Razer Snap Tap technology will force competitive gaming to adapt

Speed is of the essence in gaming. Those split-second decisions and reactions can be the thin line between success and failure, which means that advancing technology designed to give players an edge is highly sought after.

It’s natural in any industry that technology drives growth and having a potent mixture of new technology and competition leads to innovation. The iGaming industry is a great example of this, the space has become incredibly competitive over the past few years. As you can see from the top rated new sites listed on CasinoTopsOnline (A transparency first online casino resource) platforms have been attempting to out compete one another by offering better cutting edge games or promotions that outperform rivals, like the popular live dealer games or free slot bonus.

This is applicable to the game technology industry, where you see companies compete for the attention of gamers by offering them cheaper new cutting edge technology. That’s is what Razer has done with one of the big pieces of advanced technology to launch this year for gamers has been Razer’s Snap Tap feature. The new feature, which is supported by Huntsman V3 Pro keyboards, is a big enough innovation to give gamers using it an edge, which the rest of the gaming industry will have to adapt for in the future.

What is Snap Tap technology?

Snap Tap was released by Razer as a free update for owners of the innovative Huntsman V3 Pro lineup of gaming keyboards. The Snap Tap feature is designed to make strafing, the act of sliding to the side, quicker as a key that’s already being held doesn’t have to be released first. Having the ability to make an instantaneous directional change is huge for speed.

What’s the advantage?

The advantage is minimal in terms of time, but that’s not inconsequential. It’s shaving off the tiniest fraction of time, but that can allow one player to make their kill just that little bit quicker when counter-strafing. Counter-strafing is a big skill to learn in gaming, and if it’s not done right, then it can lead to a costly pause. 

If a character is being moved to the left for example with the A button, but a brief pause is required to get off an accurate shot, the D button can be tapped. However, if the A button hasn’t been released then the character stops completely and becomes a sitting duck. 

With Snap Tap, two buttons can be pressed at the same time, and only the latter’s input is registered as a priority. This new simultaneous opposing cardinal directions (SOCD) feature is massive and when combined with the existing Rapid Trigger, it makes for an impressive combo of keyboard advancements for gaming. 

Rapid Trigger on a keyboard simply means that instead of having a fixed reset time, a key will reset when it’s released. Normally when a key is pressed on a keyboard, integrated into its operation is a reset point after a certain time. Only once that’s reached, can the same key be pressed again until the limit of that input has been reached as well. The reset points are in milliseconds allowing for rapid tapping of the same key, but Rapid Trigger has no time-based reset.

Is Snap Tap legal?

Competitive gaming has its rules and one of them is that players can’t use script-based features to get an advantage. Things are different now with the Razer Snap Tap technology. Due to it being a hardware feature directly integrated into the firmware, it can be used in competitive gaming for pro tournaments.

This will give players using it a potential leg up and an advantage is an advantage. It’s a bit like an F1 team shaving off a tiny fraction of a car’s wing to get an aerodynamic boost, or a soccer player wearing boots designed to grip the ball more. Not everyone is impressed.

Are keyboard features cheating?

Snap Tap is legal, but it is another situation which raises the question of whether advancing levels of keyboard features are so significant that it’s a borderline cheat code. Can keyboards be considered cheating? It is a question that came up with Rapid Trigger and it’s back on the menu now.

Tweaking input priority settings is purposefully designed to be advantageous to the player. It’s what the technology is going to be sold on — getting one-upmanship over gaming rivals by making a player a more accurate shooter while enacting a counter-strafing defense. 

It’s an amazing upgrade, but some will argue this is unfair and that it could be used to just spam strafing left and right while maintaining strong weapon accuracy. If you are facing someone that doesn’t have the relevant hardware, then where is the line between advantage and cheating?

Should SOCD be banned?

By only making features like Snap Tap legal on keyboards but not through a computer script, is that an unfair balance in pro gaming? Interestingly, there was a previous version of the technology that was released as a script. Home users could benefit from it, but it couldn’t be used in pro competitions.

What’s allowed and what’s not leads to a major question that the gaming industry needs to think about for the future. That is, whether features like SOCD should be banned altogether to keep the playing field level. An alternative route that the gaming industry could go down is moving towards having the feature embedded into competitive first-person shooters.

Snap Tap is another big new and potentially controversial development in gaming. It’s not going to stop people from clamoring for the updates, which many leading competition organizers have already signed off on. However, it may force the industry to think a little harder about how future developments should be integrated on the pro scene.

User ability is not lost

A counter argument would be that there is at least the potential of a level playing field. The keyboard feature is available to everyone, it’s not an exclusive thing. However, it just is not viable for everyone to keep up with the latest hardware. 

Gaming innovations do usually level out in the long run though as more and more companies jump on board with similar versions of new tech. It’s just the initial shock and awe when something new and brilliant is released. 

The rest of the community will catch up at some point and that leaves things back where they started. Ultimately, everything boils down to user ability. Even with SOCD around, results will still come down to user skill, as not all users have the same reaction times, which is a big, innate and human difference between the pros and everyone else.