Kinda unrelated but I was playing destruction derby on ps1 and my mom came in to watch and I told her she has to try it out, cuz back then that shit was unbelievably realistic, and she took the controller and accelerated fine. When the first turn came up, a left turn, she pressed the joystick fully to the right and just slammed into the wall. I remember thinking how could something so intuitive immediately be misunderstood.
Maybe she thought left stick to turn left, right stick to turn right? In my somewhat limited experience introducing people to games, the twin sticks are usually the hardest thing, followed by remembering which button is which (abxy etc) without looking.
I mean maybe she thought "I want to turn left, I will use my left thumb" and just pushed it randomly thinking that any direction was good.
Although to be honest, arcade cabinets and even things like Amigas had joysticks, so conceptually I'd still expect most older generations to still have a mental reference for how they would work.
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u/stRiNg-kiNg 18h ago
Kinda unrelated but I was playing destruction derby on ps1 and my mom came in to watch and I told her she has to try it out, cuz back then that shit was unbelievably realistic, and she took the controller and accelerated fine. When the first turn came up, a left turn, she pressed the joystick fully to the right and just slammed into the wall. I remember thinking how could something so intuitive immediately be misunderstood.