Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Video Game Controllers

Episode Date: May 8, 2023

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why video game controllers are secretly incredibly fascinating. Special guests: Abe Epperson and Michael Swaim.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the new SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5Support Abe & Michael's independent movie 'Papa Bear': https://seedandspark.com/fund/papa-bear

Video game controllers, known for being buttons, famous for being joysticks. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why video game controllers are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm very much not alone. I'm joined by my co-host, Katie Golden. Katie, hello. Hi. Hi, Super Nintendo Chalmers. That's my remember from the Simpsons. Do you remember that from the Simpsons? I do. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the Super Nintendo,

the Super Nintendo. Super Nintendo Chalmers. Sure. I thought I'd come in hot with a Simpsons quote. Nintendo Chalmers. Sure. I thought I'd come in hot with a Simpsons quote. Yeah, we just did a bonus show all about the chalkboard gags. And then this one has a bonus show involving ducks. So again, all the episodes are one universe. It's on an extended, I'm just going to call it a cinematic universe, even though we don't make movies.

Podcastmatic. There's not really a, there's not a word that describes podcasts, is there? Speaking of movies, perfect segue. We're also joined by two wonderful guests this week, and they are buddies of ours from working on the internet long ago, and also their great work with the Small Beans podcasts and videos and everything else. And they're also crowdfunding an exciting movie called Papa Bear. Please welcome Michael Swaim and Abe Epperson. Guys, hello. Hey, guys.

Three big radishes. That is the Obscure Simpsons quote I choose to enter with. Someone will remember it. Mo's just counting his radishes. For some reason, that line stuck in my head, so I get it, Katie. Like I say it all the time. Anytime someone mentions three items, I mutter three big radishes. And it's like the curse of being in our generation is your mind is crammed with too many Simpsons quotes. It's becoming less and less relevant. By the time we're old, we will sound insane. There's just going to be they're going to do autopsies on our brains and they'll see sort of pockets of yellow brain matter. That's like, yes, this is... A coiled lobe. Yeah.

The Simpsons lobe has taken over the rest of the cognitive functioning here. That's right. But thrilled to be here. Thank you so much. And thank you for mentioning the film. It's an indie movie. Check it out, Papa Bear.

It's loosely based on the true story of my dad coming out as a gay furry when I was... No, before Tween, when I was, no, before tween, when I was a teen. An honest to goodness teen. It's like a coming of age sex comedy. Lots of fun. I'm done. Please continue. It's great. I've read a version of it and I'm very excited for the final and for it to be a thing. Yeah, it's great. Very excited to be here. And yeah, this topic, thank you, Jeff B on the Discord for suggesting this topic. It is video game controllers selected by listeners of the show.

We always start by asking the relationship to the topic or opinion of it. Maybe Michael or Abe, you can go first. How do you feel about video game controllers? I feel strongly about video game controllers, honestly. I'm not that good of a gamer, so I don't know why I do have the privilege of having this. Get out. Leave. I'm not an epic gamer,

but I do feel strongly. I feel that keyboard and mouse is superior for many types of functions, but if I had to pick one controller that beats all of them ergonomically and all that, I'm going with the PS4. That's the end of my rant. That's a great rant. It's the strongest contender.

It's perfect ergonomically. The buttons feel right. The joysticks are attuned. There's nothing better. Well, lubricated joysticks. As long as they're still frosty, they need that snap. I also have strong opinions about video game controllers. I disagree about the PC thing, but that's okay, because I do agree that as a console

boy, the best controller of all is the PS2 DualSense, PS4 DualSense, rather. The 5's still very, very very good but it's basically just a copy and man case in point there's a super hard game that requires very many like a lot of twitch reflex out right now that i'm obsessed with called sifu and controller's important it's the way you anyway uh yeah i could go on i'm gonna stop because we'll get into it but because you'll start crying yeah well i co-host a video games podcast and i've been a gamer an epic gamer my Uh, yeah, I could go on. I'm going to stop because we'll get into it, but what a good topic for me. Yeah. Well, I co-host a video games podcast and I've been a gamer, an epic gamer my whole life.

You are more epic. I will take that title. That is for sure. Now that I've beaten Sifu, I'll take that title. Yeah. I like computer games. Well, when I was a kid, I never really had a game system. My parents were of the philosophy that, yes, we can play computer games, but we should

do it on a computer. So we learned computers. Wow, mine too. But go on. Yeah. Yeah. We had the same parents. We're brother and sister.

So we were able to play as many computer games as we want. Well, not as many as we wanted, but on the computer. So I never knew the feel of a video game controller. My first game system actually bought during the pandemic, the Nintendo Switch. And the little Switch ones are, they're fine. And they're nice to like, I like the movement controls. But then it also has like a full on controller that you hold in your hands that's big. And I love it. It's really nice nice it's much easier to use than a keyboard i also disagree with you abe although i sympathize because i have used the keyboard

most of my life but you guys got to get into menus is all i'm saying radial menus dude it works super well i've even i've even customized my controller. I put little rubber caps on the joysticks that look like little kitty paws. So I love it. I just have to chime in and say, if you have large hands, the Switch controller is almost not usable. I have the tiny hands of like a Cabbage Patch Kids doll. Yeah. There you go. I have the same gaming history as you, Katie. I was only allowed to play games on a PC because

we didn't have consoles. And then we got a switch during the pandemic. And then I agree with Abe about keyboard and mouse. It rules. It's my favorite way to operate stuff. I would like go to other kids' houses to play games and be too controller illiterate to be any good at them. I would like know I could play GoldenEye better than I was, but I didn't know the controller buttons well enough because I was such a keyboard and mouse kid. That was all I knew. Thank you, Alex. And now we're on the same team for the rest of the podcast. I guess the Zoom window of four people, it feels very two on two. It's like, oh, which team's going to be which? Like, what are we gonna do that's right although yeah in my view katie and i have you guys in like a pincer move

we're on the side so i think we have the advantage tactically well from my perspective it is abe and alex who are evil well agreed there underscore that let's keep this going a little friendly competition it's perfect if only there was something we could do to like have like a competition together but in a way that's not actually physically violent but we could like direct our competitiveness through some kind of method of expressing that competition in a fun, friendly, and shall I say, graphically interesting way. And the answer is paintball. Folks, here we go.

