Playdate’s crank control input has been an idea 8 years in the making

Since the introduction of portable gaming, each new handheld has been designed to stand out from the crowd — which has often meant more power, but also unique features that some might consider gimmicks. Microvision offered swappable cartridges. The Game & Watch kept track of time. Game Gear had color visuals In just hours, six AAA batteries had been used. And while impressive new features haven’t always resulted in outstanding sales, the world of handheld gaming has continued to leap forward with selling points like touch panels, microphones, and stereoscopic 3D effects. Players didn’t know what the future held, until a few years back.

Nintendo holds the market for dedicated gaming devices almost entirely today. However, smartphones and tablets are filling that void. Enter Playdate. Panic’s adorable yellow gaming device, originally announced in early 2019, has its feet planted firmly in both the past and the future. The quirky handheld, which looks just like the Game Boy Pocket in appearance, is actually designed to deliver digital games via Wi Fi every week. Playdate is a combination of a retro design and modern technology.

And yet, the aspect that seems to have piqued the interest of most fans and developers is the small crank protruding from Playdate’s right side. With a silver arm and yellow handle, Playdate’s crank looks like a tiny hand waving hello to apprehensive players. While Playdate can represent many different ideas and concepts, the crank is by far the most intriguing. So we are committed to learning about the crank. Being one with it. Is it possible? It has been tried and tested. It is being used in games by developers. You will find all the answers. All of it will be done.

Panic

“And the crank. “The crank. My God.”

First, you need to learn how Playdate came about. Cabel Sasser, Panic’s cofounder and designer reached out to Jesper Kouthoofd from Teenage Engineering 10 years ago. A fan of Teenage Engineering’s stylish synthesizers, Sasser wanted to know if the small Stockholm-based electronics design team would be interested in teaming up for Panic’s upcoming 15-year anniversary. The plan was to “manufacture something incredibly special” for Panic’s most loyal customers. While the relationship was successful, there was much to be debate about the product.

Sitting quietly in the back of Sasser’s mind for the next few years, the anniversary item was never a focus for the small team at Panic. It wasn’t until Sasser discovered the existence of a super-reflective black-and-white LCD screen that he had an epiphany — why not make a handheld console? This was a big leap for Panic, a company known in tech circles for its intuitive file transfer and web development software, but Sasser and his team began to draw up plans for a simple prototype that could play games with pre-set visuals and limited movement à la the Game & Watch. “But it needed a ‘spark’, something special,” Sasser says. “That’s when we reached [back] out to Teenage Engineering.”

By this point, Panic’s 15-year anniversary was in the rearview mirror, so Sasser decided this new mystery project would have to coincide with the 20th. When Kouthoofd heard of the idea for the product, he was more than happy to offer Teenage Engineering’s expertise, agreeing to meet with the Panic team at the biannual Moogfest, a music and technology festival, then held in Asheville, North Carolina. One team was known for developing software while the other one is well-known for creating hardware. The teams met to discuss their ideas and then came up with a rough plan. The meeting transformed the handheld project, which was originally intended as a gift for an anniversary. It also made it possible to sell it.

Settling on the codename “Asheville,” a nod to their initial meeting spot, the two teams retreated back to their respective sides of the globe to ponder ways to make the handheld a reality.

Sasser received an email from Kouthoofd a mere week following the face-toface encounter. It was labeled “first ideas” and read as follows (typos verbatim):

goals:

• the design should make mass production easy

• avoid metal to improve bluetooth signal.

• mould the case in one color, with the addition of grey for graphics and details. To reduce printing costs, add as many graphics as possible to the mold.

• As the display is a major part of the device, try to match design elements so they are in harmony with the display (and the graphics shown on it) Perhaps using pixel icons on keys…

• make the device feel like some kind of cartridge. It’s technical but it is still enjoyable and joyful.

• avoid making the device too “gamey”. would be great to define a new category (i love the season 1 thinking…). A digital experience, art object, magic entertainment device.

• Simple and striking design that once you have seen it you will always remember it. It can be drawn from memory (similar to a Floppy Disk).

• At least one input method can be creative. You can use a crank, scroll wheel or slider to input your ideas.

• figure out some kind of stand or hanger for clock mode.

Overall, create an attractive design for a gaming device.

