Right-handed privilege in games

[Goremonger]

In InFAMOUS you can change what hand you shoot lightning out of. So..

[Deleted]

League of Legends' Taric is highly speculated to be left handed, so that's that!

[Rennadrel]

Lefties probably aren't so prolific in vidya games because they're abominations that are lucky we give them the right to breath.

You do know that the most creative people throughout history have been left handed right? Science and critical thinking dominate the right side of the brain, while the left side of the brain is more for the artistic and innovative part of the mind. I am left handed, I play and write my own music, my brother is right handed but he can play better then I when it comes to playing someone else's work, but he can't write a song at all or improvise because he doesn't have the creative thought process, despite the fact that he is really smart.

[Celista]

on topic: I'm left handed and I've never noticed this in video games.

[Lumineus]

You do know that the most creative people throughout history have been left handed right? Science and critical thinking dominate the right side of the brain, while the left side of the brain is more for the artistic and innovative part of the mind. I am left handed, I play and write my own music, my brother is right handed but he can play better then I when it comes to playing someone else's work, but he can't write a song at all or improvise because he doesn't have the creative thought process, despite the fact that he is really smart.

Actually the control paths are crossed. The left side of the brain controls the right hand, and vice-versa. It's the left side that's math and logic oriented. Unfortunately for the occidentally challenged, the kinds of people who make and program video games are nerds, not artists and philosophers. The artists who do work on the games are less likely to have pull within the company because their positions don't come with a lot of power over the direction of development.

[Cattleya]

One thing I really hate about games is the WASD movement key setup. It strongly favors right-handers (you use the movement keys with your nondominant hand and the mouse with your dominant), and playing with WASD as a left hander is an exercise is awkward arm crossing. Now obviously most games allow you to alter the key settings, but I find it annoying as hell when I have to manually change each key. That and a lot of other hotkeys are set up with the idea of WASD in mind, so you need to change all of them too, and try and keep it natural in terms of finger movement. Not as easy as it sounds.

I easily solved this issue by having my mouse on the left side of my keyboard for as long as I remember.

[Lumineus]

WASD is the awkward thing shoved in to make Right mouse+KB more comfortable for righties, actually. That's pretty much the main reason why things like the Nostromo even exist, because WASD movement sucks. Left mouse + numpad is a much more sensible configuration.

[Stir]

We don't have enough right-hearted protagonists. It's discrimination against right-hearted people, I tell you!

[vindicatorx]

I have never noticed because I don't care what hand the character is using

[Hellfury]

You do know that the most creative people throughout history have been left handed right? Science and critical thinking dominate the right side of the brain, while the left side of the brain is more for the artistic and innovative part of the mind. I am left handed, I play and write my own music, my brother is right handed but he can play better then I when it comes to playing someone else's work, but he can't write a song at all or improvise because he doesn't have the creative thought process, despite the fact that he is really smart.

He is being sarcastic, and you are just stereotyping lefties as ppl that cant do anything but art BS

[mag07]

Left handed and could not care less about which hand my character chooses to fight with, don't care on which site of the paper doll the mh is either - sorry, but that's ridiculous - all that's needed for comfy game play is a proper mouse - in fact, I'd say left handed people are at an advantage with keyboards due to easy access to numpad - does that mean right handed people should start demanding numpad be moved on all keyboards to the other side?

Don't know what's with vocal minorities nowadays. You're different, yay for you, yay for me - the sense of entitlement all over the place is appalling.

[wolphe]

YES! EXACTLY!

Legend of Zelda's Link has been left handed the entire time due to Miyamoto himself being left handed. Link is only right handed in Wii games due to how the wii remote is held. Link was still left handed in the Gamecube version of Twilight Princess. The Wii version reversed most everything in that game. Even the dungeon maps are reversed.

Link is called Link because he creates a Link between the player and the game, this was especially true for myself since like me, the character in game is left handed.


If I take my better weapon (the weapon usually put in the main hand) and put it in the left hand in World of Warcraft I suffer a damage/DPS loss for putting it in the offhand. Why is the left hand automatically the offhand? If I am left handed then the right hand is the offhand. WOW, and most games of it's ilk automatically assume the left to be the offhand and offer no means for switching orientation.

Come on guys. You are playing a game, the char inside the game, is not YOU. Why does everyone have the need to have everything made to suit their special little needs?
You know, if the game companies could spend more time, on making the games better, instead of making sure they take care of everyones needs, we would have a SHITLOADS of awsome games instead.

I mean wth!
Soon they will have to make sure you have a colourblind mode
lefthanded, right handed. a game with interesting chars for both female and male.
Asian, Black, White, Indian.
Thin, fat, muscular, Normal.
Young, Adult, Old.
Straight, Gay.
Hardcore, Noob, and atleast 5 more stages inbetween.
English, German, France, Chinese, Russian languages at a minimum.
Heck, soon they will even have to come serve you dinner while you play!

- - - Updated - - -

You do know that the most creative people throughout history have been left handed right? Science and critical thinking dominate the right side of the brain, while the left side of the brain is more for the artistic and innovative part of the mind. I am left handed, I play and write my own music, my brother is right handed but he can play better then I when it comes to playing someone else's work, but he can't write a song at all or improvise because he doesn't have the creative thought process, despite the fact that he is really smart.

That doesn't necesserialy have something to do with beeing left handed or right handed. That mostly just means that he is more of a school smart person, wich means that he is good with numbers, math etc, while you are better at art and creativity. Beeing right and left handed has nothing to do with that.
I am right handed, and im good with numbers, languages and stuff like that. Yet my two brothers are increadibly artistic and creative, yet only one of them are left handed.
And my dad is left handed while sucking at creativity, yet amazing with numbers.

[Vankrys]

Come on guys. You are playing a game, the char inside the game, is not YOU. Why does everyone have the need to have everything made to suit their special little needs?
You know, if the game companies could spend more time, on making the games better, instead of making sure they take care of everyones needs, we would have a SHITLOADS of awsome games instead.

I mean wth!
Soon they will have to make sure you have a colourblind mode
lefthanded, right handed. a game with interesting chars for both female and male.
Asian, Black, White, Indian.
Thin, fat, muscular, Normal.
Young, Adult, Old.
Straight, Gay.
Hardcore, Noob, and atleast 5 more stages inbetween.
English, German, France, Chinese, Russian languages at a minimum.
Heck, soon they will even have to come serve you dinner while you play!

i agree, at some point line must be drawn and resource should not be wasted on some political correct game but be more wisely spent in making game better overall. I have no problem is the character is white, black, female or even gay, as long as the game is fun.
i nerver have a problem sith CJ being black, lara croft being a woman, or link being left handed

However, i thing the language barrier is real, and effort to translate game are, i believe, justified. would Ubisoft games be as successful for example of they only release french version or nintendo only japanese version, etc...