We're going to head out to the woods. But yeah, and this topic, I love that it is super personal to everybody. I'm confident, listeners, we will not hit absolutely everybody's favorite game or experience of specific gaming in their life. But this episode is mainly about particularly funny and outlandish controllers, and then also the surprising early roots of video game controllers. So I think it'll be for everybody, especially if you're not much of a gamer. It'll still be very interesting to you. I can't wait to talk about SimAnt from the 1990s. Good one.

I just referenced that on my show, which is odd because no one's thought about it in 20 years. I think about it every day. Oh, there you go. You're the one. Wow. Proven wrong again, Michael. Every day.

And all four of us are on the same team the black ant team against the red ant team good excellent better than the red ant communists okay for young people sim ant was a game where you played as an ant colony uh and your goal was to take over a home before I think the Red Ants did it. Pretty simple. Pretty simple. You had some menus, you know. I love a menu. You are so into menus.

Yes, I am. No apology. Well, and on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics this week that is in a segment called s is for facts that are secretly t is numbers so incredibly a is making stuff extraordinary t is even more than each number that came before here's stats yes that was amazing but that's my takeaway yeah well sung but it was as soon as my brain knew a melody it was i'm like all right here comes a long one. Let's settle in. Here comes a long one. He's going to spell a whole thing.

So here we go. This is cocktail sipping music. Yeah, for sure. Thank you, The Sherm Bank on Discord. For that fun idea, we have a new one every week. Please make a massillion way I can bet as possible. Submit through Discord or to SifPod at gmail.com. And the first number is 11 bananas.

Ugh, too many. 11 bananas. It's, yeah, it feels like too many. It's what a gamer turned into a video game controller and used to defeat the flying dragon Agil in the game Elden Ring. They made a controller out of 11 bananas. So I personally do not love a banana. In made a controller out of 11 bananas. So I personally do not love a banana.

In fact, I quite hate a banana. Least favorite of the fruit. Our team has been severed. You're a banana fan. Okay, well. Katie, even the ants eat bananas. Even ants respect them. Well, they can have it.

I've just always found a banana disconcerting as a fruit. It's a man-made horror, but great. So now we've got a banana controller. That's just wonderful. That's the true man-made horror is converting them into a video game controller. Yeah. All right. So what do you got to do? you got to like chew a banana every

time you want a strafe left i love that you immediately start to dig into like the impracticality of the banana video game controller like that isn't the point oh whoa the tone in that look that's what the money's for it's fun bananas that's why we're here why are we here i mean i don't know why this guy is doing this i would never do this i don't well also if there's noobs listening to this and that is spelled with zeros and a z elden rings notoriously and really really. So obviously it's a flex. Uh, I actually worked at IGN, a big gaming journalism site when Elden Ring was released. And there were other ones too. There's like a bongo controllers that someone beat that dragon with where you can only input one or two things. Um, and then the best one I saw was something

where it was like a kickboxer and he had to control it by like punching targets all around his room. So by the end, he was like drenched with sweat. Yeah, this is really mind expanding for me. Because again, I mostly know a keyboard and a mouse. And in March of 2022, YouTuber SuperLuis64 gave himself this challenge and he built a controller with the help of a kit called Makey Makey. And that might be how especially that pad-based controller was also made. Makey Makey is a kit that was first released in 2016. It was developed at the MIT Media Lab. The kit is a circuit board, a USB cable, and a set of alligator clips. And what you do is you connect other things to that to complete the

circuit. And then whatever you're connecting to it can be a part of a controller. So in the case of bananas, you set it up so that when you press the banana down, like squeeze the banana, it completes the circuit and that's pushing a button. Don't squeeze too hard though, because you know what happens is the banana pops out and then it goes into someone's mouth. Then you're eaten by a dragon as you watch your best friend choke to death in front of you.

This looks like a banana matrix. Like it's all these poor bananas plugged in with wires. You're right. Look at it from the banana's point of view. And they're like, they just squeeze us for energy, man. We're just batteries to them. They fondle us now? Do they grab us?

I'm already in this pod, this peel that I can never escape from, sleeping my little banana dreams. These Keanu bananas are going to wake up. But yeah, they're squeezing the bananas slightly. Not squeezing the clips. They're squeezing the banana a little bit, right? That must be it. Your body in connecting with the banana and squeezing it is doing something. Oh, yeah.

It also electrocutes you pretty harshly. That's what they don't tell you. This is why I don't like bananas. I was the one. Every time I touched a banana, I got shocked. You're just conditioned. Yeah. I'm fairly on board with this.

Like, frankly, cost effectiveness, promotion of health, you know? I think it's a good controller. I give it a four. Is it cost-effective if your controller... Now, PlayStation controllers are overpriced these days, but bananas are rotting constantly. Surely you would sink more money into banana controller eventually. You'd eat the bananas, Michael.

