That is a Ukrainian soldier using a steam deck to control actual weapon systems real humans…

OK, this is a stupid point. This is a much different scenario than someone sitting at home. The Deck is portable, light, and has control and display built in. It’s perfect for this, where a desktop wouldn’t really work. Even if the control scheme isn’t ideal (which it’s great for controlling a drone, but that’s beside the point), setting up a keyboard and mouse with a monitor and power would be horrible for them.

No it isn’t, they could use a mouse if they wanted to, and they aren’t. Sure it helps that the Steam Deck is portable, but if you think they are all sitting there wishing they could have a mouse and keyboard you are being silly. We aren’t talking about what makes the most convenient way to game on the go, if using a mouse and keyboard provided a critical increase in accuracy and speed using a weapon system you better believe they would stick a fucking logitech wireless mouse in the pockets of their army fatigues?

This is irrelevant to the conversation, but there are different types of mechanical skill

Yeah your tangent here is, I know there are different types of mechanical skill but don’t come at me like competitive counter strike requires more reaction speed, hand eye coordination and target prediction than quake, you are deceiving yourself because you can’t admit that high level quake play just shits on any kind of counterstrike style game along the real but ultimately arbitrary axis of pure mechanical skill, aim, reaction time and ability to predict the motion of chaotic intelligent enemies. It isn’t up for debate, the movement in Xonotic is 1 million times more complex and fast than it is in Counter Strike… by design. *NOTE Counter Strike is just as hard as a competitive game as Xonotic, it is probably way harder given the immensity of it’s playerbase that has also mastered these mechanics.

Understand I am talking about moment to moment game mechanics skill, when I say riding a horse fast is far harder than driving a racecar fast, I don’t mean driving a racecar is less competitive or easier, I mean the moment to moment shit you have to do to stay on a horse is more than a racecar. I am tired of people very very very experienced at driving racecars telling me that riding a horse is much easier when they have never even sat on a horse in their life. Ok, if you want to bring up F1 racing at high speed around tight corners or Isle of Man TT motorbike racing yes… but now your metaphor is just supporting my argument that Xonotic is the most mechanically difficult competitive type of FPS game, because those are clearly the closest thing to real life Quake gameplay…

https://youtu.be/WfOF6c79A3Y

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RBZvSDHURnk&pp=ygUMeG9ub3RpYyBkdWVs

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VakkA196ILs&pp=ygUMeG9ub3RpYyBkdWVs

This does help segway into a nice summary of why you are so wrong here, my point was that if you can play Xonotic somewhat competitively using joysticks and gyroscope aim than that is proof you can play any mechanically less taxing game competitively with this set up. That doesn’t mean Counter Strikes is any easier than Xonotic or Quake 3 Live, what it means is that the there is less raw skill required in the actual moment to moment gameplay vs. having skill, knowledge and experience in every other aspect of competition that is vital other than just literally being good at doing the thing.

I will not have a discussion about this lead into a digression into bickering about how skill is more than just raw reaction time or aim skill… yes I know, I never claimed otherwise read my words closer before you react with this argument.

I would like to also respond to your argument that if using joysticks and gyroscope were competitive you would see at least some PC players using them in competition. This is a massively flawed assumption though it is reasonable on the surface.

1. The hardware for gyroscope capable joystick gamepads, whether they are integrated into a handheld gaming console or they are contained within the controller like on a Ps5 controller, has not been around for very long in any accessible fashion.

2. You are ignorant in the way most pc gaming people are in that you are ignoring the MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH larger playerbase of mobile shooter gamers using purely a smartphone with touchscreen controls and gyroscope… that are playing at a competitive level that you would flat out deny if I showed you videos of. You don’t know what you are talking about, you haven’t seen high level players on ipads playing Farlight 84 or Call of Duty Mobile and thus you have no grounds to make the claim there isn’t evidence that joysticks and gyroscope aim can’t be competitive because you see no evidence of it. Call Of Duty Mobile is one of the most played games on the planet, get with the program buddy.

