Why WASD and not ESDF? People have been touch-typing with their left hand in that home position since the late 1800s. (Or do you actually operate WASD with your pinky, ring, and middle fingers when gaming?)
> being right-handed (like most people), I prefer directional controls on the right hand and action buttons on the left.
It is right-handedness that led to this because it was used in conjunction with a mouse, so all those right handed players had a mouse in their right hand, meaning their left hand was on the keyboard.
If you, as a right-handed person, use a mouse in your right hand and the arrow keys in your left hand, you are very much in the minority. Even for games that don't use a mouse, this convention (and muscle memory) is so established that it makes sense to use WASD, even for right-handed players. However making it configurable is always desirable to accommodate the minority of players who might not want to use WASD for any reason.
If you're not an avid gamer or primarily gamed before keyboard + mouse was common, this might indeed seem strange. But for anyone who's gamed consistently in the past 20 years it is very normal.
Why not ESDF? I don't know why initially but today WASD is established convention.
A further argument for movement from the left hand comes from consoles, which starting with the NES if not earlier have consistently (always?) had the d-pad on the left. I remember having some trouble reversing that learning for the PC platforming games that used the arrow keys for movement.
Retrofitting alphanumerics for game controls is such an ugly, kludgy hack, even if it’s very convenient (especially in games where you can text chat with other players.)
Feels like a carry-over of the PC’s “wannabe”ness as a gaming machine since the 1980s/90s.
ASDF used to be an option on first person shooters when they were first coming out.
How are the first FPS games relevant?