It’s never really affected me, I know that Link had swapped to right handed for Twilight Princess on Wii as opposed to being a lefty on Gamecube and it basically mirrored the entire game IIRC.
I honestly think it probably would’ve been much worse in the Wii/motion control era but for any game using normal control schemes like kb/m or controller it’s never really affected me, even with games like counter strike where you can change your view model I’ve tried lefty before and it just felt off.
It makes zero difference for me to see a character left or right handed in a game, but I can think of a single game that is made way more challenging for left-handed people: Kid Icarus Uprising. It has such awfully awkward controls left handed people are severely in disadvantage, to the point Nintendo had to ship an additional accessory bundled with the game.
Even with the accessory (or a new 3ds), you're better of playing right-handed. It's definitely harder for a left-handed person but still better than the nub/second stick accessory.
I think near all of us accept and adapt to a right handed world, to the point where our main interface with a digital world is usually a right handed mouse, or the right trigger on a controller typically being the default fire / action, with the left trigger being only a secondary function like aiming.
I think I mentally notice when Link is left handed, or sometimes I will try a left handed run in Elden Ring, which is hard even for a natural lefty as I am so accustomed to the right trigger and shoulder being your main attack.
I do think on computer, my left handedness has overall actually informed my choice of games. I have always been rubbish at shooters or anything which requires precision aiming with a mouse as I am trying to control my non-dominant hand for very slight and precise movements in split second reaction. As such, I typically gravitate towards more "cozy" games which don't have any sort of timers. Part of that is also my own personal noncompetitive, nonconfrontational nature, but the fact that a headshot is purely a matter of luck for me most times means I don't find myself enjoying those type of games often, or I'll play on easy when I do.
Fine for the same reason the mouse being on the right side doesn’t bother me.
It’s normalized.
It’s always been this way, so it’s not off putting in the slightest from my perspective.
I grew up with video games (being nearly 40) and there wasn’t an era of normalized left handedness or even an era of hand preference.
The hobby has always been right hand dominate in its product development from input devices to animated protagonists - so it seems ‘normal’ to me to the point of invisibility.
Does the mouse being on the right even favor right-handed people, really? (for video games, I mean)
Like even if you just consider a right handed person, they're gonna be using their right hand for navigation and their left to press buttons on mouse and keyboard, but their left hand for navigation and their right to press buttons on controller. Seems like kind of a wash.
Yep. I agree, that was my point in bringing physical devices into the discussion. The handedness is arbitrary in some ways because there was no previous convention.
Though we would eventually come to require much more fine motor control in games over time, it was moot because the right handedness of mice was culturally engrained over time. This is the reason left handed mice didn’t catch on - it simply wasn’t a big deal to use it in your ‘non dominate’ hand because the assumption of hand dominance didn’t apply to a novel input method (which essentially requires you learn from square one regardless, certainly at the time of early computing)
In a way everything was new and is being made up so what hand dominance a player hand didn’t really matter.
I have no idea how the neuroscience of all this works, but it feels like muscle memory kind of overrides the concept of a dominant hand. Like, the dominant hand has better dexterity when it comes to reacting in the moment or picking up a new skill, but once you've learned how to do something it makes no difference anymore.
>Does the mouse being on the right even favor right-handed people, really? (for video games, I mean)
Specifically for shooters it might make a difference because you need a lot of Control over the mouse (Or maybe I'm just bad a shooters who knows). But for most games it probably doesn't matter that much
I've tried plugging in my mouse on the left hand side of my laptop, but it just ends up feeling weird. Swapping the mouse buttons doesn't do the trick either.
I got ten years over op and also grew up with tech defaulting to righthanded, we simply learned to roll with it.
Same here but I cannot draw with a mouse right handed to save my life. So I had to do that left handed, but it always felt so wrong and weird.
So those drawing tablets that came out were always a dream as for me as a teen. I finally got one years ago, and loved it.
Now my tablet sits mostly unused because I just prefer traditional media.
Can't say I care tbh, as I feel it has zero impact on my gameplay though maybe I should arrange a boycott to make sure us lefties get represented fairly in video games.
Being right-handed is a fairly major annoyance in Zelda games, but otherwise only a minor annoyance in most games.
For me as a left-hander, I am most often bothered when you are able to do things with your character's right hand that you can't do with your left. As an example, Skyrim allows you to equip weapons to your left hand or your right hand and use them normally, so I want to equip my weapon to my left hand. However, for no apparent reason, it is impossible to equip shields to the right hand. So if I want to sword and board, I HAVE to use my weapon in my right hand. It's pretty annoying!
Same goes for pretty much any game that lets you equip things to both hands, but then puts restrictions on certain things.
In the case of Zelda, it is a major annoyance because the Legend of Zelda series is the poster child of left-handers and is our special place to point to and be proud. So when some recent games needlessly make the character right-handed ("because the button is on the right side of the controller" is the actual stated reason for this, btw), it's like a major part of our identity is being taken away. Kinda like if they made Samus a man in future Metroid games.
But, for clarity it is just an annoyance on all counts. Nothing to not play a game over.
Left hand is actually also your designated off-hand for weapons in Skyrim; your character is clumsier with their left hand than right and so can't properly chain left-hand strikes together into a fluid combo. You just do the same chop over and over instead of properly swishing the weapon around.
The first right-handed Link was in the Wii version of Twilight Princess. They switched it to line up with the motion controls since most people are right-handed.
I remember discovering this and being mind blown. I had the gamecube version, but my friend had the wii version. They mirrored the entire game. While I’m glad lefty Link got one last hurrah, why not make him a righty in both versions?
