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this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2026
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Gaming literacy is a real thing. Most people who didn’t grow up with 3D games don’t intuitively understand it. I’ve seen many boomers either stare at their feet or the ceiling & they have no clue how to solve their situation because they are disoriented. Same with young kids learning.
I've seen this happen with 20 and 30 year olds.
Its an entire learned skill that a large segment of the population never learned.
... unfortunately, much like reading and writing, these days.
But yeah, the idea that... you can move your position in 3d, with wasd or a dpad or a stick... and also orient your view angle with a mouse or stick ... at the same time?
This is utterly baffling and disorienting to a lot of people who've never played a first person perspective game before.
Its ... part of why AAA games are more often than not third person, in the last decade.
Its easier to pickup for a noobie, because you have a constant point of reference, you can always see the avatar of the player, camera movements are less sensitive and less drastic because you have a wider FOV.
But.... people live their whole lives in first person view?
Any last words, Jim?
* turns around *
Huh?
Yeah, it's just wild to me, that we went full-force ahead with the whole 3D thing, when you lock out so many potential players with it.
With 2D games, you can chuck someone a controller and even if they're just haphazardly pressing buttons, they can still participate in the game. With 3D, no chance.
And even those who do have practice still struggle with it. Think of a difficult 3D game and I bet it's a valid joke that the true end boss is the camera.
I've always wondered what's specifically going on their minds when that happens. I remember getting into shooters and pretty much immediately understanding the two separate axes in Duke Nukem 3D at like age 7-8 (yeah I played violent games when I was young my parents only restricted movies). Maybe that's why? My brain was just better able to learn at that age? Or is it that I am autistic? Is neurology a factor?
EDIT: Just realized, even younger, I played and beat Star Fox SNES, which only had 1 axis, where aiming and moving were bound together. Maybe it was the baby step of playing a simpler 3D shooter game.
You can try emulating how they feel by finding a game that lets you bind side to side movement on the mouse, and rotation to A and D. Some old shooters were set up that way I think.
My dad always played Doom and Heretic by MOVING with the mouse and aiming with the arrows on the keyboard. It was so weird watching him play. And despite him playing Wolfenstein and Doom and Heretic and Rise of the Triad, he quit once we got Quake. I still played Quake using nothing but the keyboard, like I did the other games mentioned. I didn't start using the modern wasd and mouse setup until Tribes 2, since it was fairly close to the defaults (IIRC, it used asdf instead of wasd but I rebound them so it was more like the arrow keys; just one set of keys to the right of wasd. I used R to go forward).
It's even a thing in our generation - my now ex was pretty stumped playing skyrim. 2d games were no issue.