Direct Manipulation

From GameOntology

A game that provides direct mapping of player input is one that provides a one-to-one relationship between the players input and the actions of the entity he's controlling within the game. In some games this works out to pressing up on a joystick to go up, left to move left, right to move right, down to move down. In this case one can argue that the interface is very intuitive.

Please note that in reference to direct manipulation, direct is meant to describe the one-to-one relationship between input and action, not necessarily a direct relationship between up on the joystick and an upward action. Some games provide controls for actions that are just as direct (one input signal to one response), but feel less intuitive. Such controls commonly appear in games whose primary activities don't easily map to an intutive input pattern on available input devices, like pumping motions, handing buckets from player to player, or complicated martial arts moves.

1 Examples
- 1.1 Strong Examples
- 1.2 Weak Examples
2 Relations with other elements of the Ontology
- 2.1 Parent
- 2.2 Children
3 References

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Examples

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Strong Examples

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Pac-Man

Pac-Man [Iwatani, 1980] provides a direct one-to-one relationship between the player's input and Pac man's movement within the game. Unless obstructed by a wall, when the player pushes up on the joystick, Pac man goes up. Pushing left on the joystick moves Pac man left, right to move right, down to move down.

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Resident Evil

The movement controls in Resident Evil [Nakaya, 1996] follow a steering metaphor that some players find difficult to use. With this interface, up on the joypad moves the player's avatar forward, left turns left, right turns right, down moves backward. Designers chose this input method in order to provide a consistent method for inputting movement commands despite the frequent change of camera angles within the game.

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Street Fighter II: The World Warrior

While many of the controls in Street Fighter II: The World Warrior [Capcom, 1991] mirror the direction the player avatar moves on screen (left moves left, right moves right), the controls for special attacks (like Ken and Ryu's dragon punch or hadouken fireball attack) require the player to combine movements on the digital pad with button presses in a way that does not necessarily reflect the resulting action. For example, the motion toward, down, down-toward, and punch wouldn't necessarily lead one to expect a flying uppercut to result unless it were a pattern established by the game. Thus, we say that this game is a weak example of direct manipulation. Though movement is manipulated directly, the special attacks are not. In fact, further weakening it as an example, whenever a player inputs a special attack combo, movement is effectively canceled. In other words, if the combo is "left-left-down", the character does not move left, left and then down in addition to the special attack.

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Weak Examples

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Mario Party 4

The minigames provided in Mario Party 4 [Hudson-Soft, 2002] include some that provide interesting control mappings to in-game activities. As in the previous examples, the game provides one-to-one mappings between player input and character action, but mappings that are perhaps less intuitive than left to go left or right to go right. Some examples include a balloon inflating game where players must alternately push the right and left shoulder buttons on their joypads to simulate pushing down and pulling up on a bicycle pump. This game is considered a weak example because the mappings, while staying mostly direct, do change throughout the game. In other words, they are not necesarrilly consistent for the duration of the game.

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Mister Mosquito

While playing Mister Mosquito [Sato, 2002], players have the opportunity to get a mosquito's view of sucking blood from humans. The game provides a one-to-one mapping for the act of sucking blood once attached to a donor that many people would consider difficult to follow. In order to suck blood, players must trace circles with the right analog joystick on their joypad at a rate that's not so fast that the donor notices the mosquito, but rapidly enough that there is sufficient suction to draw blood.

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Sid Meier's Pirates!

There are certain times in Sid Meier's Pirates! [Meier, 2005] when the player directly controls the avatar. When sailing the Caribbean, the player can turn their ship left or right, and initiate combat with other ships. During naval combat, in addition to turning, players can also fire their ship's cannons and determine the type of shot for the cannons. When dueling enemies, each type of attack and defense is map to a separate key. When dancing with the daughters of governors, the buttons pressed by the player corresponds to various dance moves.

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World of Warcraft

In World of Warcraft, many functions are performed directly through key presses, but consist of telling your character to use an ability and watching them do it. For example, when a hunter shoots his bow, the player doesn't have to manually aim it at the target. However, movement and turning are direct one-to-one inputs and the direction the player's character is facing matters when attacking targets.

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