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Left Handed Gaming

Forum Index > SC2 General
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ROOTdrewbie
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
Canada1392 Posts
December 25 2010 22:49 GMT
#1
So, I am left handed but I learned how to use a mouse with my right hand, and I never thought about it or planned to be a gamer or anything, and I just continued to use the mouse with my right hand over all these years. I started thinking about it, is it possible that it is hindering my Starcraft skills? Would I have better mouse accuracy if I used my left hand all this time? Also, if I decided to switch hands, how long do you think it would take to catch up to where I am now. I have no idea how the brain works and if both hands are equal or if one side is inherently better than the other :S. So what do you other lefties do, and does anyone know anything about this subject?
www.root-gaming.com
Agh
Profile Blog Joined July 2010
United States976 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-12-25 22:55:19
December 25 2010 22:53 GMT
#2
left handed.. and canadian? wowww

drewbinator i am disappoint.


meh you can try but it's probably too late



also obligatory naniwa vid, incase you've never seen or didnt know
I may appear to be an emotionless sarcastic pos, but just like an onion when you pull off more and more layers you find the exact same thing everytime and you start crying
kyarisan
Profile Joined May 2010
United States347 Posts
December 25 2010 22:56 GMT
#3
first of all, its nice to hear from another lefthanded person that plays SC hellow fellow southpaw :D

secondly I don't think mouse accuracy would be better with your left hand, not nearly as much as having a decent mouse with proper settings would. i don't think your body can be wired specifically so that you have a better "mouse movement" with your left hand than your right evne if you are left handed, handedness just represents a tendency that your body feels more comfortable with initially doing things with, and you can be trained against your own handedness if you put enough effort into it. however with a system as complex as a computer i don't think the body has a "handedness" for that, but i could be wrong.

in the end though i think just mass gaming is a more effective way to train your brain to be efficient at something than whichever tendency you happen to have *shrug*
Deleted_143
Profile Joined October 2010
Australia256 Posts
December 25 2010 22:57 GMT
#4
--- Nuked ---
Barett
Profile Joined May 2010
Canada454 Posts
December 25 2010 22:59 GMT
#5
I will admit I do not know much, but I think that if you switched back to lefty you would loose a lot of your comfort with the mouse.

As for catching back up, I would say it would take quite a while. If you've been playing Starcraft for say 10 years, It would probably take you around a year or so to get fully back to comfortable. Its probably gotten quite normal to play with your wrong hand.

This is only my natural thought on this subject though. I know nothing about Biology.
Gym, Video Games, Laundry.
Alou
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
United States3748 Posts
December 25 2010 23:01 GMT
#6
I'm left handed but I also I play with mouse with right hand. I used to play with mouse as left hand when I was playing Call of Duty way back when, but I switched for some reason. Honestly don't care too much. And it'll probably take you a while just to get the hand motions for macro and such going like your left hand does now.
Life is Good.
Ryusei-R1
Profile Blog Joined December 2009
United States2106 Posts
December 25 2010 23:01 GMT
#7
I think it would take a huge amount of time to get your hands used to using the mouse in left hand. Sure, it might give you more precision and whatnot, but are you willing to use up possibly a whole year or two of time just to adjust to your left hand? Plus, you're not even going to be guaranteed that playing lefty will make you better, it's a huge risk.

On the other hand, you're still pretty damn good, even with using your weaker hand. So unless you have the spare time to switch hands, might as well stick with right handed mousing.
Jaedong plz
green.at
Profile Blog Joined January 2010
Austria1459 Posts
December 25 2010 23:04 GMT
#8
for what its worth, i am left handed too but play with a righthand set up (also play righthand guitars). Never thought about to pros and cons of this untill now, aka never had the feeling it kept me back.
Inputting special characters into chat should no longer cause the game to crash.
Herculix
Profile Joined May 2010
United States946 Posts
December 25 2010 23:04 GMT
#9
i'm in the same position you're in drewbie, and the conclusion i've come to is that if you've been using a mouse in your right hand for years (not even starcraft, just casually or in other games that require any amount of precision), it would probably take a year or more of practice with your left hand, though if you put in the time it'll probably end up being better.

