 08:31 Dan Milburn says:
I used to play FPSes with the numeric keypad. Not having easy access to thebuttons to select individual weapons was a bit of a pain, but apart from that it works fine. I think I only switched to WASD when I start playing World of Warcraft..
16/03/2010 at 07:55 Heliosicle says:
Depends for me, for Arma 2 I use WASD because of the fact that I need me alot of keys, for most other things I use arrows, I’m used to a laptop keyboard, where I had end for jump, shift for run/walk, application for talk, and ctrl for crouch, might buy a new keyboard soon…
I must say, being a left handed pc gamer is alot better than being a left handed mac gamer, I remember trying to play CoD 1, 6 or 7 years ago, with a single click mouse and the numpad, it didnt occur to me to move the keyboard…
16/03/2010 at 07:57 Will says:
I’m left-handed, but have always used my right hand for mousing for some reason. I’ve had moderate to severe RSI (amusingly called OOS in my adoptive land) on and off for years – enough to go to the doctor for when it flares up, mainly from multi-hour coding sessions with insufficient breaks.
@Alec: I’ve had some success using Workrave as a break timer, which has helped me get over bad spells. But I had to buy a new mouse a couple of years back and chose a Microsoft Mouse 7000 (it has a near-vertical left side and slopes down on the right). I really haven’t had any RSI issues since despite turning Workrave off and working some very heavy contracts. It’s right-handed, but I’d suggest giving it a try if you get over the current bout and feel like changing hands again. It might be self-suggestion, but I haven’t really made any other work environment changes that I’m aware of and I’ve been symptom free since not long after I bought it.
It can also be useful to use something like a tablet from time to time since it provides pointing via a different set of hand/wrist movements and might offer your wrist a break. Plus learning all the Windows keystrokes helps too!
@Yargh, Benjamin: I’m a (lapsed) left-handed fencer too. It’s great, execpt when your opponent is left handed as well then it all falls apart :( Worth it for being able to irritate right-handed folk with things like a disengage lunge to their left shoulder…
Best of luck,
Will
16/03/2010 at 08:03 MinisterofDOOM says:
I can’t write to save my life with my left hand (admittedly, even my righthanded handwriting is barely legible) but most other things I do well with either hand. At work when juggling multiple computers, I do a lot of left-hand mousing. but with right-handed mouse setups. My left-handed left-button double click speed has increased dramatically over the years…it was once pathetic, causing me to accidentally rename desktop shortcuts rather than launching programs.
Working on my cars, same thing…whichever hand is better positioned to turn the wrench or drop the hot oil filter and dribble oil down my arm, etc. gets used…I don’t contort myself to get my right hand into position. I’ve always wanted to drive a RHD car with a manual trans just to see how bad I’d fail at shifting with my wrong hand. Oops, that’s not first, that’s reverse.
16/03/2010 at 08:05 JB says:
I’m a (boring old) righty, but I play sports left-handed/left-footed. I even used to do highjump like a lefty. If I try to write left handed it’s the usual drunken-spider-fell-in-the-inkwell-and-ran-across-the-page. Never tried using a computer left-handed though.
16/03/2010 at 08:32 Reverend Speed says:
In most things I’m left-handed; with a mouse I’m ambidextrous which can unnerve friends when they see me casually using the hand closest to the mouse… then crossing my right hand over my left to use the keyboard.
Friends: WAT?!
Me: …wut?
16/03/2010 at 13:12 The Sombrero Kid says:
lol i do this too, i think it’s easier to be ambidexterous with a mouse than a pen. i play guitar right handed, i cut things with my left hand but only with right handed scissors, i can’t get left handed scissors to work! the most annoying thing about being left handed is screw caps!
16/03/2010 at 08:36 Dan Milburn says:
I mouse left-handed for games, and right-handed for everything else. This seems to be enough to keep the RSI at bay.
16/03/2010 at 08:40 Dominic White says:
I’m predominantly left-handed, but gaming in general has given me a degree of ambidexterity. Still, doesn’t change my control layout – defaults for most things, mouse on the left, keyboard on the right. Some people ask how I use WSAD without being all bunched up… well, I move my keyboard a bit further to the right.
As for consoles, the primary controller has been on the left for as long as I can remember, so I’m really not sure how anyone can consider that right-handed in design.
16/03/2010 at 09:07 ben0207 says:
Try looking up the Kensington Expert Mouse trackball. Uses fingers for movement, has a rotating ring (ooh-er) for scrolling and four buttons. Build quality could be better, but mine’s lasted 7 months now without issues.
