Designing Game Controls

What the talk is about

Andrii Dotsenko explains how to design game controls, drawing on his work creating control schemes for PC versions of large Ubisoft games, including Watch Dogs 2. He builds on three principles: controls should be easy to learn given human physical and cognitive limits, should clearly communicate the player's intent, and should leave room for mastery. He shows how to map actions to finger reach zones, group related actions, and rely on standards and real-life mental models. He also covers input curves, aim and movement assists, the roughly 100 ms response window, the effect of frame rate, and counting input independently of frames. Examples include hacking and keyboard driving in Watch Dogs 2. Useful for game designers building controls or porting games to PC.