Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Stop what you’re doing and look down for a moment. Look at what’s in front of you: a keyboard, and to one side, a mouse. These are tools. But beautifully, over decades, we’ve manipulated and bastardised these tools into being a means of gaming. Do we need any more? A lot of people seem to think so.

When you compare the instruments with which the PC gamer plays, with those of the console, the difference is pretty hilarious. One is a neat, ergonomic device with economy of space and design, allowing an intricacy of buttons in a simple manner. The other is a large, flat plastic lump with over 100 buttons, and a detached, movable peripheral with up to another seven buttons. And a wheel.

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The gaming hardware market is always a rich source of people who just don’t get it. All those keyboard and mouse replacements, made from the mistaken presumption that PC gamers at large have some sort of problem with keyboard and mouse. Then there’s the occasional chair-with-a-subwoofer-in, like the Buttkicker, which thinks bombarding your guts with violent tremors until you need to stop playing and go have a poo adds something to gaming. The pistol-shaped mouse still makes me giggle, designed seemingly oblivious to the fact that the nature of mouse usage means there’s no way the barrel of the gun would ever be pointed at your on-screen target, and that having a second, different weapon alongside the one already visible in the game only screws with the sense of immersion.

And now this… Read the rest of this entry »