Platformer Video Games with a Keyboard? How Different are Gamepads and Keyboards, Really?
During a recent usability review playtest of an in-progress video game, I noticed something strange about the way the main menu registered gamepad inputs. This led me down an especially nerdy path to better understand what was going on.
I recently conducted a usability and gameplay analysis of an in-development game called Dungeon in a Bottle. It’s a 2D precision platformer and is absolutely delightful.
One focus of my analysis was the menu system. The developer, Very Handsome Games, called specific attention to the menu system as something they’d like me to take a look at. So I did. I look at things that people want me to look at. It’s who I am. It’s also why driving down a billboard-filled highway can be dangerous for me and any of my passengers. Billboards are meant for looking at.
When you’ve been playing video games with an eye toward usability for as long as I have, you start to intuit things on a gut level without having to rely on a checklist of usability heuristics. In the case of the Dungeon in a Bottle menu system, something felt a bit off. But I couldn’t articulate it, so I kept on with my play session. Later in the game, I noticed that a particular mechanic, called a Moth Jump, depended on button presses during specific intervals of time that, for some reason, perhaps my own ineptitude, I couldn’t quite land consistently.
The issue I found with the menu system is that when changing from one menu item to another using a gamepad it was possible, and actually quite common, to cycle so quickly through the menu options that landing on a specific option was difficult.
So, I had a theory worth testing: Are gamepad button presses less instant than keyboard button presses? Do players tend to hold gamepad button presses longer than keyboard button presses for the same objective?
Well, first I wanted to better understand Dungeon in a Bottle’s own playtesting measures. I reached out to the developer and asked them to validate a hunch that the game’s testing so far had been focused on keyboard input. They validated this hunch. Nice.
But a hunch alone wasn’t enough. I needed data. So, I mocked up a menu system to test this theory. I used a menu system both because that’s the situation that initially churned my gut, but also because it’s a testing environment that eliminates skill-based variables. I needed to remove as many variables as I could because I don’t have access to a fancy lab with lots of eager test participants. No, I have access to a smelly room and just three less than eager family members.
So, I have the test environment, I have the testers, and with a quick script to count frames during button presses, I have my data stream. Each session went like this: I had the player sit in front of the screen. I then instructed them to pick up the controller. I told them that the d-pad should be used for this test. I wasn’t testing how intuitive the interface was, afterall. I was testing for frame counts. So I felt comfortable directly telling the player how to navigate the menu. I then gave them a simple set of instructions to follow. For example, go down to the exit option. Now go up to the color option, now go back down to the exit option, and on and on until the player had pressed an average of 28 buttons. I then had them do the same for the keyboard.
Afterwards, I had some data. Average frame counts are higher for gamepad button presses:
And this average is consistent even at the individual participant level:
Sure, this data isn’t enough to be statically valuable, but it’s definitely enough to add some credence to this idea that gamepad directional buttons tended to be pressed for longer durations than keyboard arrow keys.
Practically speaking, how is this useful? First, and perhaps most importantly, it means Bob’s thoughts about the “instant and satisfying” nature of keyboard button presses is valid from slightly more than just a subjective perspective. Second, it means that any coding in the game that relies on specific button states may need to take this input-based player behavior into account. Now, I have not talked with Very Handsome Games specifically about how they coded the game, so from here on out I’m only relying hypotheticals that could be applied to any game.
First, know that there are three states that a button can be in. In Gamemaker Studio 2, the engine that I’m most familiar with, these button states are:
- check_pressed, which checks to see if the button has been pressed
- check, which checks to see if the button is currently down
- check_released, which checks to see if the button has been released
If cycling through the menu is based on the check function, then knowing that gamepad users hold buttons longer means that those players may inadvertently cycle past the desired option. Perhaps replacing this with the check_pressed function would be better, as this would allow the menu selection to advance only once per button press. However, for games with very long menus, this would force the player to press a button many times instead of just holding the button. Think the way Contra on the NES is way less problematic when using a turbo button. In this scenario, the check_pressed function is probably the right way to go, but some additional logic might be called for Perhaps the developer would want to incorporate a timer to allow the selection to advance only after a set number of frames has passed. According to the lowest frame count capture for a gamepad in my study, that number would be five frames. The developer could also have these rules be separate for gamepad and keyboard users if they really wanted to cater to specific gaming habits.
Overall, I’m really happy with this finding. Again, it’s not statically valuable, but it is incredibly interesting, to me at least, as it further helps me understand the differences between gamepad and keyboard inputs. Too often I think of the two interfaces as entirely preference based. I don’t think of them often enough as different in terms of functionality, at least not with games that are limited to very simple mechanics and few button requirements.
Credits and Mentioned:
WULFF DEN / I’m done using D-Pads
My games usability review presentations
Music credits
- Bossa Antigua by Kevin MacLeod, Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3454-bossa-antigua, License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Pump by Kevin MacLeod, Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4252-pump, License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