i decided to just stick with what's comfortable to me because not only do you have to learn to use a mouse with your left hand, you have to use a keyboard with your right which just seems so foreign and awkward to me.

and yes, everything that involves dexterity has a 'handedness' which includes mouse and keyboard.
TheFrankOne
Profile Joined December 2010
United States667 Posts
December 25 2010 23:10 GMT
#10
Hey, I've taken a couple neurology classes in college and I don't think you will be well served by switching. Your left hand is better automatically but you have developed enough muscle memory, which exists in the neurons themselves in your hands and arms that it would overcome any natural benefit that you may gain from switching without equivalent practice.

Your hands have programmed themselves to work the keyboard with one and the mouse with the other. Of course, you definitely should give it a try.
HollowLord
Profile Blog Joined August 2010
United States3862 Posts
December 25 2010 23:11 GMT
#11
I'm fairly certain Nazgul's left-handed, isn't he?
dota 2 stream #noskill #feed #noob twitch.tv/dmcredgrave
KevinIX
Profile Joined October 2009
United States2472 Posts
December 25 2010 23:12 GMT
#12
I grew up using my right hand on the mouse, even though I'm left handed. I can't switch. Using my left hand on the mouse is completely unnatural.
Liquid FIGHTING!!!
matthras
Profile Joined September 2010
Australia32 Posts
December 25 2010 23:12 GMT
#13
The fact remains that you'd probably still need to practise a ton with the left hand in order to match up to the dexterity and accuracy that your right hand gives you. Also having watched the posted video of Naniwa, the other drawback is that you'd also need to learn to use the keyboard with your right hand instead of your left.

I can't say I know too much about brain development, but when you're learning and training something, your brain develops extra neurons. Since you're effectively switching sides, you're switching to the different side of the brain for those functions (since the right side of the brain controls the left side of your body and vice versa), which would explain the need for extra practising.

I do recall Artosis mentioning in a comment on one of his FPVoDs on Youtube a while back that his mouse accuracy comes from years of gaming.

I'm also left handed but I've stuck to the conventional right handed mouse and quite frankly the thought of switching hasn't really occurred to me.
Make drones. Make drones. Make drones.
TheDoK666
Profile Joined May 2010
France179 Posts
December 25 2010 23:13 GMT
#14
hey drewbie i had the same thinking about that 2 years ago , 1 year ago i decided to switch only on fps games then in april i switched totally on with sc2.Your left hand will cath up very fast but ur dexterity on the keyboard will come a bit after. Btw something to know, if your movement are controled by your right eye, it's managed by the same side of the brain, so you will gain on reaction on your mouse but lost it on your keyboard.... i feel that switching is an improvement for fps games but with my level i dunno about SC in general... btw if you switch don't fall into the "okay go in LH" and 5minute later "meh i suck" attitude , that's not instant and i guess your age will have an impact into the speed you adapt to it.

I did that to improve my personality and myself in general , so i think you can do this for perfomance too but this canbe , at first, somethin to feel about yourself.

Anyway now you got this in mind, you can never know if you don't switch and it will haunt you forever... but stay on touch with us about that, it's could be cool
pwet
Chux
Profile Joined June 2009
Peru255 Posts
December 25 2010 23:14 GMT
#15
I'm left handed too! And i've been experimenting with switching hands for everything else besides SC2 so my right hand doesn't get too tired in the day.. anyways, the results: my leftie got used to the mouse pretty fast and now i feel pretty comfortable working that way.. the problem is my right hand. It just does not wanna get used to the keyboard shorcuts (that i use a lot, btw). I just keep using both mouse and keyboard with the right hand (releasing the mouse,pressing ctrl+V,going back to the mouse, for example) and it's driving me crazy. (I've been doing that for 2 weeks already and still..)
MSL 2052-2053, here we go!
TheRPGAddict
Profile Joined October 2010
United States1403 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-12-26 00:49:08
December 25 2010 23:17 GMT
#16
I am left handed, but I like to look at it as being more beneficial for my keyboard hand rather than detrimental to my mousing hand. If you have used the mouse in your right hand your whole life, I do not think it would be worth it to switch.

