Key Pages:
13 Things 2008
Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology
Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology & the Ancient World
Brown University
Box 1837 / 60 George Street
Providence, RI 02912
Telephone: (401) 863-3188
Fax: (401) 863-9423
[email protected]
From the Magnavox Odyssey's "paddles" to the NES controller, to the Wii Remote, the game controller has changed drastically over its 36 year history. But what has driven this change, and how has this change driven advances in gaming? In this project, I intend to explore the human driving factors behind the evolution of the game controller, starting from the very beginning, touching on various landmarks such as the NES controller and culminating with the Wii Remote, possibly mentioning tangents such as the Intellivision controller and the Virtual Boy in the process, as well as lasting technologies, such as the analog stick and rumble (both first introduced with the N64). Even future additions to controllers may be discussed, such as the MotionPlus, brain-computer interface devices, or rumors about changes to the PlayStation 3's SIXAXIS and the Xbox 360's controller. Portable game systems and computer game input may be discussed, however, this is less important to the main theme of the project. I hope to establish the driving factors behind the advancement of the game controller, such as how, as the gaming systems became more complicated, so too did the games, and thus input needed to be rethought.
These are renderings of two hypothetical portable game systems that I designed a way back: [link] [link]
Actual project: The Game Controller: From the Beginning
Posted at Oct 17/2008 11:20AM:
chris witmore: Hi Jeffrey,
I like how this is coming along. Have a look at some of Henry Lowood's work: [link]
Posted at Dec 16/2008 08:35PM:
Allan Stewart: Hey Jeff, I found this while crawling teh inninit [link]