how did the WASD keys become the norm for movement on pc games? Couldnt it have been ESDF or some other set of keys?
In: 1807
In a single word: Quake. Before Quake, movement controls tended to be all over the place. Arrow keys were far and away the most common, but WASD, ESDF and WASX also existed. You only shot on a single plane, so you didn’t have control over vertical camera movement. Even when games advanced enough to enable that control (such as Dark Forces), you tended to use something like PgUp/PgDn for verticality. Thus it made sense for you to use the arrow keys in the right hand and spacebar, shift, ctrl, etc. in the left.
Quake popularized mouse control of camera, with independent controls for movement, even though it didn’t have it enabled by default. If you wanted to git gud in those days, you had to master mouse control, and since most people are right handed, that forced movement controls to move to the left side of the keyboard. From there, WASD makes the most sense, as the letters form a simlar inverted T layout as the arrows, while still leaving all the other major keys for interaction within reach. Try using something like ESDF, I find I have to bend by wrists in at a weird angle to be able to reach shift or ctrl.
Latest Answers