Twelve bananas every night? Yes. Yeah. Simple enough. a banana controller you'd eat the bananas michael 12 bananas every night yes yeah simple enough asked and answered that's how the rest of us eat katie we always eat bananas every night read gravity's rainbow again only one person will get that maybe it's alex not me but that's okay yeah this and i like this story as a way to understand all video game controllers and this is a quick within the numbers takeaway number one any properly configured circuits can be a video game controller not all of them are electronic based on current so much these days, but if you just set up a circuit where you complete the circuit by pressing something or adjust the amount of electricity going through it, that was how all the first controllers were built. And that's how

people can use this kind of kit to make anything into a controller if they want to. So what you're saying is these bananas could be hamsters. Pretty much. Yeah, I think so. Hang on. I gotta go. You just have to keep the clips out of it. I'll be back later. No, no. Yeah, this guy, he set up all of his bananas. There's footage of him defeating the dragon after knocking out a few human characters as a test run. And he also would describe his buttons as bananas. Like he said, he had a dodge banana and a horse banana and an attack banana. A horse banana. And then he defeated the boss, the flying dragon, Aguil.

Then he ate each banana consecutively in grim silence. Now, this is, of course, very creative, but Alex, are we going to talk about this friendly reminder that SuperLuis issued on Twitter? SuperLuis64, he's at SuperLuis underscore 64 on Twitter. He said, quote, Friendly reminder, bananas leak after using them.

I repeat, they leak after prolonged use. I'm moving back to building exercise controls after this vid and then he had a picture of kind of beat up bananas all over his desk in front of elden ring i hate a leaky banana sounds like a medical problem frankly and now that we've covered a food controller, the next number here is 200. Because 200 is the number of special video game controllers produced in the year 2019 by the Miller Brewing Company. They made 200 controllers that are a can of Miller Lite beer. There's beer in the can and everything. Now that's a controller I can get behind and tell you what.

Wait, so do you have to drink, is it like 11 cans of beers and you have to sip each one to play the game? You don't have to. You were asking about eating bananas and now you have to drink the beers. I think you just have to touch them. Right? So what's the point of it being beer? Smart guy. I think it's Miller trying to get some of that sweet money is what i do that viral buzz going yeah they want money yeah the mount the

mountains on the can turn blue as you lose the game what's up millers i just conflated you with cores suck it suck it but yeah how did this one work? Did it have buttons on it? Did you pop the top? How'd you do the controls? Yeah, it's just, it's basically just an object in the way other controllers are. It's a can with a lot of the technical components sort of built into the bottom base of the can. And then the side of the can had a four directional arrow pad buttons for a b x y start and select and the controller parts are separated from the liquid beer in a way where it works and it's up to you whether you want to drink it or not it's just in there okay so you can drink it yeah so not ergonomic at all one use only it's like a mess like a nightmare just a thing to to prove you could do it so katie's right do you plug it into the is it like wi-fi bluetooth what yeah it has a micro usb

for charging but it connects to a console wirelessly through bluetooth and they they gave one of these to a writer for PC Magazine to test it. And he said that when he tried to pair the Bluetooth, his Bluetooth list just said Miller Light Can. That was the name of it for Bluetooth pairing. Now, can you download beer into the can through the Bluetooth? Yeah, refill it. Yeah.

The ultimate DLC. Yeah. Drink loadable can. Can tent. And they called this the can troller. And they made 200 of them for a promo at E3, the E3 gaming convention. What they did is they hired comedian Eric Andre to sit on a stage and play Street Fighter V. And Andre and Any Challenger both used a can troller to play.

And if they beat Eric Andre at Street Fighter, they got to keep the can and have it autographed. It should have been that he has to drink his controller in shame and they give him a new one. And by the middle of the con, Eric Andre smashed just doing improv crowd work and stuff he would be great at that good controller this is the world i want to live in yeah yeah and and they were able to play street fighter with it and then this pc magazine writer said that he tried some sega games

on steam with it and he said what you'd think it's not comfortable it's not good but it is definitely a functional controller like he could do the game with it yeah although it does leak as well which begs the question do video game controllers all have leaking problems is this a technology that had to be phased out that none of us were aware of they conquered this demon and asked to the video game controller i love pong but my hands are always so wet after what is that stuff it's not water no it's not what my question is what's coming from pong i do like that we have dry controllers, right? Ordinary dry plastic controllers. And now we're thinking, how do we make these sticky?

Like, it's fine. This controller works well, but it's not sticky enough. It's not, you know, gloopy. It doesn't have a sort of tackiness to it that can only be from dried beer or a leaky banana. Yeah, I think the rest of the show, there is no food or drink in the controllers. Pretty good. Bad news for my ants, though. My sim ants.

Yeah, it was little green circles was the food, right? Anyway, enough sim ants. I wanted to eat those little green circles. They looked so good the the next number here is two million uh because two million is the number of power gloves sold for nintendo consoles starting in 1989 the nintendo power glove totally undeserved what a scam way more than they should have gotten away with. It's just a controller sewn into a plastic glove that you can play with your other hand on your arm. Yeah. Yeah. I remember the commercials made them look like your hand motion. They were just straight up lies. The commercial was a lie. Without saying it, it just implied a bunch of stuff it could do that it

couldn't do. Yeah, that was my understanding of it and research confirmed that, yeah, the Power Glove had one of the bigger marketing campaigns ever for a Nintendo thing, especially back in the 80s. There was even a movie called The Wizard with lots of Nintendo product placement, including Power Gloves. That's what I was going say is you you're both heresy the power glove is awesome and cool as you can see from lucas in the movie the wizard he's so he's the coolest boy he is the coolest boy watch that movie and tell me he's not the coolest boy as a kid i thought it was so cool and i wanted to be like him and I never got a power glove. So I wasn't.