I have played with some of these players in Call Of Duty Mobile in high level Search and Destroy games or in Alcatraz or normal Battle Royale modes (among the other less challenging normal Call Of Duty modes) using an xbox controller and gyroscope on my phone… there are some ways that touchscreen is superior (ease of access to buttons along with extreme customizability of many control inputs to be intuitive and fast) but also some ways that my setup of joysticks + gyroscope was superior. Was I as good as these players? Of course not, but there wasn’t some categorical ceiling of hardware holding me back, these people are just better at the game plain and simple. I had the same experience getting near the top of the ladder in Apex Legends Mobile, the predator ranked players above me where ruthless but they didn’t have some kind of untouchable hardware advantage on me even if their devices had higher refresh/Hz, lower latency, larger and higher resolution screens. That helped, but what mattered was they were better at the game. Still, I got close enough to the top to thoroughly convince myself that there wasn’t a hardware issue really holding me back, the holes in my battle royale/FPS game mechanics have far more to do with my tactics then aim, I have the aim down well enough trust me.

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/92194/call-of-duty-has-70-million-daily-active-users-more-than-roblox/index.html

https://www.esports.net/news/mobile-games/cod-mobile-player-count/

Per Activision, the game has already crossed 500 million downloads in 2021 itself. Therefore, the overall game downloads in 2025 should be considerably higher than that, and could be somewhere around 700 million right now. While it’s still a bit far from the 1 billion milestone, which only a few games like Subway Surfers and Free Fire have achieved, the game is undoubtedly one of the most popular ones available on mobile. This can also be attributed to the game being free-to-play, which has generated considerable interest towards the Call of Duty franchise.

Additionally, according to Active Player, the daily player count in recent months is around 25 million users, a really huge number.

https://www.esports.net/news/mobile-games/cod-mobile-player-count/

examples of competitive touchscreen and gyroscope play

codm

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BuRirm25WhI&pp=ygUnZmFybGlnaHQgODQgY29tcGV0aXRpdmUgaXBhZCB0b3VybmFt

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uwNWk_MNFRk&pp=ygUnZmFybGlnaHQgODQgY29tcGV0aXRpdmUgaXBhZCB0b3VybmFtZW50

3. As I have pointed out repeatedly in my arguments, just because there is a superior way to do it DOES NOT mean computer people/gamers will elect to use it (ESPECIALLY stick in the mud pc gamers). Computer people/gamers are no different than any other demographic of humans in that they will irrationally refuse to try certain things for no good reason, the thing that makes them unique is the degree of confidence they have that they do not do this because they are good at computers and/or programming. Thus at a fundamental level even if you are right and there aren’t any competitive joysticks and gyroscope players out there than it still isn’t actually very good evidence that it isn’t possible to play competitively with joysticks and gyroscope because there is no reason to assume pc gamers would actually evolve and try it. PC first person shooter competitive gamers just recently decided to stop using CRT monitors I mean… come on don’t look to them to be harbingers of innovation!

4. Mouse and Keyboard will always be a massive part of competitive gaming, I will also refuse to be lead along a digression into arguing about this, I am not denying the immense competitive capacity for mouse and keyboard at certain genres of video games, but we are no longer in an environment that pc gamers assumed would continue indefinitely forever… there are other competitive control schemes now that can beat mouse and keyboard, decisively in some cases depending on the competitive esport. These include joysticks and gyroscope aim control for gamepads/gaming handhelds and touchscreen and gyroscope controls for smartphones. There will be more discovered, this makes mouse and keyboard players uncomfortable shrugs but as pc gamers love to say condescendingly, it is the way it is.

Edit I mean I didn’t even bring up rocket league lol…

Edit 2 My second edit got lost, but suffice to say gestures at FPV drones and RC hobby not giving a shit about wanting mouse and keyboard level precision control in the field because THEY ALREADY HAVE IT with their tools.