Don’t worry about being frank if you don’t like it. Send me sketches or references if you have any other ideas.

-Jesper

A picture was attached to the email

Panic

Sasser was stunned. He quickly responded to the Panic email and stated that the handheld needed to be manufactured.

While I may have some thoughts and notes to go back on, it is still exciting.

It is the crank. It is the crank. Oh, my God.

-Cabel

Since Asheville, Kouthoofd had been thinking long and hard about what a gaming handheld should and shouldn’t be. He wanted to direct Panic in the correct direction that Teenage Engineering had been taking for many years.

“Everything we do is to create kind of an alternative to touch-screen psychosis,” Kouthoofd said years later on an episode of the Panic Podcast. “It’s very effective for, like, a smartphone, but for a gaming device … A gaming device to me is almost the same as a musical instrument. It’s about zero latency, muscle memory, and you need to feel that you are in instant control of everything that happens. That tactility, however you solve it, if it’s pressing a button or turning a knob or a crank, it’s very important for the whole experience and the joy of being in control and using your hands.”

Sasser believed that each of the control strategies proposed by Kouthoofd, his team, had potential. However, the Panic group was most impressed with the removable crank, which could attach to the handheld’s side, and allows for radial input. An outrageous concept for any gaming device that wasn’t a fishing controller.

“The crank was obviously the real — no pun intended — turning point in terms of, ‘Maybe this thing can follow its own path,’” Sasser tells Polygon. “But we did experiment. The crank concept was to allow you to plug in different items. You could use a magnetically snapped port to attach the crank and plug another device, such as a dial. It’s something I enjoy exploring and my team is very patient with me. We felt that it might have been too much. It was already apparent that we were pushing limits. This system will eventually become too complicated. It’s going to be like Homer’s car in The Simpsons.”

And so, as other details like the handheld’s name and wireless game delivery service were hammered out, a single, non-removable crank was settled on. Panic, his buddies, had to create the design and test it extensively, connect it to the operating software and convince the game developers to join the party.

Panic

Panic

One million cranks

Panic and Teenage Engineering had much to discuss and decided Playdate’s final form would require a lot of custom-made parts. Each tiny Pozidriv screws and button covers would have to be made from scratch in a Malaysian workshop. And all the parts would need to fit neatly within Playdate’s minuscule 76 × 74 × 9 mm casing.

According to Panic’s mechanical engineering and manufacturing consultant Steven Nersesian, the crank introduced a handful of production and engineering issues. Nersesian separated these problems into five separate sections in an email.

Surface Finish Getting the surface finish on the axle was critical, inclusive of the diameter and tolerance, and the “roundness.” This was paramount to getting the proper feel of the rotation… not too loose, not too tight.

Bearing: The crank assembly is pressed into an inner plastic bearing. Similar to the axle challenges, we had to watch the “roundness” of the bearing as injection molded parts tend to shrink at different rates in alternate axes. It was crucial to choose the right material, which required multiple testing until it worked.

Use Design The handle was made from plastic in order to match the housing’s color. But that doesn’t make for a good bearing surface against the metal arm, nor give the handle a long life for those doing lots of cranking. Teenage Engineering’s small design in addition to the overall thinness of Playdate meant there was very little room inside to fit all of the details. Initial iterations were not satisfactory and cracked. After prototyping a number of options, we settled on one that would be the most easily manufactured, the most reliable, as well as have the best feel.

Flip-out Feeling:The internal spring and ball bearings provide a pleasant feeling as you take it out from the pocket. It was difficult to tune these parts and match the geometry of the axle.

Repeatability: It was not easy to make every assembly exactly the same. There were small differences in how different assembly workers approached the task, which led to minor variations. To create a neat jig to unite the entire process, we had to collaborate with engineers and the production team. A checker is used to ensure they conform with specifications.

While production at the factory was successful, Panic ran into new problems. While the machine could do repetitive tasks, such as pushing buttons repeatedly and peppering Playdates with controlled electric shocks, it was not able to test a crank.

“The force is so tiny that we couldn’t find any equipment accurate enough at an affordable price; we would have had to spend $200K on an automated test machine,” Sasser says. “So instead we relied on literal years of shipping hundreds of units to early developers and gathering feedback through their real-world use.”