The one surprise to me was that they were not made by Nintendo. This was a third party product. The Australian Center for the Moving Image says a company called Abrams Gentile Entertainment partnered with Mattel. Abrams Gentile? Gentile. partnered with Mattel. Wait, Abrams Gentile? Gentile, yeah.

They're very picky about who purchases their power gloves. Squeeze me? Squeeze me? It's also just a weird term to do tech. Yeah, what does that mean, Alex? Explain yourself. We demand it now as the audience. Okay, look, so all religions feature a power glove, right? And then, okay.

Yeah, it's spelled like Gentile. It might be pronounced different, but I'm sure it's somebody's last name. In Judaism, the glove is unleavened. But apparently that entertainment company had worked on developing something called the Data Glove, which was an industrial computing product for business purposes. And then they teamed up with Mattel to make something that works with the NES Nintendo console. And two million purchases went through, but it never lasted or took off from there. What was the Data Glove for?

Data entry was the idea. Like you could use something that you're wearing in order to enter stuff. And we have like different wearable tech now for different purposes, especially fitness watches and stuff. But yeah, the idea was finally you can wear something for computing when you're on the job. I bet anything it was a calculator taped to your forearm. Like, essentially. Or a small keyboard taped to your forearm, yeah. I want, like, a headband with just a clock on it.

So cool. Okay. Easily done. Easily done. Wrist watch, long band. If it's so easily done, why has nobody done it yet? And the next number here, also kind of a forerunner of what we have now, next number is 1,000 feet. So a little over 300 meters in metric, but 1,000 feet.

metric, but 1,000 feet, that's the working distance range of a wireless video game controller designed by Atari in 1981. As early as 1981, they had something in their development lab that was a wireless controller that worked from as far as 1,000 feet away. Farther than you could see the screen from. Feels like overkill. Not really neat, but good for you i guess it's pretty small-minded michael you just make a very big screen it's a problem solved i'm over here solving problems yeah yeah or a telescope you know but yeah they didn't release this true the uh the wireless controller apparently a lot of regular consoles started having them around the 2000s.

But according to Hackaday.com, Atari was working on this very early because they knew people liked to be wireless with tech if they can. And they had a project codenamed StellaRC that used RF transmitting tech to successfully control an Atari console from a thousand feet away. successfully control an Atari console from a thousand feet away, but also the transmitter would take control of other Atari consoles in the area by mistake? It connected to the nukes, you can say it. I like to think that sometimes these wireless technologies, what if it was a failed time traveler who went back and was like, know what i can invent pokemon go and then just failed at doing so said like wireless technology there's something in that right i'm gonna steve jobs this you mean because it seems ahead of its time but it also accomplishes

nothing yeah yeah exactly there is if i could like go back in time with all my modern knowledge i also don't know how to actually build a lot of stuff. Oh, so, yeah, I would just be running around like, what if you make a car? And they don't know how to do it. So you send me back to like medieval times. And, you know, I'm like, I got to teach them about medicine. I got to teach them about Atari. And then it's like, well, I can fold you a cootie catcher out of paper. And they're like, what's paper?

It's like, damn it. I was about to say i could make paper because i did it in elementary school but now thinking back i believe we made paper just from shredded pieces of other paper so that's no good that doesn't help no yeah what are you doing there we did that too i really i really thought i was doing something we're like you pulped you pulped shredded construction paper and then made it into paper. It's like, what was that? Busy work.

It really felt like you were accomplishing something. And then you realized, no. Yeah. And then you hooked it up to Elden Ring and you used it to play video games. And so this controller, not only did it mess with other consoles, it's almost that Nukes joke. Like it interfered with remote garage door openers and probably further stuff if they rolled it out widely. And it got to the point where the federal government stepped in

and the FCC started regulating this prototype and product idea. They said you have to... We're trying to play Atari at the Pentagon and it keeps going haywire. What are you guys doing? What are you doing? Yeah. You're playing Duck Hunt and a duck goes down and then a plane goes down in real life.

Oh, man. Atari apparently did succeed at making the FCC happy and making a workable version of this, but it retailed for $69.95 in like 80s money with inflation that's approaching $200 per controller. And so they just never became a widely used thing. And then wireless controllers had to wait for like 20 years. But their impulse is not wrong. Cords are the worst thing. Yeah.

Nice to get away from it. Yeah. Yeah. And then one more number here. This number is 1993 because that is the year 1993 when a PC gamer named Dennis Fong began using the letters W, A, S, and D as substitutes for his arrow keys. If people, you know, go look at a keyboard if you want to wasd is a widespread replacement for arrow keys wasd that's how i always say it in my head when i see it wasd yeah white anglo-saxon democrat

but that that leads to another quick takeaway here, because takeaway number two. One individual professional gamer popularized the use of the Wazd keyboard keys as substitute arrow keys. And I didn't know until researching, like, a lot of developers, programmers got the idea from one early esports athlete. I wonder how that person brags is my question. Because do you think he ever has the thought to just go like, hey, invented the WASD thing. You mean

keyboards? No, no, I mean putting your hand there. Cool. So can I put my hand in your area? That works perfectly. Yes, of course. How's your flirting going, Dennis? Not successfully, but the logic is there, right?