Than you are like most mouse and keyboard players where you confidently assume mouse and keyboard is the best control method end of story. You don’t know what you are talking about and neither do any reply guys who will try to obliterate this point with a salvo of “um actually” killer rhetorical points.

https://steamdeckhq.com/news/steam-deck-shown-being-used-in-ukraines-war/

That is a Ukrainian soldier using a steam deck to control actual weapon systems real humans (likely mouse and keyboard players who have no ability to use a gamepad) are counting on to survive an actual war.

Honestly if I sound snarky it is because I have grown to love how unshakably mouse and keyboard players believe they are using the only method to play competitively. Especially in a battlefield type FPS game with aircraft, mouse and keyboard players will hilariously refuse to fly with anything other than mouse and keyboard or a crazy complex flight simulator setup with a flight joystick they talk about but will never get.

Meanwhile there is an xbox one controller sitting in the other room that in 5 minutes they could learn to pull off flight maneuvers smoothly and confidently with that are next to impossible to do with mouse and keyboard…

I point this out to mouse and keyboard players directly and they don’t listen even why I fly literal circles around them. They respond with some form of “mouse and keyboard works badly enough for me”. Computer people are truly so much smarter than the rest of us!

me flying circles around people

https://lostpod.space/w/id9wMqsEmHSD9xQCTchQ9r

https://lostpod.space/w/fYo9DBAxwWSace7X7X486t

https://lostpod.space/w/qUyc9YLX69RK4xokm98qCW

Recording of me playing the best arena shooter, Xonotic, with joysticks and gyro. Sure there are plenty of quake players that could annihilate me, such is life, but I am able to play fluidly and competitively enough that the issue is my skill at the game and to a lesser extent the limited framerate and field of view of the Steam Deck screen not a fundamental limitation of joysticks and gyro. Note that Xonotic is one of the fastest competitive games period, which means slower competitive games are comparatively in terms of dynamic aim and movement skill FAR easier to master the mechanics of than Xonotic, so Xonotic is the perfect proving ground to prove this.

https://lostpod.space/w/n4botXqTikDFBD5d9HZqRi

Back buttons are essential in any competitive action game.

This is about wealth inequality too.

Why do they need guns? They are starving, is that not evil enought?

Exactly!

murderers of our children

I guess, but honestly, you are giving artists money so who cares?

The only two relevant questions are:

1. Was spending that money actually a serious error in that you needed the money for something else?

2. Did you give your money to an indie artist or a massive AAA company that actively is attempting to hurt artists even the ones it temporarily employs?

Buy indie games, revel in your wealth of games, this is a good thing not a bad thing. You flaunt your disgusting wealth and power by simply buying an indie game that was made with passion by artists and game developers and yet you are never even going to play it. Witness your power!!!

Which is exactly the intended conditions ventcure capital investment in WhatsApp was intended to do, now they can just keep cashing in over and over again banking on pure inertia from people already knowing how to use WhatsApp badly to do something they could do far better with another tool.

What that says to me is you are trying to bullshit using a basic tool when you actually need to do the work of onboarding people onto some kind of platform where you can actually coordinate complex things or have conversations between huge groups of people that are still salient to individuals.

Nobody really needed this feature, this is the actual reason it is being implemented… obviously.

It is insulting they aren’t even trying to hide it.

I am not so sure this type of pirate ship is gonna be competitive in a modern environment.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pirate_ships

watt

A good example is ADHD. I have severe ADHD so I take meds to manage it. If I am driving an automatic car on cruise control I find it very difficult to maintain long term high intensity concentration. The solution for me is to drive a manual. The constant involvement of maintaining speed, revs, gear ratio, and so on mean I can pay attention much easier. Add to that thinking about hypermiling and defensive driving and I have become a very safe driver, putting about 25-30 thousand kms on my car each year for over a decade without so much as a fender bender. In an automatic I was always tense, forcing focus on the road, and honestly it hurt my neck and shoulders because of the tension. In my zippy little manual I have no trouble driving at all.

