Mechanical keyboards and Tetris

[Wrathi]

Hello everyone. My name is Wrathi aka Lurpsukka on various other gaming websites. I'm your average Tetris player that's not a very good player or not the worst either. I average around 62-70 seconds on Tetris 40 lines. I've just purchased today a mechanical keyboard, SteelSeries 6gv2. It already feels great as I'm writing with this and I already type faster than I did with my previous "normal" membrane keyboard.

I've set a goal to myself: to become better at tetris. Well, that's nothing new isn't it? Here's the catch: I'm here to test if there's really any difference on what kind of equipment you play Tetris with or is it just marketing talk. SteelSeries 6gv2 is marketed towards pro gamers in games like Starcraft 2 and Counter-Strike. Considering the skill required in these games I don't think Tetris is any exception as it's a very fast paced game too!

I'm now opening a challenge to myself and seeing if special gaming peripherals really affect players invidual skill. I will play Tetris consecutively for 2 weeks, 30-60mins each day. Progress will be posted daily on this thread.

Let's start! My current records for Tetris 40-line mode are as follows:

Nullpomino

57.78 seconds

Tetris Friends

59.98 seconds

Tetris Online Japan

57.79 - NEW RECORD
60.1 seconds - OLD RECORD

Day 1

60 minutes of TOJ/Nullpo. NEW Record on TOJ. No record breaken on Nullpo.

[Rosti_LFC]

1) Did you always play for 30-60 minutes every day beforehand?

2) Has it been a while since you last saw any real improvement in any of these modes?


If the answer to both of these questions is anything other than "yes" then this test is fairly meaningless, because regular practice is going to produce an improvement anyway, regardless of what keyboard you use.

[Wrathi]

1) Did you always play for 30-60 minutes every day beforehand?

2) Has it been a while since you last saw any real improvement in any of these modes?
If the answer to both of these questions is anything other than "yes" then this test is fairly meaningless, because regular practice is going to produce an improvement anyway, regardless of what keyboard you use.

Yeah to both, I kinda play actively for certain period of time and then it can get as long as few months before I play one single game of Tetris. As for current times I just break my TOJ record after 10 minutes of playing! 57.97

[DarthDuck]

I'm now opening a challenge to myself and seeing if special gaming peripherals really affect players invidual skill. I will play Tetris consecutively for 2 weeks, 30-60mins each day. Progress will be posted daily on this thread.

As Rosti was pointing out, this is not a controlled experiment. Your sudden and disproportionate focus on 40L will cause your 40L score to spike regardless of equipment. And the added tetris hours will give you all-round skills. As a side note, an average of 45 minutes of tetris a day really is not that much.

If you wanted a sincere test, then you would compare more than one keyboard at once (say take three keyboards) and log each of their respective scores. And for it to be "really legit" I think you would have to test an Apple keyboard since that is potentially the best tetris keyboard due to perfect flat keys that you hardly have to press. Another reason for needing to test the Apple keyboard is we all would expect a mechanical keyboard to shave some seconds off. But then again you are shedding no light on how 7Gs relate to other mechanical keyboards. From this experiment, you can already know what the results would be: "Yep equipment does help a bit although I also improved a bit too, so it's hard to say how much equipment helps."

tl;dr: you need a lot of keyboards and a larger time sample for this to be legit.

As a random question at Blink if you reads this, did Steelseries even ask your permission before taking your video off of youtube and embedding it for an ad?: http://gaming.emr8.com/2011/05/23/editors-...ries-7g-review/

I noticed it's also on youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHTO5PxCr98

[Wrathi]

As Rosti was pointing out, this is not a controlled experiment. Your sudden and disproportionate focus on 40L will cause your 40L score to spike regardless of equipment. And the added tetris hours will give you all-round skills. As a side note, an average of 45 minutes of tetris a day really is not that much.

If you wanted a sincere test, then you would compare more than one keyboard at once (say take three keyboards) and log each of their respective scores. And for it to be "really legit" I think you would have to test an Apple keyboard since that is potentially the best tetris keyboard due to perfect flat keys that you hardly have to press. Another reason for needing to test the Apple keyboard is we all would expect a mechanical keyboard to shave some seconds off. But then again you are shedding no light on how 7Gs relate to other mechanical keyboards. From this experiment, you can already know what the results would be: "Yep equipment does help a bit although I also improved a bit too, so it's hard to say how much equipment helps."