The logic of what I'm saying. I'm going to press S and back away. She said yes to my flirts and her prize was D. Is that anything? To the right? To the right, yeah. We ran to the right. Also, I wonder if they were left-handed just because it's just like comfortably where your hand would go.

And I find it very awkward to use the arrow keys because I'm left-handed. So I wonder. I don't know if you know that little trivia. Yeah, because there's a past sift about computer keyboards, but I didn't know this at all. I hadn't thought about them as the gaming controller. I use them for a bunch. And that handedness question is interesting because it's not a lefty righty thing. It is a opening up your right hand to use the mouse.

Right. lefty righty thing it is a opening up your right hand to use the mouse right and then once you're doing that most most keyboards have the arrow keys way on the right side as well and so the the shift for this was so that when your right hand is using the mouse your other arm is just comfortable doing arrow key stuff right which is i mean that that means it's not a left right handed problem, but it means it inherited one because like the mouse being on the right side is because. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or it's like however you play guitar. It's like what hand do you want to be dominant because they do different things. For example, I play guitar right handed even though I'm left handed and that ended up making rhythm harder for me, but picking easier. So I think that, that yeah that's interesting to me cool you guys don't crisscross you know you know crisscross applesauce i think that's why

i use pcs i use pcs and controllers growing up and i think that's why i actually like controllers again because i'm like a large guy with big wingspan it feels the most comfortable for me to drop my arms and just have a thing in my lap. I think that's really what it comes down to. My gaming posture is sort of chipmunk. So like as cramped and hunched over as possible. Controller stuffed in your mouth, in your cheek. Yeah, exactly. I mean, like we got more muscles to smile than to frown and you can use those on your controller.

Talk about a joystick. I hate myself. I hate my own brain. It is, besides the mouse and keyboard arrangement thing, it is a comfort and speed thing for why this guy did this. Because according to PC Gamer Magazine, Dennis Fong, he's better known by his nickname Thresh. He's considered the all-time greatest player of the Quake franchise. He was also a top Doom player. Those are first-person shooters for a PC. And he won the first ever Quake professional tournament

in 1997 at age 20. But he said sometime around 1993, he was, you know, a younger kid and not very good at games. Like he would lose Doom matches against his brother. And he said, OK, this summer I'm trying something new. I'm going to teach myself a whole new setup. And at the time, he only used the keyboard. A lot of players use the keyboard for both functions that a mouse does and the arrow keys do. And then he realized that in the game Quake specifically, when you use keyboard keys to turn that has a fixed rate of speed. So if he switched to using his mouse to

turn his character, he could flick it much faster or move slower, like he had better aim, better maneuvers. So he taught himself to use the mouse and to use his left hand on the keyboard. He said, quote, right after I made that switch, my skill improved exponentially. Pretty much from then on, I never lost. And just somewhere along the line that summer, he configured WASD to be his arrow keys. He said he tried WADX, where you have to reach much farther to go down. But either way, he happened to try that. It made sense with the number keys right above it for to try that it made sense with the number keys right above it for changing weapons it made sense with the shift key for strafing and then as he became

famous as a gamer people asked him what his configuration was and he'd just tell him and then they copied it that's so cool this is also it's i guess uh this is also incidentally no i feel like he's the guy is making more of it than any he's like first i tried the x but the x wasn't great it's like dude you just put your hand comfortably down on a thing don't take this away from me it's the only thing he has it's foundational but i think he's puffing it up a bit it someone else would have done it if he didn't who are you how dare you isn't putting your hand comfortably down on a thing how you do most stuff like flying a plane

or surgery it's true it's not really out of the box surgery is very very comfortable for the surgeon I suppose and I also just wanted to say this is kind of the reason the mouse thing is kind of the reason that traditionally to this day especially in first-person shooters multiplayer

does not match people who are using controllers and people who are using a pc because that intermediary of flicking a stick will never be as accurate as i move the mouse and click on the center of the screen and you're dead. So it's definitely, if you're just going for the efficiency of doing the thing, mouse wins for sure. Yeah, like it's a sports equipment difference, basically. You have the better or worse version of shoes or a ball or something else. Point to Abe and Alex. If efficiency is your goal.

But that's a longer rant, so I'm not going to impact that. Why would it not be? Because a game's for fun, not for efficiency. When I play on a PC, it feels... Efficient fun. ...fuzzy to me. Or it feels like too much, like, oh, I'm just playing a game, because all I'm doing is click, click, click. You see what I have to deal with?

Which I also associate with my work machine. Yeah, it's horrible. No no he's got a point yeah and that that whole thing is very new fong tried this in 1993 started doing it in competitions in 1996 before the end of the decade a bunch of games coded wasd as the standard configuration for arrow keys. So yeah, it just kind of popped up. He also doesn't call himself the inventor of it. He just says he popularized it, which I think is true. So it's fun.

Even cooler. Yeah. There you go. There's that humility I was looking for. He's all right now in my book. Yeah. I guess I just realized that arrow keys were not originally for gaming. They were just for going through text. Like moving that little cursor line around.

Moving the cursor, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, this keyboard is just secretly a gaming controller some of the time. That's a weird tool. And those are all our numbers and two takeaways. And we're going to take a quick break. When we return, we're going to go back to the explosive beginning of video game controllers.

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And we're back. There's two more takeaways in the main episode here, and we're going to the beginning. Takeaway number three. A former Manhattan Project physicist built the first video game controller. Uh-oh. For those who aren't in the know, the Manhattan Project was a little secret society of people who built the bomb. Dippin' Dots. The big bomb. That's where we get.