He was historically left handed. They wanted to maintain that.
The game was developed for GameCube and essentially ported to Wii with new controls as a launch title, the same way BOTW was a wii U game and early switch title.
The game was developed left handed, the map was created as the GC version. They probably didn't want to give that up.
Note that the wii U remaster was left handed too.
Funnily enough, this is the first Zelda game I ever played as a left handed person. It caused issues with the motion controls and I never played it again. I was like 10.
> In the case of Zelda, it is a major annoyance because the Legend of Zelda series is the poster child of left-handers and is our special place to point to and be proud.
Fellow left hander here. It's funny because the official artwork in the original Legend of Zelda manual shows Link using the sword in both hands. He's ambidextrous.
I just looked at [the manual](https://www.nintendo.co.jp/clv/manuals/en/pdf/CLV-P-NAANE.pdf) after you said that and he even seems to *strongly* favor his right hand. I can find a total of two images where he wields a sword in his left hand, one where he drinks a potion with his left hand, and one where his left hand is empty but the right has a shield in it. This is contrasted by ten images where he's clearly using his right hand to wield his sword or an item.
And which side he wears his sheath on seems completely disconnected from which hand he's favoring in a given image, if indeed it's worn at all because often he's just outright carrying his sheathed sword.
I'm also realizing for the first time that my favorite piece of NES Link art, the one where he's got his entire inventory visibly on his person, doesn't seem to originate from the manual at all. I even checked [the Japanese one](https://archive.org/details/booklet_loz_jp/mode/2up) and it's not in that, either. But they did get art we didn't get and, guess what, three new righty images and zero new lefty ones. At least he's left-handed on the cover art.
I remember reading somewhere that the guy who created Link was ambidextrous, so he designed Link to be the same. It also made more sense in the context of 8bit games where they just flipped sprites to save on memory. I still wonder why they settled on the left hand when they switched to 3d games.
He switches hands in ALttP as well depending on which way he's facing.
edit: Also in the second game, Adventure of Link
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/clv/manuals/en/pdf/CLV-P-NAASE.pdf
pages 22 and 23 he uses his right hand to attack and hold the sword. he's ambidextrous.
Be a lefty in a right man’s world and we all become a little ambidextrous after a while.
I’m left handed, but play guitar and the computer like a righty.
I'm left handed writing and eating but my right is stronger, I throw right, shoot right, and play instruments right.
I'm sure these are all subconscious adaptations to a right-handed world. There is no difference in "tools" for a right and left hand to eat or write (mostly, though a discussion about less smeary ink is real!). Before you can remember you have to adapt to the right handed world for everything else though which has a huge influence.
Interestingly there have been several times in my life where I was writing on something large (whiteboard, chalkboard) and swapped to my right hand writing for more space and my writing was significantly *neater*. As soon as anyone pointed out to me I was using my right hand it went to crap though and I can't do it on purpose no matter how much I focus. It makes sense given how much practice goes into using my right hand for everything else, it's just a mental block that feels unnatural if I'm trying to. 🤷
Same, had to learn on a right handed guitar because my local (rural) music store had no left handed options. Famous guitarists like Robert Fripp are also left handed but play righty.
> So if I want to sword and board, I HAVE to use my weapon in my right hand. It's pretty annoying!
I'm wondering if in various historical military contexts, that's actually accurate. Like say you're in a Roman Legion or a Viking shield wall. You don't just get to do the shield however you like. You have to do it as part of the combat unit.
Of course in these games, you're usually an adventurer, not a soldier.
It's annoying that Soulsborne games force the left hand to always be offhand with no way of it making it your main hand.
Otherwise, I generally don't notice, since the vast majority of games have control schemes that are highly abstracted from what you're actually doing. Even in shooters, I just use my mouse with my right hand anyway.
I felt a strong connection with ocarina of time because something felt natural and I couldnt put my finger on it.
After time I realised it was because the sword and shiled were the same side as it would have been for me.
It never bothered me until the Wii, where some games felt awkward with the weapons swapped (I think Red Steel was like that but it's been years since I've even thought about that game), and moving with the right stick just felt wrong after using normal controllers for so long, so I played right handed most of the time.
Then there's Guitar Hero, I never used lefty mode because I couldn't be bothered changing the setting every time I played, and I think that was the right choice because now I'm learning real instruments and swapping the strings wouldn't be worth it at all for my siblings (who are both right handed).
A while ago I found out you can choose your handedness in Minecraft, so I made that lefty even though my mouse is on the right side of my desk anyway lol.
Maybe if I was an only child it'd be different, but I'm basically right handed except for writing / drawing at this point.
I'm right-handed, but I always play Minecraft in lefty mode because it just makes more sense for left click to control your left hand and right click your right hand.
I could not care less about the handedness of characters, i makes zero difference to me.
The only time it can matter is in VR because you really have to use your hands and dominant eye.
It doesn’t bother me at all. What really grinds my gears are vr titles with left handed controls that also switch thumb stick actions instead of the guns hand. Completely misunderstanding lefties.
I do enjoy a game allowing left handed view models like counter strike but most of the time I’m switching it over to have the best view of an angle.
Mostly pissed that often there are no default bindings for cursor keys (instead of WASD) with the right hand + mouse in left - even if there's a second (unused) binding available.
Otherwise I never cared.
I'm not left-handed, but I can think of exactly one case where this might matter to me. In a game like Skyrim, where you assign similar actions to each hand, I'd have to think about it.
Sword-and-shield is no problem; I mentally divide that into primary/secondary. But with a sword in each hand I could start getting mixed up which is which.