16/03/2010 at 09:14 Andytizer says:
Now that you’ve done an article on leftiness I wouldn’t mind seeing something about inverted y-axis players if any of RPS can count themselves an ‘inverty’.
Despite inverted y-axis being a staple part of camera controls since Quake, there are glaring omissions like Beyond Good & Evil, Silent Hill: Homecoming, NOVA for iPhone.
Like lefties, inverties have to adapt their playstyle to games without the option to invert y-axis in disorientating ways.
16/03/2010 at 10:43 Mungrul says:
Pah! Quake? QUAKE?!?
I’ve used an inverted Y-axis since playing Apache Gunship on the Speccy back in 1986!
Buggrin’ young folk these days, don’t know they’re born, I tells yer!
16/03/2010 at 09:25 Leonard Hatred says:
wait.. what? there are still right-hand-disabled people in this modern age?
bring back Eugenics and stamp out the left-handed menace once and for all imo.
16/03/2010 at 09:27 Alastayr says:
I’m a righty and I got RSI a few weeks ago when I played through Mass Effect 2 on Insanity for a friend at his PC. He’s got one of those shitty Logitech “Premium Optical Mouse” aberrations with only 2 buttons…
When I told him to get a better mouse lest he might suffer the same fate, he defiantly loughed at me, accused me of lying, mocked my RSI and defended his shitty mouse with a vigour you’d not see in a Lioness defending her cub. Some people really don’t appreciate when you try to look out for them…
It’s largely gone now and I manage to get by with my left hand on mouse duty mostly, though it really ruined my gaming schedule. :(
16/03/2010 at 09:48 Benjamin says:
I find whether I use invert-y or not depends on the game I’m playing – anyone else?
16/03/2010 at 10:58 Dan Milburn says:
Yes. First person games always have to be inverted, third person games don’t.
16/03/2010 at 14:44 The Sombrero Kid says:
a mouse feels like it’s running around the inside of the mans face, whereas with an analogue stick it feels to me that it’s top is the back of the inside of the mans face and the balls the centre so it projects through onto the inside of his face. so for me for a mouse i always use uninverted and for an analouge stick i always use inverted :S
16/03/2010 at 10:05 HermitUK says:
Left handed when using anything like writing implements or scissors. But I’ve always used mice right-handed. The first computer I remember using with a mouse (an Amiga) was a family computer, and everyone else is right handed. Thus the mouse stayed on the right. To make it doubly hard, the A500 had a hard drive attachment that connected to the left end of the keyboard, so if I had wanted to use the mouse in my left hand it would have been an awful long way away from the actual screen.
16/03/2010 at 10:30 Gassalasca says:
I’m left-handed, but it never occured to me to use the mouse with my left hand. When I first heard some people do that, it seemed ludicrous to me.
Interestingly, I played the cello when I was a kid as a right hander as well. Though I play drums now in a sort of a hybrid fashion. Hm.
16/03/2010 at 11:33 MacBeth says:
A righty, but from the days of HL1 or earlier I have scorned WASD for the far more useful ESDF, which gives you way more options for your little finger, provided it is flexible/controllable enough…
16/03/2010 at 11:41 Carra says:
Pfff, WASD.
Numpad ftw!
And if a game needs more then twelve buttons next to the forward, back and strafe buttons it’s too complicated ;)
16/03/2010 at 11:50 Kelron says:
I’m kind of ambidextrous. I’ve always written with my left hand and used the mouse with my right hand for as long as I can remember. My right-handed writing and left handed mouse use are possibly better than most, but not much better than you’d expect from someone using their off-hand.
16/03/2010 at 12:29 JohnH says:
I still use the mouse with my left hand. So I still remap almost every key in games today to keys around the arrow keys. Over the years I’ve grown accustomed to using the arrow keys and all the surrounding keys for just about any task a game throws at me. Numpad 0 to reload in some games, autorun in others (fps vs mmo’s usually). Del, Ins, and the rest of that key cluster is used for whatever I need for the specific game. Del and Pg Dn for prev/next weapon where applicable. End for use. Ins, Home and Pg Up usually end up being random stuff. Home is throw grenade in BFBC2.
As for the mouse itself, I’ve been using Razer mice the last years since they’re still making ambidextrous gaming mice. I’ve gone through Diamondbacks, Copperheads and now the Lachesis. The excellent thing with these mice is that they also have 2 thumb buttons so you can, in most games anyway, bind 2 actions to them as well. Thumb button 1 is often jump and 2 is bound to melee attack, in the case of BFBC2, or something else that comes in handy.
16/03/2010 at 13:17 Shinan says:
I tend to just mirror the defaults with ijkl. I like ijkl because of the thing that usually is on the j that makes the position easier to find for the hand.
