When Up Means Down: Why Do So Many Video Game Players Invert their Controls?
An Anonymous Coward writes:
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2020/feb/28/why-do-video-game-players-invert-the-controls
Imagine you are playing a video game where you're looking out over an explorable world. You have a controller in your hand and you want your character to look or move upwards: in what direction do you push the joystick?
If the answer is "up", you're in the majority - most players push up on a stick, or slide a mouse upwards, to instigate upward motion in a game. Most, but not all. A significant minority of players start every new game they play by going into the options and selecting "Invert Y axis", which means when they push up on the stick, their onscreen avatar looks or moves downwards. To both sets of players, their own choice is logical and natural, and discussions about the subject can get quite fraught - as I found when I tweeted about it a few weeks ago. But why the perceptual difference? Is there anything definite that neuroscientists or psychologists can tell us about this schism?
[...] "From a cognitive perspective, players who don't invert are 'acting as' the avatar, with movement/steering originating from between the avatar's eyes, controlling the camera," says Dr Jennifer Corbett, a lecturer in psychology at Brunel University London's Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience. "Players who invert are 'acting on' the avatar, with the controls either behind or on top of the head controlling the avatar."
[...] Corbett suggests we could also look at other areas of our technology use for comparisons. "There could be a relationship with other screen interaction biases, like whether or not people invert when scrolling through the pages of a document on a laptop - do they perceive they are moving the page or the viewing window? There could also be a link to more global environmental or contextual predispositions, such as those that influence whether people perceive the now-famous dress as blue and black or white and gold, largely depending on what colour they perceive the illuminating light (eg, outside daylight versus inside a shop) to be."
One thing is clear: players who were introduced to inverted controls by 1980s flight sims, by 1990s Star Wars X-Wing games or by Nintendo shooters are likely to stick with inverted controls through their lives - players who weren't, don't tend to start. Both groups are adamant that theirs is the correct perspective and cannot countenance the alternative. However, as with all the most important things in life, what at first appears binary, is actually more complicated. Some players only invert Y with joypads and not with mouse controls, some also invert Z, a small number start in one group then later swap over, some constantly switch between control methods at will depending on the game. Inversion is a spectrum.
So, fellow Soylentils, which way is it? Push to go up, or pull?
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