does anyone ever think about how in a lot of 8-bit computers, there were no movement keys?

So you got things like movement only on joysticks, or QA/OP pairs? or even AZ and ./ ?

and the PC started out with movement keys, but behind the numlock toggle. So it only sorta had them, they were basically just aliases for 8462 on the numpad

then in the AT era IBM did the amazing move of splitting them out to their own keys: now the PC had dedicated movement keys! finally, no weird workarounds like typing on top of other letters/numbers

and so, from 1984 to around 1997, the IBM PC had arrow keys and basically all games used arrow keys for movement. because they were the arrow keys. for moving.

the only exceptions were some isometric or 8-way connected games that needed the additional angles of the numpad, or the occasional flight sim that required a joystick with no keyboard fallback.

and then WASD completely and totally took over.

which makes the PC the only computer system I know of that went from no-arrow-keys to arrow-keys to arrow-keys-but-we-don't-use-them

there's even a lot of 60% layouts which do not have arrow keys anymore.
How do you press arrow keys if you're in a program that requires them? well, it's simple. You hold down some modifier keys AND JUST USE WASD

it's just strange that we've effectively come full circle on the arrow keys thing

also if you think about it, the PC timeline goes like this:
81-84: kinda arrow keys
84-97: arrow keys
97-21: WASD

that's 3 years with the kinda arrow keys, 13 years with them, and then 24 years without

PCs have used WASD movement almost twice as long as they've used arrow keys

and a lot of the blame for the death of arrow keys seems to fall on mouselook being such a thing in FPS games

but... this seems a thing easily solvable without needing abandoning the arrow keys.
just move them, like on a left-handed keyboard

or I spent a lot of time in the early 2000s gaming on this fun beast, a wild ergo BTC design that has DUAL ARROW KEYS

and you can make the argument that WASD enables use of a lot of nearby buttons as action keys (like E/F/G for use/inventory/flashlight or whatever), but you could also solve that by just putting some game keys near the arrow keys

I guess the real answer is that the reason games use WASD instead of arrow keys is evolution, not intelligent design

WASD worked "well enough", so it caught on.
and evolution doesn't favor perfect or even good designs, it favors designs that work well enough

move the arrow keys? yeah, but what about users who are stuck on old keyboards with right-side arrows?
add game keys near the new arrow keys? eh, how do we bind them by default?

and in either way we have to have a fallback for people who don't have these fancy new keyboard designs. there's no God of PCs to enforce everything move over to them, even Microsoft and IBM could barely do that back when they had the chutzpah to try.

so slow imperfect evolution wins out over carefully designed perfection.

YOU WIN AGAIN, DARWIN

I just have to imagine there's some person at IBM who was actually there in 1984 designing the new IBM AT keyboard and was like "we should have dedicated arrow keys, it'd really help with gaming" and they're so proud of that fact

and every time they've opened PC game since the end of the clinton administration it's been a slap in the face

ARROW KEYS? PFFT, NO, NO ONE USES THOSE. WE USE SOME RANDOM LETTERS FOR MOVEMENT!

I should make a keyboard that uses reverse WASD

it has "arrow keys", yes, but they don't send the arrow key scancodes.

"but how do I use the arrow keys?"
"we don't use those anymore, we use WASD"
"but I have a program that needs arrow keys, how do I press them?"
"you press them BY GOING BACK TO 1984 WHEN WE STILL DID THAT SHIT, GRANDDAD!"

I dunno. It's just amusing to me that it was incredibly common for home computers to not have arrow keys, and the PC was one of the rare ones that did actually have arrows... and we only used them for a bit over a decade before deciding FUCK IT WE'RE GOING BACK TO LETTERS