Of course some games are not for me. Arma2 had so many keys that when I played the demo I just had no way of remapping them all and just cried out in despair and uninstalled. I’m also using a Nordic keyboard (with åäö-buttons on the right side) and occasionally games don’t recongize that these exist and don’t allow me to bind the button to the right of the L.
I’ve never mirrored the mousekeys though. I just click everything with my index finger moving the finger around a lot.
When I make an FPS I’ll default it to IJKL and let those damn righties (a.k.a. fascists) remap to their wasd. I’ll also make use of every single key on the keyboard like Arma2 and watch them cry as they try to comprehend their button pushes. (alright, “enter land vehicle is this key… oh enter boat is this same key but I’ll have to remap it separately MY GOD THERE’S ANOTHER PAGE OF KEYS TO REMAP”)
16/03/2010 at 13:44 wiper says:
Not sinister myself, but have a friend who I can speak for: she’s a lefty when it comes to most obvious things (writing, chopping, guitar), but she too plays games right-handed. Even, bizarrely enough, plastic guitar games. That is: she plays real guitar left-handed, but GH/RB guitar right-handed. She has a few other right-hander quirks, but I can’t remember them off hand (no pun intended).
16/03/2010 at 14:06 Flint says:
I’m left-handed, but use the mouse with my right hand. It’s just the way I learned it, no such fancy things as leftie mice back in them ye olde days (or at least my family didn’t have one).
16/03/2010 at 14:17 Other Steve says:
Lefty Left here.
Razer Lachesis and the arrows for me in pretty much anything that permits the configuration.
If for some mysteriously biased reason a game wont permit the arrow keys my secondary configuration resolves around the numpad. (a solution i find to be somewhat inelegant)
Rebinding is so second nature by now I actually find myself reconfiguring games with perfectly legitimate lefty configs as prebound alternate controls.
The only game i can actually remember playing in any other way was Mechwarrior 2 and that was joystick, mouse and keyboard in pretty much any order that was nearest to hand (so to speak).
However, now in honor of such presented ambidexterity I shall aim to play though metro 2033 on Friday entirely right handed!
(Horrah!, Yeah… I suspect that I’m pretty much boned)
16/03/2010 at 14:37 aDelicateBalance says:
I’m left-handed for writing and, when at home, where I play most of my games, I use the mouse on the left-side and the arrow keys, however I can certainly use a computer with the mouse in my right hand, given a choice I prefer the left.
I have a Logitech MX610 left-handed ergonomic wireless laser mouse (click for picture), which is cool because in world right-handers get all confused when they try to use my mouse, which comes with the buttons automatically remapped – the PC sees the right button as the left button and vice-versa with no need for fiddling with Windows mouse settings.
In terms of set-up for FPS games, I am comfortable in games like Left4Dead, Counterstrike Source, TF2 and various other single and multi-player games using the arrow keys, then generally something like…
enter – use
delete – drop weapon
pgdn – reload
back button on mouse (under left thumb) – switch to last weapon
forward button on mouse – grenade
middle button – melee (some games)
right ctrl – crouch
right shift – jump
keypad 0 – sprint
keypad 1 – scores (in MP)
keypad 4 – flashlight / nightvision
then I have [, ], \, insert, home, pgup, del, end, num 7, 8, 6 and 2 all within easy reach for other actions and num pad * and – control Fraps.
I find it annoying in particular when demos don’t allow key re-assigning – I’m not going to buy a full game if I am forced to use WASD. Although I might be able to learn to play using WASD, I think it’s pure laziness on the part of programmers not to include the option and it would make me wonder about the standards in the other aspects of production.
Also, right-brain (left-handed) and left-brain (right-handed) mental processing works in fairly different ways neurologically from what I understand. I think it would be interesting to see if people who are predominantly left-handed tend to play games or approach games in a different way to those who are predominantly right-handed.
16/03/2010 at 14:41 aDelicateBalance says:
should read “…because in my world right-handers get all confused…”
16/03/2010 at 14:55 jsutcliffe says:
I am supposed to be left-handed, but my fascist infant and junior schools made me into a righty, for reasons I don’t really understand. There was an excellent period though, until I was about 13-14 years old, where my arms were properly ambidextrous. Now the only thing I can do accurately with my left hand is play pool, which makes occasional awkward shots a little easier but it’s not the kind of party trick you can use to impress ladies so it’s useless.
I am right-handed and left-footed though. And left-eye dominant. I’m not sure if that’s unusual.
16/03/2010 at 15:12 Axess Denyd says:
I only recently made the switch myself, because Best Buy had ZERO mice I was interested in that were not right-hand only, and my mouse was dead and I didn’t want to order something.