In 2019, the Panic team had over 2,000 people test the crank at the PAX West booth. The team even printed out a stack of special cards with the words “Oh, thanks for breaking that!” to hand out to any unwitting tester who managed to crank things too far. Much to everyone’s surprise, the cards sat untouched for the entire four-day convention.

Their PAX experiment was a huge success and the crank was finally ready to go after many years of testing, engineering and troubleshooting. Panic would spend $5.20 for each unit of the stainless steel axle, arm, magnet and plastic handle as well as the screw and pin.

While the physical aspects of the crank were being perfected, Panic was busy building a simple operating system and wooing game creators with Playdate’s distinctive specs. Though the crank was one of the handheld’s standout features, Panic designers made sure it wasn’t too heavily featured in the overall feel of the operating system. By stacking game choices and system settings, Panic gave owners the chance to casually scroll through their options by turning the crank forwards and backwards — simple movements that felt natural.

The crank was a topic that split the hearts of game developers. Though there were a fair share of crank enthusiasts, Sasser estimates that roughly half of the developers who showed interest in working on a Playdate title didn’t feel the need to utilize the crank in any way. These developers were excited more about the retro-feel and 1bit screen. When thinking back on the development of the games in Playdate’s introductory season, Sasser says he’s glad each developer “felt free to follow their hearts.”

Many developers saw the crank working and all came to the same conclusion: Fishing. “Almost every developer we showed Playdate to immediately mentioned a fishing game,” Sasser recalls. “And yet, because of this, everybody thought everybody else was making a fishing game. We have therefore no fishing games. Yet.”

While Playdate was initially available to developers, the majority of users discovered Playdate in May 2019. You still have plenty of time to join the Playdate train and get season one.

Hang ten(sion)

In the summer of 2019, as Vitei CEO Giles Goddard perused the selection of indie games at Kyoto’s yearly BitSummit festival, he couldn’t help but notice a small crowd of onlookers gathered feverishly around a single man. Nick Suttner (writer, designer, consultant, Panic friend) was the man who was attentively looking out over those around him.

Goddard quickly fell for the yellow miniature device once he got to know it. “I had no idea what the crank was all about,” Goddard says. “I thought maybe it had to do with charging or it was just something you fiddle with. I didn’t think it was an actual input. After I took it out of my hand, I was amazed at how tactile it felt. The crank provides a direct input. I was just enamored by it from day one.”

Goddard is a veteran of the game industry for longer periods than others. Joining up-and-coming development studio Argonaut Games as a programmer in the late ’80s, Goddard relocated to Japan to help with production of the original Star FoxThe tender age of 18 was when Goddard began programming. Goddard was soon a Nintendo EAD employee in Western Europe. He programmed the famous interactive Mario character at the beginning of the game. Super Mario 64accepting the role of the lead programmer for critically acclaimed 1080° Snowboarding.

Goddard eventually decided to go it alone and began freelance work for Nintendo. He also started Vitei, Inc., his own software development company. Vitei was established in 2002. Since then, Vitei has developed many games and helped to create others. Vitei even started a studio in Kyoto (now Chuhai Labs)

After his first interaction with Playdate, Goddard knew he wanted to develop a game around the handheld’s miraculous crank. Eventually securing a few prototype units, Goddard devised a friendly Playdate “Pitch Jam” for the team at Chuhai Labs. Twenty unique games were pitched, but in the end it was Goddard’s vision of a simple surfing game that received the most votes.

Goddard’s game, dubbed Whitewater Wipeout, was inspired by the tight controls of Playdate’s crank and the standout mobile game of his childhood: California Games. “My brother had an Atari Lynx, which was way ahead of its time,” Goddard says. “The best game on the Lynx was California GamesAnd the most popular game California GamesIt was surfing because it was such tight and well-made. We were just hooked on it.”

Reminiscing on his days with California Games on the Lynx, Goddard felt the biggest issue was always the lack of precise control when rotating one’s surfboard. “At some point I just thought, ‘The crank is the perfect way to control this,’” Goddard says. “Because you have 360 degrees of whatever rotation you want at any time. You decide the speed by how fast you’re turning it. It is unique that it can be spun very quickly, then slowed down to make fine movements. There’s literally no other control input that lets you do that. As soon as I realized a surfing game would match it perfectly, that was the point I thought, ‘It has to be that.’”

