I have a confession to make: I've spent several hundred dollars on Steam Controllers......

[mattferg]

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLordXx8iNEyStcX_WzqM0JCpiJYgqhinc

Check out Razbuten's "Gaming for a non gamer series". In it, the lady he lives with struggles with the controls to do basic things such as moving the character and camera at the same time.

https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/alien-resurrection-review/1900-2637344/

Or how about this review of a game, where the dual stick controls we take for granted today were once described as being terrifying.

If we were to take the argument that having to learn it makes it bad, we'd have to say dual stick controls are bad in order to be logically consistent.

In truth, having to learn something doesnt make that thing inherently bad.

The reality is that the modern dual stick controller design has been around for more than 2 decades. Gamers likely have loads, and I mean loads loads, of experience with it.

So along comes the Steam Controller, and its got a wildly different design. Its more than a little naive to think no learning should be required to use it effectively.

And I get it. If someone doesnt want to learn and they just want to use whats familiar to them, that's fine. I just wish people would take ownership of their preference instead of saying something is bad simply because it doesnt fit their preference.

Exxxxcept eventually people learnt how to use them and switched. That didn't happen for the Steam controller - the learning curve was WAY too steep.

 

[mattferg]

Dude - A piano keyboard is the most frigging unnatural controller on the face of the earth. Closely followed by the violin.

There is no such thing as a natural controller.

Yup, Microsoft and Sony sink tonnes into R&D to find out what feels natural, but they're just wasting their money...

 

[Mennenth]

Exxxxcept eventually people learnt how to use them and switched. That didn't happen for the Steam controller - the learning curve was WAY too steep.

Exxxxcept (lol) a surprising number of people did learn how to use the steam controller. There is an entire community built up around it, with an active subreddit and discord that I've been a part of for the 5 years of the SC's life*.

The learning curve isnt as steep as people try to claim, it just takes sticking with it for longer than most were willing to give it. Trying it for 5 minutes and rage quitting was the norm around launch, and even mainstream reviewers only used for maybe an hour or two and never once tried to alter any config settings.

Again, expecting 2 hours to bridge the gap of 2 decades of experience is more than a little naive. But thus is the nature of "gamers". If it aint automatically good, "gamers" will toss it into the trash. The reason they learned dual sticks was because back then, that was the only way to play those games. You either learned, or you didnt play. These days you have the freedom to choose your input device (at least on pc), so you can use whats familiar to you and pretend everything else is worse. Good for accessibility, but has caused innovation in input methods to stagnate. I wish we'd return to the age where every new console had its own unique controller...

*Want to know something fun? Over the course of my time in the community, I noticed that keyboard and mouse users picking up a controller for the first time had a much easier time adapting to the Steam Controller than those already familiar with dual stick controllers.

 

[terzaerian]

Yup, Microsoft and Sony sink tonnes into R&D to find out what feels natural, but they're just wasting their money...

Just imagine how natural it would feel if they also sunk in all the marketing cash they burn in order to weld the egos of suckers and shills to their respective brands.

EDIT: Also, get a load of this R&D:

Class-action lawsuit filed against Sony over DualSense controller drift issues

Last week brought reports that some PS5 owners had found their DualSense controllers were displaying drift---analog sticks detecting phantom inputs. It quickly led to Chimicles Schwartz Kriner...

www.techspot.com

 

[Mennenth]

Exxxxcept (lol) a surprising number of people did learn how to use the steam controller. There is an entire community built up around it, with an active subreddit and discord that I've been a part of for the 5 years of the SC's life*.

The learning curve isnt as steep as people try to claim, it just takes sticking with it for longer than most were willing to give it. Trying it for 5 minutes and rage quitting was the norm around launch, and even mainstream reviewers only used for maybe an hour or two and never once tried to alter any config settings.

Again, expecting 2 hours to bridge the gap of 2 decades of experience is more than a little naive. But thus is the nature of "gamers". If it aint automatically good, "gamers" will toss it into the trash. The reason they learned dual sticks was because back then, that was the only way to play those games. You either learned, or you didnt play. These days you have the freedom to choose your input device (at least on pc), so you can use whats familiar to you and pretend everything else is worse. Good for accessibility, but has caused innovation in input methods to stagnate. I wish we'd return to the age where every new console had its own unique controller...

*Want to know something fun? Over the course of my time in the community, I noticed that keyboard and mouse users picking up a controller for the first time had a much easier time adapting to the Steam Controller than those already familiar with dual stick controllers.

To clarify that last bit; while its all anecdotal and I dont have the really have the resources to run a large scale experiment... My hypothesis based on my observations is that if you are a keyboard and mouse user that has never touched a controller, you will more likely adapt to the Steam Controller more quickly than you would adapt to a dual stick controller... And either way you'll adapt to it easier than a dual stick controller user.

But anyway, this is all beyond the point.

Exxxxcept eventually people learnt how to use them and switched.

This is an admission that dual sticks had to be learned, which ultimately is evidence to support my claim; dual sticks arent as easy to use as people would like to think.

 

[fadingfool]

Love my Steam controller. Normally a mouse and keyboard user but if I'm on the couch and want to play on the TV the steam controller is my go to device. Range is better than the Xbox controller I also have (for non-steam controller compatible games) and the thicker hand grips are more comfortable in my shovel like hands.

 

[YeahOkay]

Yeah, I'm sorry but this article isn't the best.

 

[AspinBlack]

The Steam Controller is awesome. I play all my FPS games with it. I can get the same kind of accuracy as a mouse while sitting on the couch. Typical I have the keyboard for hitting the key for specific weapons or function. But the action is all with the controller. Makes it very easy to maneuver and stay on target.