The H-bomb. Dippin' Dots. Dippin' Dots. I love the idea of this person looking at their controller and being like, is this morally okay, though? Like, have I taken humanity too far in one leap can we really like deal with this spiritually pan over to oppenheimer he's like you're all right dude don't worry i am become wazzed what does that mean i don't know it hasn't been popularized yet. I'm a trailblazer, baby. And this story is the inventor

of the video game controller, physicist William B. Higginbotham. He's a U.S. physicist. He did it at a U.S. government laboratory as well. Sorry, could you say his name again, please? William B. Higginbotham. Okay, continue.

Key sources are a biography published by the IEEE, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Also the book, A Brief History of Video Games by games writer Richard Stanton. The start of it is the Manhattan Project. One participant was MIT physicist William B. Higginbotham. He helped develop the timing circuits for the first atomic bomb. He witnessed the first atomic test. He was, you know, significant to making nuclear weapons a thing. So I'm not allowed to like him, but his name is so good. Damn it.

The next step is exciting because after this, Higginbotham, he becomes passionate about two things. One of them is he helps found a group for atomic disarmaments called the Federation of American Scientists. Many of them did that, right? Many of them signed a thing, said like, we created this horrible thing. Also, we're sorry for whatever it's worth. Essentially, oops, signed everyone who did the project. I remember Truman hated all the nerds. Literally, oops, signed everyone who did the project.

I remember Truman hated all the nerds. He's like, you need to be on board with your creation. No, we hate it. You nerds. I get the whole political situation behind it because they were probably told, if we don't make it, someone else will make it. So you've got to make it first. We're on the verge of this technology and it's going to happen. it's definitely but still like if you're like the inventor of like the mega world killing sword

and you're like actually shoot i shouldn't have done that yeah it's tough to read the instructions forgiven dude yeah of course poe buddy's nerfing man yeah we've all done it the famous oppenheimer quote poe buddy's nerf he just watched the blast poe buddy is nerfing single tear rolls darkness in his eyes yeah poe buddy's nerfing i i am become poe buddy poe buddy yes i have become Poe buddy. Yeah, and the other thing those guys did is what Hagenbotham did. He made his job working for peaceful and positive new uses of atomic splitting. He was like, what are other ways this technology can be used for society?

Video games, video games, video games. Yes, banana controllers. I mean, bananas are slightly radioactive, so games, video games. Yes, banana controllers. I mean, bananas are slightly radioactive, so. That's true. We must split the banana. And he just makes ice cream and puts it together. So he goes to work at further government laboratories to find good uses of atomic stuff. He works at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in the 50s. That's on Long Island in New York. And oddly, that leads to like an entertainment project.

Because this Brookhaven National Lab, they did very serious and or secret work. But once a year, they had a community event called Visitor's Day, which was basically an open house type thing where the scientists showed fun demos to the public to like, I think just do a nice thing. It doesn't, it's not clear why they bothered to do this at all, but I think it was to make the lab fun and not spooky. It's like, maybe we should take these skeletons down. and yeah and they uh for the 1958 visitors day higginbotham decided to do a creative project because his department had an analog computer that they had in a custom way hooked up to a machine called an oscilloscope and an oscilloscope is an electronic instrument with a screen for

displaying waveforms and voltages. And it kind of goes like this. An audio oscilloscope. It's going on. For their real work, they used that to calculate missile trajectories, like war stuff, you know. But along the way, they had also programmed that to do the similar task of calculating a bouncing balls path, because it's just physics the same way. And Hagenbotham says, hey, can we use this machine to build something interactive for fun? And the interactive fun idea is that a person could control a virtual tennis racket and swing it at a virtual ball at a chosen angle.

And then the computer responds, calculates the path, and you have an interactive, entertaining game. And so he and a couple of colleagues put it together. And on October 18th, 1958, at Visitor's Day, they unveiled a program called Tennis for Two, which is players aim and swing a virtual racket at a virtual ball, and they did it with two custom-built control devices that are widely acknowledged to be the first video game controllers. Higginbotham and his colleagues had to build this by hand. It did not exist as a thing. And so for this game, they built two small aluminum boxes that were each one dial and one button. And so you

turn the dial to aim the racket and you press the button to swing the racket. And that was it. Yeah. And the technical components of that were an electronic circuit with a variable resistor. So when you turn the dial, that changes the resistance in the circuit. And then that is information for the machine to use to do do the game also interesting that the first game ever involved modeling realistic physics because that's one of the hardest parts of game design and many games still don't do it like or gamers will know what i mean there's like most games have predetermined physics like an animation cycle goes but there's some games games have predetermined physics like an animation cycle goes but there's some games where they're like our physics are real meaning like objects are

responding to forces we programmed in and Pong actually does that and that's hard like it's interesting that the very first game had physics that's so cool god it's so interesting I I don't know it's like we we take for granted so much like computer programming and how that all works. But like when you break it down into this like analog computer and what they had to do to make that work, it's just it's so incredible. Yeah. And this was the top scientists in the country, basically the most advanced equipment in the country. Like it's why back in 1958, it would be a government lab and not some startup somewhere. Like you truly had to have the most cutting edge stuff to do this. And still playing video games at work.

It's a problem, people. They're just playing Call of Duty in between inventing the nuclear bomb. Sir, I'm pleased to give you top level clearance. We can now inform you of a little project called sonic the hedgehog he goes faster brace yourself it's very fast what's he doing gold coins sir gold coins we're thinking of rings but we haven't decided yeah and and with the involvement of scientists and gaming, these particular scientists did not recognize how popular this idea would be. Apparently, Higginbotham took it back down at the end of Visitor's Day. He set it up at the Visitor's Day the next year because he was like, oh, why not do it again?