Are you me? I love weaving through traffic as fast as I can… in a video game (like Motor Town behind the wheel). In real life I drive very safe and it is boring af for my ADHD so I do things like try to hit the apex of turns just perfect as if I was driving at the limit but I am in reality driving at a normal speed.

Part of living with severe ADHD is you don’t get breaks from having to play these games to survive everyday life, as you say it is a stressful reality in part because of this. You brought up a great point too that both of us know, when our focus is on something and activated we can perform at a high level, but accidents don’t wait for our focus, they just happen, and this is why we are always beating ourselves up.

We can look at self driving car tech and intuit a lot about the current follies of it because we know what focus is better than anyone else, especially successful tech company execs.

Lie dare you claim Waymo is better than Tesla

(it is a lidar joke, Waymo has lidar sensors which makes it way safer)

Are you telling me this isn’t a wizard school?! Wait

The story of Israel is the story of the US in many ways, and the same species of denial reflected, shattered and mutated into a new context with different pre-existing histories doesn’t change the nature of this, that it is the same old process of colonialism violently denying itself. I recognize the primal scream because I have shamefully participated in it in the past cycles of this story, not because I actually understand myself as impervious to its violent impulse.

This has nothing to do with religion, any -ism, any broad category of people, it is just the nature of how colonialism was designed to divide us.

These are some really wild and generalizing claims about Iran and Iranian people and honestly you should be ashamed of yourself.

As someone on the left in the US I want to make it clear I think you are behaving in a pathetic way and yet I would never draw conclusions about Israelis or Israel the way you just casually did about Iranians even though Israel is committing a Genocide Of Palestinians. There are many Iranians with a wide variety of views on Israel, but no… they do not desire a genocide of Israelis the way Israelis desire a genocide of Palestinians that is the ugly truth and yet even as I perceive it I know there is nothing inherent to Israelis that makes them incapable of seeing the humanity of Palestinians because I know all too well how easy it is to fall into the same awful mindset as someone from the US.

This is ALL a choice about how we flatten other groups into simple narratives. The most important thing about leftism to me is never forgetting that.

I come from a war-like society, I can respect the call to war when it is done out of a genuine desire to defend what you hold dear, Israel’s call to war is not a call to war it is a call to genocide and it reimagines the atrocities of US colonization reflected and reanimated into a modern middle eastern conflict. I will not stand for it, I will resist the dehumanization of all people, Iranians, Palestinians, Israelis, Muslisms, Jews… we are people alike.

Also there is NO evidence that Iran has been pursuing producing a nuclear weapon for… decades?

“I have really acclimated to the ability to do violence as a CEO of a large company involved in music, I have especially enjoyed destroying the dreams of musicians who want to earn a living, but it isn’t enough what can I say I am a guy driven by the hustle. I want more! So I decided the killing needed to be more literal and started a shady as fuck Defense company!” - Daniel Ek

Wait these genocidal idiots really called it “Operation Narnia”?

wtf

vomits on ground

This would be disgusting if it was just a normal act of war, of killing soldiers and calling it a cute name like this to disguise how any war is a tragedy, but there is a much more serious red flag here about Israel and Israeli society, this shows a blatant disregard for the humanity of these SCIENTISTS by assassinating them and making a joke out of it about sending them to dream land. Not only is this murder, the motive is a blatant lie, Iran was not developing a nuclear weapon that is undeniable and unarguable based on the overwhelming evidence.

If you still think that Israel and the US aren’t coming for science, freedom of thought and peace in general you are a fool. I live in the heart of this dying empire, the US, and let me tell you, they are coming for you if you are a scientist, run or fight, either is fine but pick one soon before it is too late.