I can kinda relate this to the sport I play. I play golf, at a fairly high level high school wise. I golf right handed despite being left handed because when I was young manufacturers rarely sold left handed clubs and if they did, they were much more expensive, especially for juniors, so I just learned how to golf right handed. However, professionals I see now tell me it was a good move because obviously the left hand if the leading hand in the golf swing on the way down which can lead to a forward shaft lean at impact. This causes me to have more consistent above average ball-striking because I have less of a tendency to "scoop" at the ball.

In terms of Starcraft, playing "right handed" may actually be more beneficial because the keyboard hand aka your left and dominant hand could be seen as the more important of the two and the "leading" hand in Starcraft.
yeti
Profile Blog Joined January 2010
United States258 Posts
December 25 2010 23:18 GMT
#17
Switching is probably not a good idea.
I have tried switching to a lefty mouse a few weeks back, and proceeded to drop 10 games. Yeah I probably didn't give it enough time to develop lefty mouse memory, but it was really the right hand that was messing me up. If you game with a left hand mouse, your right has to take over the keyboard, and lets face it, you don't know how to hotkey with your right hand. The keyboard is hand-specific more than the mouse.
Yeah you could create custom hotkeys to fit your right hand, but i dont know if you could switch the control button. In order to assign a control group with your right hand, you need to press control with your thumb instead of pinky (or at least I always using pinky). This was the most confusing thing when I first switched, and I just could not deal with it.
Besides I always take pride in my hotkeying ability. I figure what I lose in mouse control, I gain in keyboard control. To be honest my lefty trust in the keyboard over the mouse is what made me into the macro player I am today.
the absurd is sin without god
whoso
Profile Joined October 2010
Germany523 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-12-25 23:24:47
December 25 2010 23:23 GMT
#18
On December 26 2010 08:14 Chux wrote:
I'm left handed too! And i've been experimenting with switching hands for everything else besides SC2 so my right hand doesn't get too tired in the day.. anyways, the results: my leftie got used to the mouse pretty fast and now i feel pretty comfortable working that way.. the problem is my right hand. It just does not wanna get used to the keyboard shorcuts (that i use a lot, btw). I just keep using both mouse and keyboard with the right hand (releasing the mouse,pressing ctrl+V,going back to the mouse, for example) and it's driving me crazy. (I've been doing that for 2 weeks already and still..)


yeah this. ur left hand might get used to the mouse pretty fast, but it will certainly take a ton of time to get your right hand to handle the keyboard as fast and smooth as necessary. also, i think it might actually be an advantage to have the stronger hand on the keyboard, where you usually spend most of your apm. sc2 is not a shooter after all, where aiming is like everything.
Backpack
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
United States1776 Posts
December 25 2010 23:27 GMT
#19
On December 26 2010 08:11 HollowLord wrote:
I'm fairly certain Nazgul's left-handed, isn't he?


Yea, he plays with the mouse in his left hand as well.
"You people need to just generally care a lot less about everything." -Zatic
Flexx
Profile Joined August 2010
United States87 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-12-25 23:29:08
December 25 2010 23:28 GMT
#20
I am left handed, but have used a mouse in my right hand for my entire (computing) life. I am very certain that the time you lose relearning to play with the mouse in your left hand will be very, very detrimental to your play. Not to mention having to relearn quick hotkey usage.

The bottom line is that your CNS learns through constant and repetitive practice. Movement patterns (muscle memory) are hardwired into your brain. It will not be simply a matter of weeks, or months before you BEGIN to play normally again.. it will be much, much longer. Infact, I'm pretty willing to believe that since you have used a computer (and played SC2) for so long right handed, achieving the same level of manual dexterity if you switch will be pretty much impossible.

There is no reason for your right hand dexterity ceiling to be hindered simply due to you being left handed. If nothing else, your left hand is actually more dexterous than your right, and thus you should technically be able to use the keyboard faster and more accurately than right handed players.
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