Photo by Chris Plante/Polygon

The basic idea of Whitewater had been fleshed out, Goddard and his team set forth to program the game using Panic’s code editor Nova. Goddard enjoyed how easy it was to develop a Playdate-themed game, despite having worked on complex games for powerful consoles. He was restricted in scope, so he had to concentrate on the gameplay and crank controls.

Goddard explained that it was easy to program the crank by simply assigning numbers between zero and 359. The input numbers would change the angle of the surfing board. Playdate has the ability to emulate any computer on which Panic runs, so developers as well as average users can use it to play. Goddard can use the mouse to control a circle that represents the crank, or the actual thing could be used for testing.

“The entire device is very simple to program with. It’s great.”

Goddard, as he sat cranking Playdate prototypes for his game test, noticed an issue. Panic knew about it: not all cranks were created equal. Some cranks proved to be easy to use and some were more difficult. “One of the difficult things was figuring out if the final version of the crank was going to be a floppy crank or a stiff crank,” says Goddard. “I know it sounds like a really stupid little issue but … it was quite interesting.”

Chuhai Labs’ team went as far to disassemble a couple of prototypes and oil the crank to see how important tensile attention was required. WhitewaterDo it exactly as you would. “I had a little technique where I would grease it just enough for it to feel really good. I don’t know if you’re supposed to do that … but we did,” Goddard laughs. Both the Panic Labs and Chuhai Labs teams were satisfied with the current crank state. It is a good compromise that permits speed and accuracy.

Goddard responds quickly to questions about Playdate and how it compares with other gaming devices. He describes the crank as an important part of the system but also a gimmick. “Most gimmicks feel like gimmicks,” Goddard says. “Take the 3D on the 3DS. Most of the time I’d say most people turn it off because it’s distracting, not to mention it takes battery power and can slow things down. The 3D is great as a gimmick, as a way to show off a game, but when you want to play it full-time you probably turn it off because you don’t need it.” Goddard insists the crank does not fall into this category. While the crank is a gimmick of sorts, it’s also highly effective at what it does and seemingly necessary to the success of most Playdate games.

The team at Chuhai Labs is already brainstorming its next Playdate outing, and Giles Goddard says he’s excited to be involved. “It’s kind of my dream job to make games for this thing,” the 50-year-old programmer says, holding up a Playdate. “We have PlayStation 5 dev kits, Oculus dev kits, and all these other dev kits, and by far the most fun … is this one.”

All it’s cranked up to be

Even with delays caused by faulty batteries or CPU shortages, they are still able to run smoothly. factory closures, Panic’s handheld is finally on its way to the first wave of consumers. The success of Playdate systems (and all handhelds) is slowly being realized as they make their way into everyday life. Games like Whitewater Wipeout and Keita Takahashi’s Crankin’s Time Travel AdventureThe game’s core gameplay, which revolves around the crank will be tested by thousands of users.

Many believe that the real magic of the crank is not in games featuring it extensively, but in those that combine its functionality with the classic mechanics of old genres, or conceal it through subtle gestures on the screen. Lucas Pope, an indie developer best known for creating cult classics like Use paper The Return of the Obra DINNHe has shown off the former with a quick glimpse at his game Mars After Midnight during Panic’s Playdate Update this past summer.

Mars After Midnight puts players behind the door of an “off colony community support center” for a wide variety of Martian weirdos. When creatures come a-knocking, players use the Playdate crank to open the hinged flap on the door’s window. The crank only moves half the way around, so this light, natural touch is not noticeable. It’s exactly the kind of small detail that will make the Playdate stand out from other handhelds and gaming consoles.

A lot of the excitement surrounding the Playdate is generated from the fact that players don’t know exactly what’s coming each week. Outside of game titles and a few select clips of gameplay, we don’t know how, or even if, the crank will work within most games. Half the fun will be experiencing how and where the crank pops up, not to mention the outrageous radial control schemes that​​ the community of hobbyist developers will no doubt churn out in the coming years.

Is Playdate’s crank a revolutionary new form of gaming input or a silly dash of superfluous nonsense? One could argue it’s a bit of both. But whether you feel the crank is genius or trivial, you’ll be hard pressed to refrain from giving it a few turns should you ever get your hands on the cheery yellow handheld. You wouldn’t blame the little mechanical device after all of the love and thought that went into it.