I used the keypad with the right hand. 8,4,6,2 for movement. Minus for jump, + for duck. Right cursor key was run, page up and page down could be used in different situations. Usually / and * were things like switch grenade or zoom, once again depending on game. And enter was “Use”.
Really I still feel that was a better layout than WASD, but more and more games were getting to where you couldn’t rebind some things anyway (Far Cry 2 comes to mind, couldn’t ever UNman a turret when the key was changed).
16/03/2010 at 15:14 Hank says:
Give us a chance to talk about ourselves and we jump on it!
I’m left-handed, no one tried to change that in my formative years, and when I started using mice in high school (I’m in my 30s now) I didn’t think twice about the standard layout. I was competitive in BF1942 Desert Combat, so no FPS problems.
I have tried to use symmetrical mice with my left hand, but it feels weird and there’s no good reason to do so.
My mom used to write down her dreams with her left hand (she’s a rightie), and that inspired me to train my right hand. In college it came in handy taking notes, avoiding the crossing of the three rings in binders, and I use my right hand often now if my left hand is full or if I need to write more legibly; my right hand’s script is smaller and neater than my native style.
I really like my left-handed Fiskars; cutting right-handed is very awkward.
16/03/2010 at 16:41 Pantsman says:
I, like Alec, used to mouse southpawed. I would use the numeric keypad for controls, rebinding WASD to 8456 and other functions to the surrounding keys. I’m glad I eventually switched back.
16/03/2010 at 16:47 mashakos says:
Well, my right arm is partially disabled i.e almost useless for gaming so… I’m in an even stickier spot than the regular leftie. Over time I’ve had to adapt and contort my posture into ever wierder positions with each new increase in game complexity.
So, left-handers: speak out! How do you do it?
What obstacles does it present?
On the PC side, I’ve bought at least 3 different keyboards and five different mice till I settled on a combination that fits me. I prefer those 10 button mice which free me from relying on the keyboard. Now I only need to touch the keyboard for those directional buttons (guilty!)
Consoles are almost unplayable for one thing due to most console games not having a user control mapping page. I’d have to buy an expensive custom made gamepad to get any mileage out of current gen consoles. My PS3 sits gathering dust, and my gaming on that front consists briefly sampling a few demos of those cursed “exclusives”.
Are you frustrated at being overlooked by games and most especially gaming hardware?
Definitely. I don’t understand why game developers don’t support accessibilty, when it would cost them maybe a week’s worth of development time from a junior dev at most.
I feel that we’ve been going backwards in terms of hardware ingenuitity ever since the invention of the joystick. Gamepads are great for most people, but why is Nintendo the only company in 20 years to come up with a new concept for interfacing with our boxes? (that came out wrong!)
Are you ashamed of my betrayal?
You are disgusting, but I can’t say I blame you.
Have you made any cool modifications to your hardware or games to accommodate your clearly superior hand-preference?
I play 3rd person games and racers using an analogue joystick. Does that count?
I gaurd my game profile saves with my life! Seriously, the last thing I need after a new OS setup and game collection install is to sit for hours reconfiguring the controls on all my games…
16/03/2010 at 17:49 Koozer says:
First gaming memory: Jazz Jack Rabbit multiplayer, me (left-handed) on the arrow keys and my brother on WASD. Perfect for a lefty and righty to play on one keyboard without sitting in each other’s lap. I’ve always used the mouse in my right hand though, it’s just easier. Another left-handed guy back in school always insisted on using the mouse in the left hand. I always thought he was just making life difficult for himself.
But really, the right gets the simple job of moving around a bit and hitting downwards every now and then. Your left hand does all the hard work pressing lots of little keys in different locations in quick succession.
Clearly therefore, left-handed is better than right-handed.
16/03/2010 at 18:11 Smithee says:
I’m a southpaw, and I’ve never had much of a problem playing most games using right-handed WASD and left-handed mouse. Where things get really challenging is flight sims, since much of the higher-end equipment is right handed. I loved my old CH Products Flightstick Pro since it could be used ambidextrously, but while it was great for games like TIE Fighter, it lacked enough buttons to be an adequate HOTAS solution for actual sims. I’m now using a Fighterstick, which has been great except for the fact that it’s right-handed only. I’m adapting, but I can still fly better if I awkwardly grasp the stick in my left hand and avoid pressing buttons with my palm. (The irony of all this is that the airplane I fly in real life uses a left-handed stick and a right-handed throttle, meaning it’s easier to fly than a sim.)