And then they just moved on. They didn't patent any of what they built. They didn't try to publicize it, didn't try to market it. This didn't get rediscovered until 1983. So 25 years later, a magazine journalist named David All is working on a magazine article, finds out that these guys built a video game, and then popularizes it. And it's agreed upon that they made the first video game controllers. But at the time they were like, yeah, that was a fun open house activity. Now back to science.

I love the joy of children. Anyways, back to doomsdays. Right. And that leads into the last takeaway of the main show. Takeaway number four. The parallel invention of knob-based video game controllers helped create the entire home video game industry. It turns out that, you know, Higginbotham's idea does not enter the marketplace, but some other companies parallel invented tennis-ish, pong-ish games like that. And the very good controller that makes that fun let kind of the whole console industry get started.

That's interesting. So Pong was kind of the first controller-based game. So there was litigation about it because there was one pretty similar game before that. Ping. That was not theirs. Ping. Ping comes before Pong. Come theirs. Ping. Ping comes before Pong. Come on. Give us this one. Throw us a bone.

Ping truther. Just what we needed. Actually, Final Fantasy 3. Right. Known in the States as Final Fantasy 3. Now is Zelda the paddle or is Zelda theda the ball i can never remember yeah it's a problem with the franchise's marketing that's for sure

yeah because this this is basically the early history of consoles and again a higginbotham demo it's really believed that higginbotham's demo was not copied just other companies thought of it separately uh in particular starting in the late 1940s, there was a television engineer named Ralph Baer, who sketched out and prototyped ways of playing interactive games on a TV. And he did that for a lot of companies. After a lot of acquisitions and mergers, he was working at the Magnavox company. And in 1972, they released a console based on that idea. It was called the Magnavox company. And in 1972, they released a console based on that idea. It was called the Magnavox Odyssey. And I'd never heard of it before, but this comes before Pong. Do you know if it had multiple games? Because that's what's interesting to me. Or like the first consoles, my understanding is it's like a device that plays this one

game, right? It's almost like an arcade machine. I don't know if you know know maybe it's not the topic of the episode but i'm curious when they started being like you could put them on cartridges and have five games yeah i guess this one had cartridges and because you're right like pong when it was first in homes was just pong and it didn't do anything else yeah but the the odyssey apparently it had basically a bear circuit board and just a little label that said this is for this game it didn't have like a nice cartridge around it or anything but you would take

that in and out it was really rudimentary oh you'd like crack the whole thing open and replace the motherboard and now it plays pac-man or whatever I mean still way before pac-man even but you know what I mean right what games did it play this was also early enough that basically every game was just a virtual version of a real sport it was a very sports driven time and so apparently the odyssey it had a hockey game it had a volleyball game but far and away the two most popular games on it were tennis and table tennis okay so was this all just pong but they labeled it differently like okay now it's hockey now it's tennis now it's table tennis it was the wee bowling of its time yeah everyone's like you tried this thing yeah it's just the same pong setup it's two bars and

a ball but you're just like oh but now it's a little bit sideways oh we're still doing it today three years ago a game called pong story mode came out where you have to like, oh, but now it's a little bit sideways. Oh, we're still doing it today. Three years ago, a game called Pong Story Mode came out where you have to do a quest with characters and lore by playing Pong over and over. You become Pong by the end. IP never dies. Okay, but I actually had a game growing up called Mortal Pongbat, and it was a game where you would try to blow up the other person's paddle.

It was really fun. I remember this and I hadn't thought about it for 25 years. That does exist. I feel like we got the same stack of game CDs because like, yeah, it was just like you would. The ball would sometimes be bombs and you would try to like blow up the other paddle. Wow. There's a good early one like that called Battle Chess that was just normal chess. But when you took a piece, your piece would come to life and like mercilessly murder.

You would see the queen like slay the little pawn. Like slit the pawn's throat. Just the red wedding, but very slow. Yeah, like now we have every kind of game. And the start of people bothering to buy a video game machine that you bring in your house was fakey tennis that is basically pong. And yeah, the Odyssey was the first big one. Apparently the console was a hit mainly just because of these tennis games. It had a price of $100 back in 1972, which is over $700 today.

And they sold over 100,000 units over the first Christmas it was on the market. Wow. They had a hit product. A lot of disposable income there. Yeah, just wealthy early 70s people. A lot of wazds. And then around the. A lot of disposable income there. Yeah, just wealthy early 70s people. A lot of wazds. And then around the... A lot of wazds.

Yeah. Disposable incomers. Yeah. And then around that same time, engineers Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney built the first modern style arcade game, an arcade cabinet called Computer Space. Then they started their own video game company, which they called Atari, and they chose to make their next project a tennis game directly inspired by the Magnavox Odyssey's tennis game, and that became Pong. First that was in arcades, and then they sold little home machines that just did Pong. Why did they not call it the Dabney Bushnell

Gentile Gaming Authority or something like that? I would love my own hobby even more. My takeaway is that tennis really had its day, and it's really not survived. People really liked tennis. People were nuts about tennis in the 70s. Ping pong's still popular in my friend circle when it's available.

Table tennis. Yeah, I like to ping a good pong and a lot of why this was popular as a game was that the controller was fun because the the magnavox odyssey it came with controllers that were just a weird tan box but the box had two knobs one was for for horizontal movement. The other was for vertical movement. The Pong setup, it was still just a knob for controlling it. And that was a fun enough way to play a video game. Like it really worked. You really felt like you were controlling that paddle. And having an effective enough controller made these games a hit. Like people would spend pretty crazy money on a box that just played this game.