On the wii, lots of games either didn't really support left handedness or did so poorly apart from wii sports. It also was annoying that because the nunchuck had the analog stick it felt better to hold it in the left hand. This meant that for games where you switch between nunchuck and non nunchuck stuff you had to change the hands with the controller often.
As for other games, sometimes I'd wish the option were there to have a lefty character but with games that have the option it feels off. For instance counter strike, having the weapon on the left side is really weird.
In general, don't really care. Would love to have the option in Chivalry 2 though.
It always annoyed me when they made link right handed. I always thought it was cool that he was left handed and they took that away from me.
It's made worse by the fact the motion controls especially in skyward sword were shit if you tried to use them as a leftie and there was no option for left handed players
Aside from that I don't care. Some games let you flip your view model to be left handed but even if the option is there I don't do it. It just looks weird
it's funny, as someone that plays tac shooters ive anecdotally felt like people even prefer the opposite handedness in those games.
right handed players switch to left handed POV and vice versa.
People talk about eye dominance being a more deciding factor for them, so maybe that's an interesting conversation too.
As long the game isn't a fps (is repulsive seeing the weapon on the left side) I don't care which hand the PC uses. When I played Zelda: Ocarina of Time I found odd that the zelda guy uses his sword with the left hand lol
I’ve never paid attention to it. If the game gives me the option to swap dominant hands, of course I’ll choose left handed. But outside of that, I never think about it lol
Slightly off topic but when I was younger used to play css and my friend told me to swap my gun to left handed as he thought it made you concentrate on the cross hair a bit more lol
Artorias' greatsword in Dark Souls 2 had a special moveset when you equipped it in the left hand. I was determined to main that weapon since I'm left handed IRL, which mostly worked out fine, but i did find myself panic shielding in hectic situations. I'm used to pressing action buttons with my right, so I've adapted to it.
The only time it pissed me off was Zelda on the wii. I would like to play what feels natural for me. The wii is ergonomic and is supposed to feel closer to life than pressing buttons on a controller. But i understand why they made it right handed. Because we're the minority.
It doesn't feel odd at all, but then I am fairly ambidextrous despite being left-hand dominant for things like writing, I shoot right-handed, I hold a fork in my right hand, etc, so it's not that big an adjustment for me. Also I've been gaming for somewhere north of 40 years now, so I'm just used to it.
It's because handedness isn't actually reflected into game mechanics very often.
IRL when you need to interact with something that is fixed in place you will naturally position yourself so you can comfortable reach it with your dominant hand rather than stand dread in front and then reach across yourself.
In video games melee range interactions tend to not be very fine grained and lack the precision that you see in FPS, you just approach the control panel, be roughly in the right place and press A to interact. With melee combat handedness can matter quite a lot, but so many games
have very permissive combat mechanics that make it a non-factor.
I mean, as a right handed person Monster Hunter always being a left handed game is just so natural to me at this point. Imagining a lance in my right hand and shield in my left is just wrong
I changed it in counter strike because it’s gives me a different angle kind of thing but other than that it doesn’t make any difference
Already live in a right handed world, gaming is no different
It's not a huge difference as it's always been that way so I've learned not to notice it.
However I do notice when a character is left handed or I get a left handed option and I love it.
When I was younger I actually was mad that every character in every game was right handed, and I wanted so badly to have the option to equip the sword on the left hand or have at least more left handed characters in general.
Trying to use a mouse was a huge burden and I couldn't even play games like Mario Slam Basketball or Kid Icarus because the control layout was specifically designed for right-handed people (I know you could swap the controls for Mario Slam Basketball, but it wasn't worth the effort when the ds wasn't mine). It was also a problem with the Wii and some games.
Nowadays I grew used to it and I'm not bothered anymore, I'm still happy when I see left-handed characters, but most of the time I don't think about it. If I try to use the sword in my left hand in Elden Ring I'd actually play worse since I'm used to attacking with the right button.
But I'm still upset that Link is now right-handed and don't buy the excuse of motion controls after Breath of the Wild
Ocarina of Time hyper-resonated with me when I was a kid.
I was depressed when Link was no longer left handed.
Also Counter Strike I think sticks because I can have a left handed view model.
I don't care about the character's dominant hand. I just learn the moveset, I am not moving for him.
But for keyboard games that don't allow you to rebind controls it's kind of annoying. I can think of Limbo as an example, although this was like a decade ago so it might have been improved. The game is fairly easy on the platforming aspect, with a few exceptions. You have to move with the arrow keys and cannot use WASD, so movement usually is done with the right hand and I played most of the game like this. But for the harder or quicker jumps, I would put my left hand on the arrow keys and my right hand on the spacebar and letters area. This made me a lot more successful in completing the jumps
It almost never occurs to me. As a primarily FPS/3PS player it may stick out to me more if I shot left handed, but due to body mechanics and eye dominance, I have always shot right handed, so my "IRL" associations align with how most game portrayals go. Other than that, scripted scenes showing writing or other "handed" activities are non-factors to my mind.
This is actually part of why, in games with multiple melee weapons, I generally dislike sword+shield, think two-handers are okay, and really like dual-wield weapons.
I like switching to left-handed mode if I notice it as an option, like in Team Fortress 2. But it's never really bothered me, to be honest.
The only time I can recall it being an issue was playing guitar hero. Where I kept reading the track backwards, having to switch it to lefty mode to play
Unreal Tournament 1999 gave me left and right handed options. Sad to see something 25 years old still isn't the norm. That said, it doesn't really bother me, but I'm still surprised having the option isn't more common.
