Gameplay after the death of buttons
Written by Jason Tocci at 4:06 pm on January 5th, 2012
Original illustration by Jerrod Maruyama
I realized I was going to miss buttons the moment I tried to make a call on my first iPhone.
I’d been using a Motorola KRZR for years – not because I liked flip phones, but because it was free, and I liked pronouncing the name out loud (“KRAZER!”). It did have one advantage over the iPhone, though: buttons you could not only see but actually feel.
On the KRZR, I could write text messages without my ungainly sausage fingers prompting the phone to autocorrect “Mondays” to “manboobs,” for instance, and I could pull it out of my pocket, hold a speed dial button, and make a call without even looking.
Eventually, I got used to calling and texting without buttons. But then I played PAC-MAN Championship Edition. I’d already played the game on the Xbox 360, and the option to play it for hours on my commute was too tempting to pass up. On the iPhone, though, it just didn’t work.
Now that gaming has gone button-free, designers have a new set of commandments.
Oh, don’t get me wrong – the app ran just fine. It’s just that PAC-MAN staggered around the maze like the pill-popping junkie we always secretly feared he might be. The iOS version’s control scheme involves some strange voodoo with fake dual analog sticks. Do you swipe them? Hold a thumb on each? Gently caress and hope for the best?
There are better ways to move tiny people around on a screen. Now that some of the most widely-used gaming devices have gone button-free, game designers have a new set of commandments to follow.
Thou shalt tap, tilt, swipe and shake: These are the new gamepad. Games like Infinity Blade, Canabalt, The Incident and Bit Pilot demonstrate that you can have fast-paced gameplay and tight, responsive controls without physical buttons and joysticks.
Thou shalt not make me look: This ain’t no Motorola KRZR (“KRAZER!”) with its no-look speed dial. In the heat of an epic (if pocket-sized) battle, you don’t have time to look where you’re tapping, and you can’t feel the controls. Touchable areas have to be big, sometimes even taking up the entire screen.
And following these, do what thou wilt: The practical upshot of having an entire screen be touchable, of course, is that no two games necessarily have to use the same control scheme. Different games have different needs, whether asking us to do no more than tap once to jump, or to quickly scribble magical runes between parries with our sword. In a world without buttons, we have limitations, but we also have freedom. It’s time for game designers to go bananas.
We’re now living in a golden age of simple and accessible games. Many games ask nothing more of us than to tap wherever we please. But we’re also no longer bound by A, B and the D-pad; two analog sticks and four face buttons; or whatever zany mayhem Nintendo thinks up for its next controller. Game designers can devise something new and different each time, as long as they keep in mind that we won’t be able to feel that satisfying click beneath our fingertips anymore.
You can contact Jason Tocci at the following address : jason@pocketnext.com
