The interface is king. And the algorithms and rules for moving and aiming and the way the game gives us feedback when we "pull the trigger" are, is actually very, very different than when we have a controller in our hands, joysticks and triggers and buttons than if we're using a mouse and keyboard. Uh, and it, it -- when we're watching the simulation happen it could feel identical. Uh, but in fact, there's some very different things that play to make it just feel correct, uh, when we're, when we're using these different inputs. And input is king and you have to iterate it with the device in your hand. And you have to know the feeling that you have to arrive at. Uh, there were some early attempts that kind of started to pave the way for the controller side of the equation. The triggers were no brainers. Like, when we got triggers that was, that was great. That was fast like that was automatic. We didn't have to worry about that too much. That was, that was pretty easy. It was, it's about the joysticks. And some of the early attempts like Golden Eye on the N64 and for a lot of video gamers, Golden Eye was the first FPS they'd ever played because they never played games on the PC before. And it was funny, those of us in the PC space like we weren't as impressed by it. I, you know, it's an amazing achievement and a great game and I've played it a lot. But, uh, you could feel that, that first kind of 1.0 attempt, but that you can tell they iterated towards how to use that single stick on the N64 controller. They, they iterated towards that feeling. They must have iterated towards it in the same way that we all did with the mouse and keyboard back, you know, when, when, you know, those of us were around when the first person genre was being invented, um, you know, we had to figure it all out. And you can feel the, the guys are Rare and, you know, however Nintendo was involved, they'd figured out a new kind of language. And that then was iterated upon, uh, with Halo which was the first FPS that launched the Xbox. And I think Halo was the key turning point that allowed, allowed the FPS to be at home on a console. And those Bungie guys performed a miracle. And they not only figured out how to deal with all of the physics from, you know, a joystick point of view, but they added some new concepts, some new algorithms for auto aiming, uh, and other, other bits of gravity, you know, so that the, the crosshairs would tend to lean towards the target that the player was likely going for even if they weren't perfectly precise with their own interface. And that, there's a little help there that's subtle enough where the customer, the player doesn't realize he's being helped, but it sufficient where it's actually overcoming some of the, the weakness of the joystick when compared to the precision of a mouse. Um, and that, that was a really great invention and Bungie offered the whole industry a gift there when, when they figured that out. And I, I know that, you know, I worked on Halo for the PC, the original. And when -- in interacting with those guys, that was a very complicated -- well, I don't want to say complicated. It was a very iterative process using, uh, tests, focus tests like getting people off the street of different types of backgrounds, putting a joystick in their hand and, and just watching what happens, parsing the data that comes from the joystick. I mean, they, they had a PhD in psychology driving that, that unit there and, and the test lab. And they, they figured it out. And, uh, some of us, you know, when I say us I'm talking about the industry, um, reverse engineer from Halo, others because we've done it before on the PC side we were able to, we were actually kind of excited to figure out all over again once we started making FPS's on the consoles.