That's the current average amount I play Tetris each day and sprint is my favourite mode. I forgot to add in the original post that I haven't really progressed in months at my play so I figured out it would be regular normal playing for me. I might start that 3 keyboard test since I have loads of them lying around and also couple laptops. Hmmh, but that would be quite a lot of work.

[DarthDuck]

That's the current average amount I play Tetris each day and sprint is my favourite mode. I forgot to add in the original post that I haven't really progressed in months at my play so I figured out it would be regular normal playing for me.

Ok then that adds a lot of stability to your experiment since you regularly practice yet are on a plateau.

And yes, controlled experiments are a major pain and a lot of work. And to make it even more boring, you could stick to your old styles and not try anything new... I cringe saying that, but if you are going to be toggling with your DAS and stacking strategies than those are promising ways to break through a plateau in themselves.

GL if you try to take this seriously. Also, to clarify my bias, I did recently get an Apple keyboard which definitely made my reaction speed faster. Then after going back to a board with big key buttons it felt weird and unnecessarily. I came close to buying a 7G but ultimately did not because it still has these big keys, even though it's still vastly superior to a normal keyboard.

Edit at pumpupthejam: It is still bad practice to put a watermark on something that you just content-farmed.

[pumpupthejam]

As a random question at Blink if you reads this, did Steelseries even ask your permission before taking your video off of youtube and embedding it for an ad?: http://gaming.emr8.com/2011/05/23/editors-...ries-7g-review/

I noticed it's also on youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHTO5PxCr98

Doesn't look like an ad to me...more like a keyboard review.  Besides, the video is public so I can't see any reason why anyone can't use that video in any way in which they see fit.

[Kitaru]

"Reach plateau, take a break, return to notable improvement" is a common trope, though; breaks give your brain some time to allow new information to process and settle. So, if you take some days (or weeks) off and then return, you would have to account for that as well. I think there are too many variables to get conclusive results until you've reached an extreme in terms of ability.

[Rosti_LFC]

I think you would have to test an Apple keyboard since that is potentially the best tetris keyboard due to perfect flat keys that you hardly have to press.

I don't really agree with this. Personally I like the feel of my scissor-switch laptop keyboard because the keystrokes are very short and it's fairly flat (and I think it's way better than any Apple keyboard I've used in terms of feel and precision), but I also feel that if they were better than conventional mechanical keyboards for typing/gaming then they'd be preferentially used for typing/gaming.

I see where you'd be coming from if you were going to argue why they might be better, but I'd say you're almost certainly wrong just on the principle that I doubt mechanical keyboards would be so popular if it were the case.


Either way, the method the OP is outlining is nowhere near a fair test. You either need to be interchanging the keyboards you use (use a different one each day?) or you'd use one for two weeks, switch and use another for two weeks, plot the results of all the games you play, and see if there's any obvious step or discontinuity in the lines of best fit.

[Paradox]

apple keyboards not the best but I agree that they are pretty good for tetris compared  to a lot of keyboards, and even a lot of gaming keyboards.

[DarthDuck]

I'd say you're almost certainly wrong just on the principle that I doubt mechanical keyboards would be so popular if it were the case.

One problem with expensive things is that they tend create the illusion of value and demand. If Steelseries 7Gs sold for $18, not as many people would "want" them. More people would use them, but they wouldn't be considered as exciting/special.

Also, a problem with using popularity as a measure for tetris-related issues is that we don't have a large enough sample of top-level tetris players to work with. 1/6 of our top players might use 7G keyboards, but if we only have about 30 top players...

[Paul676]

And I suspect a lot of the top players use non-steelseries keyboards

[Paradox]

Steelseries 7g is pretty damn good regardless of the cost. If it was $18 we'd all have it.

I personally also like it because I can switch easily between my speakers/headphones. Normally I have to plug/unplug things from the back of my comp when I record. Also its the most comfortable keyboard I've had and its so easy to move swiftly over it with great accuracy. My typing speed has increased by 20 WPM which I attribute to comfort level and softness of pressing the keys.

[Rosti_LFC]

One problem with expensive things is that they tend create the illusion of value and demand. If Steelseries 7Gs sold for $18, not as many people would "want" them. More people would use them, but they wouldn't be considered as exciting/special.

Except things like these get reviewed extensively. You can look at some of the detail people will write about on these sorts of things and they're clearly objective to cost.

[XaeL]

As a mech keyboard user i think it makes a difference, however the difference is usually exagerrated.

i type a bit faster with a mech keyboard than a  normal one, and it is more comfortable and feels better, but its not like if i used a regular one i would be unable to type (but its annoying making the backwards switch).