Talking to Gamespot at this past weekend’s QuakeCon, Splash Damage CEO guy Paul Wedgewood discusses the differences between platform control schemes, and how the developer is working to create an equitable gaming experience on PC and console.

“We knew when we started, that we could make a good mouse and keyboard game because of all the stuff we’d done with Wolfenstien, Enemy Territory, and Quake Wars,” he says. “But the question is, how do you add that much depth to a shooter if you’re limited to an analogue controller with a small number of buttons? With a keyboard, you bind everything, right?”

How, indeed. Of course, the differences – or, perhaps more specifically, the finesse – between controller and keyboard/mouse gaming remain a fiercely controversial, if thoroughly pointless, topic between gamers. Personally, I don’t see what the big deal is, but then, some gamers apparently need stuff to argue about, or their lives are meaningless. Wedgewood’s a little more practical about it.

“So, we wanted to make a shooter to where whether you’re using a 360 controller, a PS3 controller, or a mouse and keyboard, you have the same great experience,” he explains. “That means you need to be able to lean, duck behind things, and shoot over the top of stuff and control your profile, using the SMART (Smooth Movement Across Random Terrain) System so you can vault and slide, jump between gaps, do little wall jumps and that kind of thing.”

He goes on to say that, “All of that stuff is possible because we put so much effort into getting the controller right. For us, we just decided to be platform agnostic – even at the beginning when we were developing for PC we just used 360 controllers, or while at E3 we brought the PS3 version of the game. Oddly, here we are on an Intel platform but showing it with a 360 controller plugged into it. So, we’re not letting people use the mouse and keyboard because it’s nice to prove you can have that depth of control and mechanics but on a 360 controller.”

Actually, we had a bit of a discussion about this going on around the forums recently. Our resident Modern Warfare camper extraordinaire, Maplassie, had an interesting story to tell. He and some friends set up a series of matches between gamers on PC keyboard and mouse combos and a bunch of guys using controllers. The keyboard/mouse players thumped the gamepad players in every single game, including – amusingly enough – Halo. Every single game, that is, except Gears of War. A game, I might just point out, that has been developed specifically for current generation gamepad control. Could it be that development and game design might be the most significant factor here? Gasp, etc.

Either way, Brink’s looking like buckets of the fun stuff. It’s due to launch sometime around Q2 2011. In the meantime, however, everyone who stopped reading after the first paragraph may commence slagging off PC / console gaming, and how much one or the other totally ****ing sucks for no real reason in the comments. Thanks for the hits.