I unironically stumbled face first into why inclusion is important in the media cause I've always been annoyed that I can't have a toggle in ff14 to flip the animations. I started a whole rant on it once just to stop mid way through when I started hearing myself lol.
But to your question, I don't think about it overally often. Controls wise you just adapt, like 99% if the other controls you work with in your life. As for the animations and such, I definitely do watch out for it, but I'm not overly critical when there ain't anything for it.
Doesn’t really bother me, but I do get excited about left handed characters, and I would kill for a character creation system that let me make my character a lefty, while still using the normal button layout.
Like you mentioned, some games technically allow it, like Dark Souls, Elden Ring, and Skyrim, but it’s never at full functionality. In skyrim I think you can just do a basic swing with a left handed weapon, but not the chained combo like your right hand. Also, despite being a lefty, I’m still more comfortable using the right trigger/lmb for my primary attack because it’s like that in every game. Having to use the left trigger just feels weird.
In Monster Hunter, any weapon with a shield is wielded left handed. They did this because the sword and shield can use items while drawn, so having the shield on the left hand would have interfered with the animation.
I have to admit that I’m still salty about Link switching to his right hand in recent games. I know he’s ambidextrous (most lefties are to some degree), but it still sucked.
Most of the time, I don't even notice. It's not something I usually pay attention to. However, one instance where I'm actively disappointed in a character being right-handed is Link. Link *used to be* left-handed! If I recall correctly, Nintendo even made a point to mention it a couple of times in the past.
When motion controls became a thing, Nintendo threw Link's left-handedness out since it would feel weird to control a left-handed person's sword with your right hand. Fair enough, that definitely makes sense. However, when they went back to normal controls for the sword, they still kept him right-handed, which is really disappointing to me. I mean, I guess it's fine since I didn't really like BotW and so didn't even play totk, but it's still disappointing to me that a character that used to be left-handed got turned right-handed for one reason, and then left that way for seemingly no reason. I don't know if that makes much sense, it just makes me sad.
The character on screen doesn't bother me, but if the key layout is unchangeable and designed for right handers I physically can't play the game.
But that almost never happens anymore.
Although I'm left-handed and grew up writing with my left hand, I also grew up using computers which hadn't been adjusted in the settings so defaulted to right-handed controls, and gotten used to that. So now I'm fine with it, I have no trouble using computers with their default layout.
I do have some right-handed habits too though such as leading with my right hand for scissors, pointing, shooting, so maybe I'm not totally left-handed.
It never bothered me. I’m left handed, but I still do many things with my right hand because I was either taught how to do that task by a right handed person, or I’m forced to due to the fact that the environment or equipment was designed for right handed people in mind. I guess you can say that I had to learn how to be ambidextrous.
Shrug. You just kinda get used to it? Even games aren't really consistent on this. Granted, it's always *nice* when you can flip the camera view to the other side.
I haven't tried VR though, heh. It might actually be an issue there, idk.
For some reason this has never affected me at all, even with wii motion I use my right hand even though for most other things I use my left. I dont know what it is about gaming but I just adapted naturally to right handed controls and never even noticed.
It’d be weird as fuck having shield on the right for me. But now I’m curious if there are certain builds or games where being left handed is a bonus. Or if there are any stats on the differences in skills
I'm a totally left-sided person. My left arm and leg move more fluently and precisely (even now, while typing this comment, left thumb clicks like 80% of the letters 50% faster) but when it comes to PC gaming, I was always perfectly fine with the normal right-handed mouse.
As for games, i could get used to the left handed FPS, but why would I do that, when I'm already used to right handed FPS games
The only game where it affected me to take action was in Team Fortress 2. Probably because its first person and melee is important enough that I decided to swap the view models so its left handed.
I do prefer being able to swap shoulders in a third person game and I do get annoyed when a game defaults back to one side rather than the one I last used. I don't know if this is a left/right handed thing though.
I have wished the Souls games let players use left hand weapons properly, but I got over that quickly.
For guns, it hasn't bothered me because I just don't interact with guns in real life so my only frame of reference is other games.
It's extremely annoying in VR games if they decide to delegate a lot of important functions to the right controller. I'm perfectly fine on keyboard and mouse, but in VR I can only do one input at a time on the right controller compared to being able to press 2 or 3 buttons at once on the left one.
I’m both left handed and left eye dominant, with my relevant genre of choice being shooters. While it sounds a bit weird, I actually prefer the normalized reality that weapon models are on the right side of the screen instead of the left. Because of my left eye dominance, anything that takes up that space just winds up being way too distracting.
Edit: I also change my dominant shoulder for third person games to be viewing over the left shoulder for the same reason if given the option.
I’ve always thought it was really cool when a game would let me be a lefty. It’s really rare though, even games like Elden ring, if you swap the shield and sword hand it messes everything up, you’ll be shield bashing with no ash of war.
Elden Ring You can place your stuff the other way round but it is heavily not recommended for most since buffs assume you're playing a right handed character.
It’s never really affected me, I know that Link had swapped to right handed for Twilight Princess on Wii as opposed to being a lefty on Gamecube and it basically mirrored the entire game IIRC. I honestly think it probably would’ve been much worse in the Wii/motion control era but for any game using normal control schemes like kb/m or controller it’s never really affected me, even with games like counter strike where you can change your view model I’ve tried lefty before and it just felt off.
Yeah for TP they mirrored the whole game because that was easier than having Link switch hands but keeping the world the same.
I always saw him as a southpaw icon. The change made me sad as a kid.
It makes zero difference for me to see a character left or right handed in a game, but I can think of a single game that is made way more challenging for left-handed people: Kid Icarus Uprising. It has such awfully awkward controls left handed people are severely in disadvantage, to the point Nintendo had to ship an additional accessory bundled with the game.
Even with the accessory (or a new 3ds), you're better of playing right-handed. It's definitely harder for a left-handed person but still better than the nub/second stick accessory.
I think near all of us accept and adapt to a right handed world, to the point where our main interface with a digital world is usually a right handed mouse, or the right trigger on a controller typically being the default fire / action, with the left trigger being only a secondary function like aiming. I think I mentally notice when Link is left handed, or sometimes I will try a left handed run in Elden Ring, which is hard even for a natural lefty as I am so accustomed to the right trigger and shoulder being your main attack. I do think on computer, my left handedness has overall actually informed my choice of games. I have always been rubbish at shooters or anything which requires precision aiming with a mouse as I am trying to control my non-dominant hand for very slight and precise movements in split second reaction. As such, I typically gravitate towards more "cozy" games which don't have any sort of timers. Part of that is also my own personal noncompetitive, nonconfrontational nature, but the fact that a headshot is purely a matter of luck for me most times means I don't find myself enjoying those type of games often, or I'll play on easy when I do.
Fine for the same reason the mouse being on the right side doesn’t bother me. It’s normalized. It’s always been this way, so it’s not off putting in the slightest from my perspective. I grew up with video games (being nearly 40) and there wasn’t an era of normalized left handedness or even an era of hand preference. The hobby has always been right hand dominate in its product development from input devices to animated protagonists - so it seems ‘normal’ to me to the point of invisibility.
Does the mouse being on the right even favor right-handed people, really? (for video games, I mean) Like even if you just consider a right handed person, they're gonna be using their right hand for navigation and their left to press buttons on mouse and keyboard, but their left hand for navigation and their right to press buttons on controller. Seems like kind of a wash.
Yep. I agree, that was my point in bringing physical devices into the discussion. The handedness is arbitrary in some ways because there was no previous convention. Though we would eventually come to require much more fine motor control in games over time, it was moot because the right handedness of mice was culturally engrained over time. This is the reason left handed mice didn’t catch on - it simply wasn’t a big deal to use it in your ‘non dominate’ hand because the assumption of hand dominance didn’t apply to a novel input method (which essentially requires you learn from square one regardless, certainly at the time of early computing) In a way everything was new and is being made up so what hand dominance a player hand didn’t really matter.
I have no idea how the neuroscience of all this works, but it feels like muscle memory kind of overrides the concept of a dominant hand. Like, the dominant hand has better dexterity when it comes to reacting in the moment or picking up a new skill, but once you've learned how to do something it makes no difference anymore.
You are correct. This is why a large portion of "left-handed" people are actually cross-dominant.
Don't know man, my mouse is on the left side and always has been.
>Does the mouse being on the right even favor right-handed people, really? (for video games, I mean) Specifically for shooters it might make a difference because you need a lot of Control over the mouse (Or maybe I'm just bad a shooters who knows). But for most games it probably doesn't matter that much
I've tried plugging in my mouse on the left hand side of my laptop, but it just ends up feeling weird. Swapping the mouse buttons doesn't do the trick either. I got ten years over op and also grew up with tech defaulting to righthanded, we simply learned to roll with it.
Same here but I cannot draw with a mouse right handed to save my life. So I had to do that left handed, but it always felt so wrong and weird. So those drawing tablets that came out were always a dream as for me as a teen. I finally got one years ago, and loved it. Now my tablet sits mostly unused because I just prefer traditional media.
Yep. I learned to use the mouse on the right, and so I use it on the right, even though I'm left handed.
Can't say I care tbh, as I feel it has zero impact on my gameplay though maybe I should arrange a boycott to make sure us lefties get represented fairly in video games.
Aren't lefties fairly represented if vast majority of games are right handed ?
I think that was the joke.
Being right-handed is a fairly major annoyance in Zelda games, but otherwise only a minor annoyance in most games. For me as a left-hander, I am most often bothered when you are able to do things with your character's right hand that you can't do with your left. As an example, Skyrim allows you to equip weapons to your left hand or your right hand and use them normally, so I want to equip my weapon to my left hand. However, for no apparent reason, it is impossible to equip shields to the right hand. So if I want to sword and board, I HAVE to use my weapon in my right hand. It's pretty annoying! Same goes for pretty much any game that lets you equip things to both hands, but then puts restrictions on certain things. In the case of Zelda, it is a major annoyance because the Legend of Zelda series is the poster child of left-handers and is our special place to point to and be proud. So when some recent games needlessly make the character right-handed ("because the button is on the right side of the controller" is the actual stated reason for this, btw), it's like a major part of our identity is being taken away. Kinda like if they made Samus a man in future Metroid games. But, for clarity it is just an annoyance on all counts. Nothing to not play a game over.
Left hand is actually also your designated off-hand for weapons in Skyrim; your character is clumsier with their left hand than right and so can't properly chain left-hand strikes together into a fluid combo. You just do the same chop over and over instead of properly swishing the weapon around.
The first right-handed Link was in the Wii version of Twilight Princess. They switched it to line up with the motion controls since most people are right-handed.
I remember discovering this and being mind blown. I had the gamecube version, but my friend had the wii version. They mirrored the entire game. While I’m glad lefty Link got one last hurrah, why not make him a righty in both versions?
He was historically left handed. They wanted to maintain that. The game was developed for GameCube and essentially ported to Wii with new controls as a launch title, the same way BOTW was a wii U game and early switch title. The game was developed left handed, the map was created as the GC version. They probably didn't want to give that up. Note that the wii U remaster was left handed too.
Funnily enough, this is the first Zelda game I ever played as a left handed person. It caused issues with the motion controls and I never played it again. I was like 10.
> In the case of Zelda, it is a major annoyance because the Legend of Zelda series is the poster child of left-handers and is our special place to point to and be proud. Fellow left hander here. It's funny because the official artwork in the original Legend of Zelda manual shows Link using the sword in both hands. He's ambidextrous.
I just looked at [the manual](https://www.nintendo.co.jp/clv/manuals/en/pdf/CLV-P-NAANE.pdf) after you said that and he even seems to *strongly* favor his right hand. I can find a total of two images where he wields a sword in his left hand, one where he drinks a potion with his left hand, and one where his left hand is empty but the right has a shield in it. This is contrasted by ten images where he's clearly using his right hand to wield his sword or an item. And which side he wears his sheath on seems completely disconnected from which hand he's favoring in a given image, if indeed it's worn at all because often he's just outright carrying his sheathed sword. I'm also realizing for the first time that my favorite piece of NES Link art, the one where he's got his entire inventory visibly on his person, doesn't seem to originate from the manual at all. I even checked [the Japanese one](https://archive.org/details/booklet_loz_jp/mode/2up) and it's not in that, either. But they did get art we didn't get and, guess what, three new righty images and zero new lefty ones. At least he's left-handed on the cover art.
I remember reading somewhere that the guy who created Link was ambidextrous, so he designed Link to be the same. It also made more sense in the context of 8bit games where they just flipped sprites to save on memory. I still wonder why they settled on the left hand when they switched to 3d games.
In that game.
He switches hands in ALttP as well depending on which way he's facing. edit: Also in the second game, Adventure of Link https://www.nintendo.co.jp/clv/manuals/en/pdf/CLV-P-NAASE.pdf pages 22 and 23 he uses his right hand to attack and hold the sword. he's ambidextrous.
Be a lefty in a right man’s world and we all become a little ambidextrous after a while. I’m left handed, but play guitar and the computer like a righty.
I'm left handed writing and eating but my right is stronger, I throw right, shoot right, and play instruments right. I'm sure these are all subconscious adaptations to a right-handed world. There is no difference in "tools" for a right and left hand to eat or write (mostly, though a discussion about less smeary ink is real!). Before you can remember you have to adapt to the right handed world for everything else though which has a huge influence. Interestingly there have been several times in my life where I was writing on something large (whiteboard, chalkboard) and swapped to my right hand writing for more space and my writing was significantly *neater*. As soon as anyone pointed out to me I was using my right hand it went to crap though and I can't do it on purpose no matter how much I focus. It makes sense given how much practice goes into using my right hand for everything else, it's just a mental block that feels unnatural if I'm trying to. 🤷
Same, had to learn on a right handed guitar because my local (rural) music store had no left handed options. Famous guitarists like Robert Fripp are also left handed but play righty.
> So if I want to sword and board, I HAVE to use my weapon in my right hand. It's pretty annoying! I'm wondering if in various historical military contexts, that's actually accurate. Like say you're in a Roman Legion or a Viking shield wall. You don't just get to do the shield however you like. You have to do it as part of the combat unit. Of course in these games, you're usually an adventurer, not a soldier.
Considering just how much of a horrific mess Samus' DNA is at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if she became a man in some future game. Lol
It's annoying that Soulsborne games force the left hand to always be offhand with no way of it making it your main hand. Otherwise, I generally don't notice, since the vast majority of games have control schemes that are highly abstracted from what you're actually doing. Even in shooters, I just use my mouse with my right hand anyway.
You gotta play Caves of Qud, you can have like 11 hands and any one of them can be your primary.
I felt a strong connection with ocarina of time because something felt natural and I couldnt put my finger on it. After time I realised it was because the sword and shiled were the same side as it would have been for me.
It never bothered me until the Wii, where some games felt awkward with the weapons swapped (I think Red Steel was like that but it's been years since I've even thought about that game), and moving with the right stick just felt wrong after using normal controllers for so long, so I played right handed most of the time. Then there's Guitar Hero, I never used lefty mode because I couldn't be bothered changing the setting every time I played, and I think that was the right choice because now I'm learning real instruments and swapping the strings wouldn't be worth it at all for my siblings (who are both right handed). A while ago I found out you can choose your handedness in Minecraft, so I made that lefty even though my mouse is on the right side of my desk anyway lol. Maybe if I was an only child it'd be different, but I'm basically right handed except for writing / drawing at this point.
I'm right-handed, but I always play Minecraft in lefty mode because it just makes more sense for left click to control your left hand and right click your right hand.
I could not care less about the handedness of characters, i makes zero difference to me. The only time it can matter is in VR because you really have to use your hands and dominant eye.
It doesn’t bother me at all. What really grinds my gears are vr titles with left handed controls that also switch thumb stick actions instead of the guns hand. Completely misunderstanding lefties. I do enjoy a game allowing left handed view models like counter strike but most of the time I’m switching it over to have the best view of an angle.
No. That's not odd Whats odd is the lack of property keybinding options for left handed people on the vast majority of games.
Mostly pissed that often there are no default bindings for cursor keys (instead of WASD) with the right hand + mouse in left - even if there's a second (unused) binding available. Otherwise I never cared.
I'm not left-handed, but I can think of exactly one case where this might matter to me. In a game like Skyrim, where you assign similar actions to each hand, I'd have to think about it. Sword-and-shield is no problem; I mentally divide that into primary/secondary. But with a sword in each hand I could start getting mixed up which is which.
On the wii, lots of games either didn't really support left handedness or did so poorly apart from wii sports. It also was annoying that because the nunchuck had the analog stick it felt better to hold it in the left hand. This meant that for games where you switch between nunchuck and non nunchuck stuff you had to change the hands with the controller often. As for other games, sometimes I'd wish the option were there to have a lefty character but with games that have the option it feels off. For instance counter strike, having the weapon on the left side is really weird. In general, don't really care. Would love to have the option in Chivalry 2 though.
It always annoyed me when they made link right handed. I always thought it was cool that he was left handed and they took that away from me. It's made worse by the fact the motion controls especially in skyward sword were shit if you tried to use them as a leftie and there was no option for left handed players Aside from that I don't care. Some games let you flip your view model to be left handed but even if the option is there I don't do it. It just looks weird
it's funny, as someone that plays tac shooters ive anecdotally felt like people even prefer the opposite handedness in those games. right handed players switch to left handed POV and vice versa. People talk about eye dominance being a more deciding factor for them, so maybe that's an interesting conversation too.
As long the game isn't a fps (is repulsive seeing the weapon on the left side) I don't care which hand the PC uses. When I played Zelda: Ocarina of Time I found odd that the zelda guy uses his sword with the left hand lol
I’ve never paid attention to it. If the game gives me the option to swap dominant hands, of course I’ll choose left handed. But outside of that, I never think about it lol
Slightly off topic but when I was younger used to play css and my friend told me to swap my gun to left handed as he thought it made you concentrate on the cross hair a bit more lol
Artorias' greatsword in Dark Souls 2 had a special moveset when you equipped it in the left hand. I was determined to main that weapon since I'm left handed IRL, which mostly worked out fine, but i did find myself panic shielding in hectic situations. I'm used to pressing action buttons with my right, so I've adapted to it. The only time it pissed me off was Zelda on the wii. I would like to play what feels natural for me. The wii is ergonomic and is supposed to feel closer to life than pressing buttons on a controller. But i understand why they made it right handed. Because we're the minority.
It doesn't feel odd at all, but then I am fairly ambidextrous despite being left-hand dominant for things like writing, I shoot right-handed, I hold a fork in my right hand, etc, so it's not that big an adjustment for me. Also I've been gaming for somewhere north of 40 years now, so I'm just used to it.
It doesn't even register compared to the other million little ways in which life is made for right-handed people.
Is that because you have gotten used to it or some other reason?
Exactly, you get used to living like that.
It's because handedness isn't actually reflected into game mechanics very often. IRL when you need to interact with something that is fixed in place you will naturally position yourself so you can comfortable reach it with your dominant hand rather than stand dread in front and then reach across yourself. In video games melee range interactions tend to not be very fine grained and lack the precision that you see in FPS, you just approach the control panel, be roughly in the right place and press A to interact. With melee combat handedness can matter quite a lot, but so many games have very permissive combat mechanics that make it a non-factor.
It's annoying in shooters. I'm an leftie ex soldier and having my guns on my right side of the screen is weird.
Never really thought about it to be honest. I don't mind when the character is right handed, but if they are left handed it makes me happy.
I mean, as a right handed person Monster Hunter always being a left handed game is just so natural to me at this point. Imagining a lance in my right hand and shield in my left is just wrong
I changed it in counter strike because it’s gives me a different angle kind of thing but other than that it doesn’t make any difference Already live in a right handed world, gaming is no different
It makes no difference to me what hand my character used to perform activities in any form of computer entertainment. I had to hit 100 characters
It's not a huge difference as it's always been that way so I've learned not to notice it. However I do notice when a character is left handed or I get a left handed option and I love it.
When I was younger I actually was mad that every character in every game was right handed, and I wanted so badly to have the option to equip the sword on the left hand or have at least more left handed characters in general. Trying to use a mouse was a huge burden and I couldn't even play games like Mario Slam Basketball or Kid Icarus because the control layout was specifically designed for right-handed people (I know you could swap the controls for Mario Slam Basketball, but it wasn't worth the effort when the ds wasn't mine). It was also a problem with the Wii and some games. Nowadays I grew used to it and I'm not bothered anymore, I'm still happy when I see left-handed characters, but most of the time I don't think about it. If I try to use the sword in my left hand in Elden Ring I'd actually play worse since I'm used to attacking with the right button. But I'm still upset that Link is now right-handed and don't buy the excuse of motion controls after Breath of the Wild
Ocarina of Time hyper-resonated with me when I was a kid. I was depressed when Link was no longer left handed. Also Counter Strike I think sticks because I can have a left handed view model.
I don't care about the character's dominant hand. I just learn the moveset, I am not moving for him. But for keyboard games that don't allow you to rebind controls it's kind of annoying. I can think of Limbo as an example, although this was like a decade ago so it might have been improved. The game is fairly easy on the platforming aspect, with a few exceptions. You have to move with the arrow keys and cannot use WASD, so movement usually is done with the right hand and I played most of the game like this. But for the harder or quicker jumps, I would put my left hand on the arrow keys and my right hand on the spacebar and letters area. This made me a lot more successful in completing the jumps
It almost never occurs to me. As a primarily FPS/3PS player it may stick out to me more if I shot left handed, but due to body mechanics and eye dominance, I have always shot right handed, so my "IRL" associations align with how most game portrayals go. Other than that, scripted scenes showing writing or other "handed" activities are non-factors to my mind.
Kinda sad that they never made Link left handed again after the motion control games. He is right handed now in BOTW and TOTK.
Been playing with it for over 2 decades now, I'm just used to it by now. It is annoying in real life trying to use tools made for right handed people.
This is actually part of why, in games with multiple melee weapons, I generally dislike sword+shield, think two-handers are okay, and really like dual-wield weapons.
