Why do some people play inverted? [closed]

I'm curious why some people, like me, play inverted. Is there any correlation between classic gamers playing with real joysticks and playing inverted now or any other sort of correlations? I'm looking for any sort of reasoning behind it and why my brain acts in reverse of "normal". I've tried to play normal for long periods of time in 2 player because I felt like a dick having to pause it before every match to change the option and I just can't do it.

I figure there's a scientific reason.

Solution 1:

There is no increase in performance. I majored in psychology and while there where no experiments specifically on games inverted vs non-inverted there are many studies on using remote devices where input is not only inverted but the left-right movement is also switched. These include not only machine operations but also surgical equipment. There is a penalty during the learning process but after a period of practice there was no difference in response times or accuracy for the controls being "backward". If you have a nearby university you can look up the papers in various psychology journals.

So @Edward Black the brain simply doesn't work like you think it does. It is so efficient because it can create shortcuts. Plus if you look up how the eyeball/brain work together you would see that your logic is simply wrong.

I know why I like to play inverted. I started gaming on the C64 and on a couple of the flight simulators I played you where forced to use the "inverted" control scheme. Those where the games I learned to control the y-axis on and that is what I continued to use.

Solution 2:

It may have something to do with how you learned growing up.

If you grew up in the joystick era, you probably learned inverted. Before about 1994 there weren't many first-person perspective games that used up/down look. The most common 3D first-person game was the flight simulator, which adopted the inverted joystick control used by actual fighter jets. This set the standard for other games.

After about 1995, joysticks went out of fashion in favour of joypad controllers and keyboard/mouse. At the same time, first person shooters and 3D platformers became popular, and so the paradigm changed: instead of leaning the controller how you want to move, you moved the controller where you wanted to aim, like a mouse pointer.

If you learned to play inverted as a child, you may find it intuitive now, but someone who grew up with later games may have found "up = up" more natural to begin with.