16/03/2010 at 19:08 iainl says:
If you think that’s weird, I’m left-handed and use lefty-mouse (+ arrows in FPS games; I actually like having a bit of a gap around them before using numpad etc. for secondary buttons) at home, but righty-mouse at work. I think it helps me differentiate between silliness and a “work attitude”, so also switch sides if I dial in.
16/03/2010 at 20:44 aDelicateBalance says:
I used to use a lefty mouse with switched buttons at home and a bog-standard mouse with standard buttons, but in the left hand at work. My brain never seemed to get confused.
16/03/2010 at 19:18 Qazi says:
Razer just announced this in their Steam group.
http://www2.razerzone.com/lefthandftw/
What a coincidence.
17/03/2010 at 12:52 Jeeva says:
Heh, yeah. Just saw that on various sites this morning.
10 points for good timing/worrisome coincidence?
16/03/2010 at 20:01 Ray says:
I’m left handed, and I cope fine with just using my mouse in my left hand and the old standard of WASD. Razer make very good quality ambidextrous mice, so I’m alright in that department.
The one thing that annoys me is when games don’t recognise the fact that I’m using the mouse in my left hand so don’t swap the left and right buttons around, it annoyingly seems to be happening more and more often these days.
16/03/2010 at 22:38 Lack_26 says:
I’m right handed, but I use the mouse in my left hand (I’ve lived with two lefties my whole life, so they had the computer set up that way). But I also use WASD and don’t reassign the mouse keys. Why? Because I’m crazy like that.
I’ve never quite felt comfortable with my hands at opposite ends of the desk, I like them being right next to each other. Even if I do sit at slight angle to the screen, but it does allow me to lie down or stretch my legs out parallel to the computer without any discomfort or annoyance. I spend a lot of time with my legs up on a chair or cross-legged to the left of the computer, it’s probably not doing my back much good though.
16/03/2010 at 23:04 Rikard Peterson says:
I’m right-handed, but I once was starting to feel some mouse-related pain in my hand. I got over it by using pen+tablet. Not for mouselook games, of course, but for everything else, it’s great. (Not to mention that if you’ve ever considered drawing on a computer, a good tablet is very much worth its steep price.)
17/03/2010 at 00:46 Tony M says:
I’m right handed, but I use a mouse left-handed at work, right-handed for gaming. A friend of mine suffered RSI so I spread the load to both hands to reduce the chance I’ll suffer RSI.
Tony
17/03/2010 at 01:03 Swiftasaurus says:
I got it because of Harry Potter. Sad cringing faces ensue.
17/03/2010 at 07:55 cowthief skank says:
A vertical mouse. I bought one after the pain in my arm started becoming unbearable. Took a couple of hours getting used to and now is almost as good as a normal mouse. They do left-handed ones too.
It was so good that after using it at home for awhile I persuaded my boss, and my boss’ boss, to try it (they both get bad RSI too). After half a day each they convinced my employer to buy us each one.
If you can get over the slight weirdness of control you get used to it within a couple of hours. My boss had a trackball but she said this was so much better.
17/03/2010 at 18:12 M.P. says:
Alec,
I find using a Powerball for half an hour a day helps amazingly with RSI. Was suffering badly from it myself a couple of years back, and buying one helped me no end.
Don’t spin it too fast or for too long though – it’s tempting to try and beat all your friends’ scores, and that’s a sure way to make your wrist worse! :)
18/03/2010 at 04:19 mateus says:
I only got it because I’m awesome since birth.
18/03/2010 at 18:48 shalrath says:
Sorry to revive this ‘ancient’ post, but I somehow managed to be on the Razer email list, and got this linked to me the day after your story.
Coincidence? Who knows.
25/03/2010 at 21:30 BigDrew says:
I am also just about exclusively left-handed but I’ve always used mouse with the right hand.
It’s actually amazingly convenient because I can take write and take notes with the left hand while mousing around with the right. (Similarly, being able to do the 10-key pad with the right hand is awesomely convenient because I don’t have to keep stopping to pick up a pencil to write anything down).
But I absolutely can’t use my right fingers on a touchpad without seeming to be extremely disabled. Always break out the left index finger for touch steering.
The only other thing I do right-handed is use scissors…can’t use lefty scissors for the life of me. But I think that has more to do with growing up and having no pairs of left-handed scissors in the elementary school classrooms so had to make-do.
28/03/2010 at 22:09 Hastur says:
I’m a lefty who has always moused right-handed, and only recently realized the big advantage: I can mouse and write at the same time.
I had some tendinitis in my right hand and had to switch for a while. The tendinitis was Tribes-induced, and came down to the fact that I had the button pressed most of the time, due to constant jetpack use. Intermittent pressing never gave me as much trouble.