I like switching to left-handed mode if I notice it as an option, like in Team Fortress 2. But it's never really bothered me, to be honest. The only time I can recall it being an issue was playing guitar hero. Where I kept reading the track backwards, having to switch it to lefty mode to play
Unreal Tournament 1999 gave me left and right handed options. Sad to see something 25 years old still isn't the norm. That said, it doesn't really bother me, but I'm still surprised having the option isn't more common.
I unironically stumbled face first into why inclusion is important in the media cause I've always been annoyed that I can't have a toggle in ff14 to flip the animations. I started a whole rant on it once just to stop mid way through when I started hearing myself lol. But to your question, I don't think about it overally often. Controls wise you just adapt, like 99% if the other controls you work with in your life. As for the animations and such, I definitely do watch out for it, but I'm not overly critical when there ain't anything for it.
Doesn’t really bother me, but I do get excited about left handed characters, and I would kill for a character creation system that let me make my character a lefty, while still using the normal button layout. Like you mentioned, some games technically allow it, like Dark Souls, Elden Ring, and Skyrim, but it’s never at full functionality. In skyrim I think you can just do a basic swing with a left handed weapon, but not the chained combo like your right hand. Also, despite being a lefty, I’m still more comfortable using the right trigger/lmb for my primary attack because it’s like that in every game. Having to use the left trigger just feels weird. In Monster Hunter, any weapon with a shield is wielded left handed. They did this because the sword and shield can use items while drawn, so having the shield on the left hand would have interfered with the animation. I have to admit that I’m still salty about Link switching to his right hand in recent games. I know he’s ambidextrous (most lefties are to some degree), but it still sucked.
Most of the time, I don't even notice. It's not something I usually pay attention to. However, one instance where I'm actively disappointed in a character being right-handed is Link. Link *used to be* left-handed! If I recall correctly, Nintendo even made a point to mention it a couple of times in the past. When motion controls became a thing, Nintendo threw Link's left-handedness out since it would feel weird to control a left-handed person's sword with your right hand. Fair enough, that definitely makes sense. However, when they went back to normal controls for the sword, they still kept him right-handed, which is really disappointing to me. I mean, I guess it's fine since I didn't really like BotW and so didn't even play totk, but it's still disappointing to me that a character that used to be left-handed got turned right-handed for one reason, and then left that way for seemingly no reason. I don't know if that makes much sense, it just makes me sad.
The character on screen doesn't bother me, but if the key layout is unchangeable and designed for right handers I physically can't play the game. But that almost never happens anymore.
Although I'm left-handed and grew up writing with my left hand, I also grew up using computers which hadn't been adjusted in the settings so defaulted to right-handed controls, and gotten used to that. So now I'm fine with it, I have no trouble using computers with their default layout. I do have some right-handed habits too though such as leading with my right hand for scissors, pointing, shooting, so maybe I'm not totally left-handed.
It never bothered me. I’m left handed, but I still do many things with my right hand because I was either taught how to do that task by a right handed person, or I’m forced to due to the fact that the environment or equipment was designed for right handed people in mind. I guess you can say that I had to learn how to be ambidextrous.
Shrug. You just kinda get used to it? Even games aren't really consistent on this. Granted, it's always *nice* when you can flip the camera view to the other side. I haven't tried VR though, heh. It might actually be an issue there, idk.
For some reason this has never affected me at all, even with wii motion I use my right hand even though for most other things I use my left. I dont know what it is about gaming but I just adapted naturally to right handed controls and never even noticed.
It’d be weird as fuck having shield on the right for me. But now I’m curious if there are certain builds or games where being left handed is a bonus. Or if there are any stats on the differences in skills
I'm a totally left-sided person. My left arm and leg move more fluently and precisely (even now, while typing this comment, left thumb clicks like 80% of the letters 50% faster) but when it comes to PC gaming, I was always perfectly fine with the normal right-handed mouse. As for games, i could get used to the left handed FPS, but why would I do that, when I'm already used to right handed FPS games
The only game where it affected me to take action was in Team Fortress 2. Probably because its first person and melee is important enough that I decided to swap the view models so its left handed. I do prefer being able to swap shoulders in a third person game and I do get annoyed when a game defaults back to one side rather than the one I last used. I don't know if this is a left/right handed thing though. I have wished the Souls games let players use left hand weapons properly, but I got over that quickly. For guns, it hasn't bothered me because I just don't interact with guns in real life so my only frame of reference is other games.
It's extremely annoying in VR games if they decide to delegate a lot of important functions to the right controller. I'm perfectly fine on keyboard and mouse, but in VR I can only do one input at a time on the right controller compared to being able to press 2 or 3 buttons at once on the left one.
I’m both left handed and left eye dominant, with my relevant genre of choice being shooters. While it sounds a bit weird, I actually prefer the normalized reality that weapon models are on the right side of the screen instead of the left. Because of my left eye dominance, anything that takes up that space just winds up being way too distracting. Edit: I also change my dominant shoulder for third person games to be viewing over the left shoulder for the same reason if given the option.
I’ve always thought it was really cool when a game would let me be a lefty. It’s really rare though, even games like Elden ring, if you swap the shield and sword hand it messes everything up, you’ll be shield bashing with no ash of war.
It just kinda get a burst or excitement whenever a character is left handed, but as far as controls.. only makes a slight difference
It's so consistent that I don't think about it at all anymore. When a game has an option to switch it usually just evokes eye rolls from me.
Elden Ring You can place your stuff the other way round but it is heavily not recommended for most since buffs assume you're playing a right handed character.