It's nuts how simplistic we are as creatures where it's just like something as tactile as a button that's just hacks our brain we're just like love it love it want more of it give me as many buttons as possible it's the core of every video game loop it is like you see it here the very inception of like fidget spinners speak in part to the same thing in our brains you're like i press this thing and that thing there causality tandem with it that's interesting yeah you get some serotonin release every time you push a button you're just going to be pushing that button until you die yeah yeah i i see a button in a room i'm pushing it that's all i'm saying that's why they won't let

him in hospitals anymore um one time i also love that the box is so specific to that game that the vertical knob also says english like putting spin on the ball is defined as that's what this knob is for it would be like if your nintendo button instead of being A was like Mario Jump button. Yeah, right. It's just cool. Yeah. Yeah, and that's really all it took. Like, there were whole machines just for this. Also, the Pong arcade cabinet was a huge hit.

Apparently, Pong arcade cabinets took in four times more money than competing arcade games of the time. They were just a huge cash cow. competing arcade games of the time. They were just a huge cash cow. But the consoles sold really well, especially in the sporting goods sections of department stores. That was where the Odyssey and Pong got placed at Sears and stores like it. It's like, finally, I can do sports from my couch. Yeah, the dream. It's great. I'm gonna go play FIFA later. It's great. Yeah. I just love that. We were like, we were playing sports, getting exercise, getting outside. And they were like, oh, but finally, I don't have to do all that stuff. I don't have to go outside to play sports. You get the same serotonin just from looking at little bright colors on the screen. Like not even colors, just like light, white light on a black screen.

like not even colors just like light white light on a black screen yeah i am remembering i have there was a time in grade school where i told my friend that we should go play backyard soccer and he he was revolted to learn that i meant the computer game franchise with a game called backyard soccer he thought he thought we were going outdoors and i was like no i want to use pablo sanchez and this backyard soccer game. He's the kid with the little hat. You're speaking my language. What's your favorite backyard game? Oh, soccer, yeah.

Baseball was good. Soccer? Yeah. Baseball's perfect. Yeah. Pablo Sanchez for life. He's the best. At everything.

How about that SimAnts, you guys? Oh, yeah. Now we're talking yeah yeah sports and ants the two games but but like this one wave of knob controlled tennis games built everything else the home version of pong debuts in 1974 and then within two years of that, engineer Jerry Lawson and the Fairchild Semiconductor Company released a console called the Fairchild Video Entertainment System. That had controllers with a vertical hand grip, a joystick that moved in eight directions.

You could press the joystick in as a button, and then it also had a separate hold button that let you pause the game. Once we had consoles going as a business, all the other controller innovation happened from there. Like as this advanced Atari in 1977, they released the Atari 2600, and that kind of had both eras of controllers. They had one that was based on a joystick and buttons, but the console also came with a set of just knobs knobs so you could still do your pong kind of stuff.

And, you know, today's home gamers usually have a controller that does everything. But I like knowing that all of this stood on the shoulders of knob tennis and pong stuff like that. That was the beginning. That's the controller that really got it going. Even going back to that weird government lab in the late 50s. And now we've got, like on the modern controllers, we've got both the trigger button and then the other button, and I don't remember its name. What are the two buttons?

Shoulder. Shoulder. Got the elbow. We got the knees. So many buttons to remember. The knee part of the knees. You know, so many buttons to remember. The knee part of the controller. I want your controller, Katie. It sounds awesome.

It's warm and alive. It's alive. It's technically alive. It's the hamsters, yeah. You don't want to know what that middle handle of the N64 controller is. Trust me. You don't want to know. I don handle of the N64 controller is. Trust me. You don't want to know. I don't get it.

What do you mean? Off mic. Off mic. Hey folks, that's the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro, with fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, any properly configured circuit can be a video game controller. Any properly configured circuit can be a video game controller. Takeaway number two, one individual professional gamer popularized the use of WASD keyboard keys as substitute arrow keys.

Takeaway number three, a former Manhattan Project physicist built the first video game controller. And takeaway number four, the parallel invention of knob-based video game controllers that were fun for super simple tennis created the entire home video game industry. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at MaximumFun.org. Members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the Nintendo Duck Hunt Gun. Visit SIFPod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of almost 12 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of MaxFun bonus shows.

It is special audio just for members. Thank you for being somebody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun thing, check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org, key sources this week include the book The Ultimate History of Video Games by games writer and former Atari employee Stephen L. Kent, also the book A Brief History of Video Games by games writer Richard Stanton, and a biography of William B. Higginbotham published by the IEEE. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy. Michael taped this on the

traditional land of the Ohlone people. Abe recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino or Tongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. I want to acknowledge that in my and Michael and Abe's locations, and in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And join the free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey, would you like a tip on a whole nother episode?

Well, each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 101, which is about stainless steel. Fun fact there, there is an unburnable copy of the book The Handmaid's Tale, personally tested and blasted with a flamethrower by Margaret Atwood, that is bound with aerospace-grade stainless steel. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast, Creature Feature, about animals and science and more. Also, as we said in that main episode, our pals Michael Swaim and

Abe Epperson, our wonderful guests today, they are crowdfunding a movie. It's very independent, very personal. It is called Papa Bear. There's a link in the description to visit that crowdfunding page, find out more about the movie and find out how to pitch in. Please do that. Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating.

So how about that? Talk to you then. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported.