Why WASD?

At some point in the late 90's or early 2000's, first-person shooter games on the PC started by default mapping the movement keys to the W, A, S and D keys of the keyboard (the cursor keys being the more common default mapping in the infancy of first-person shooters, ie. the early 90's.) Some other game genres, such as third-person shooters, quickly followed suit.

This was indeed much more convenient than the cursor keys, especially since games were becoming more and more complex by the year, requiring more and more keys to control. In most standard PC keyboards the cursor keys are kind of isolated from other keys, and thus the user needed to reach farther to use any other such keys. However, the WASD keys are not only immediately surrounded by plenty of other keys, additionally (when the WASD keys are used with the index, middle and ring finger) the thumb ends up conveniently resting on the spacebar, thus bringing that key conveniently into the mix as well. Also the pinky finger comfortably rests on the ctrl and shift keys.

Very typically the most common default key mapping for most games, besides the WASD keys themselves, have been for quite a long time for the spacebar to jump, E as the primary "use" or "interact" key, R typically to reload, and F for some sort of secondary "use" key. Some games that require even more keys may by default use the Q, the G, and even the Z, X and C keys. (While not universal, the C key is very often mapped by default to crouching, although in some games the left ctrl key is used for that.)

However, some game will need even more keys than those, and may thus extend to use keys that are much farther away, such as the J, I or even the M keys.

But one has to ask, why did WASD in particular become the almost universal standard? If you notice the key on the left of A is Caps Lock. Some games do actually map it to some functionality, but rarely. In fact, many games leave it to its default system functionality. There might be some technical difficulties sometimes getting the Caps Lock key to remap to something else.

Wouldn't it have been better to make the ESDF keys the default for movement? In other words, shift everything one slot to the right. This way the A key would have been conveniently on the left of the S key for some functionality. Even the Q key is now relatively easy to reach as well, and would thus act as an additional convenient key.

(Of course there's nothing stopping a player from remapping the keys like this, as the vast majority of games offer the option to do that. But WASD has become ubiquitous because all games use it by default, and the vast majority of people won't bother to change it.)

Some games use some more awkwardly-positioned keys by default, like the Alt key. This could well be remapped to the A or the Q key instead, for instance.

Why the 1980's is so popular in terms of nostalgia

People of all ages are nostalgic about different eras, most commonly about the times of their childhood and teenage years. However, the decade of the 1980's in particular seems to hold a special position in this regard. Looking at it in terms of people's ages there doesn't seem to be anything particular about the 80's that makes that decade stand out from the rest. Sure, the people who are today in their 30's, 40's and 50's were kids and teenagers during that time, but the same can be said of the 1990's, the 1970's, and perhaps to some extent of the 1960's. Yet not even nearly as much nostalgia is prevalent about those other decades.

What makes precisely the 1980's so special, to stand out so prominently from the rest? I think there are many reasons for this.

The 1980's was the time when many of the modern movie conventions were invented or refined, and many of the most memorable cult classics of (what could be classified as) modern cinema came from this era. Masterpieces of modern cinema that defined and shaped their respective genres, and had great influence not only in moviemaking but also, and most importantly, on popular culture.

Movies like Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) greatly influenced the space horror genre, and even to this day many movies of that genre owe a great deal to them. The Terminator (1984) was also a great influence in the modern "light" sci-fi genre. And, of course, going into the more "hard-core" sci-fi, Blade Runner (1982) is a masterpiece, and most futuristic sci-fi movies today owe a lot to it. Quite many other horror sci-fi masterpieces were created in this era, such as The Thing (1982)

On the lighter side of sci-fi, no other movie franchise had a bigger influence in popular culture than the original Star Wars trilogy (1977, 1980, and 1983), although there are also many other fondly remembered and influential movies such as E.T. The Extraterrestrial (1982), Robocop (1987), Tron (1982), Predator (1987), and Back to the Future (1985). Modern sci-fi owes a great deal to all these movies.

Modern horror movies also owe a great deal to cult classics from the era of the 1980's, such as Friday the 13th (1980), Halloween (1978), The Evil Dead (1981), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), The Shining (1980), Re-Animator (1985), Poltergeist (1981), The Fly (1986), and Scanners (1981), all of which were extremely influential trend-setters that have affected filmmaking to this day.

The 1980's also saw the creation of many TV series that are still fondly remembered (much more so than most TV series created prior or after) and which likewise made great innovations in how such series are made, and had a great influence on subsequent TV series to this day.

While of course not the first what could be called a "modern" police procedural TV series, Miami Vice (1984-1989) arguably started and defined how modern "gritty" TV shows of the genre are made. Most modern police procedurals owe a great deal to Miami Vice. Also many other TV series of the era are very fondly remembered (even more so that most TV series prior and since), such as Knight Rider (1982-1986), The A-Team (1983-1987), MacGyver (1985-1992), L.A. Law (1986-1994), Dynasty (1981-1989), Murder, She Wrote (1984-1996), and others.

The 1980's was also the time when music, especially (but not limited to) electronic music, went into overdrive. While the 1970's already saw a lot of experimentation into especially electronic music, with all the new technological inventions allowing new types of artificial sounds to be created, it was really the 1980's when the artform was really refined, with an enormous amount of new music styles and genres appearing, most of which have persisted to this day and, once again, have had a great influence in most music ever since.

Rap music was by large refined to its modern form throughout the 80's. Most forms of modern electronic music was likewise refined and even invented in the 80's, such as all forms of techno with its myriads of variants, as well as trance, house, and so on. The 80's was also the era of glam rock and especially metal music, when most of the forms of modern metal was likewise refined and even invented. (While so-called glam rock was already pretty much in full force in the 1970's, the 80's is still the decade that's most remembered and marked by the extragavant showmanship of the genre.)

The 1980's also saw the invention and popularization of a vast amount of consumer electronics that were either a rarity or non-existent prior, and that have had a huge influence on culture and society ever since. The decade saw the proliferation of very cheap forms of physical mass distribution of music and movies in the form of compact cassettes and VHS tapes and players. It was also the decade that pretty much defined the notion of a home gaming console, portable gaming consoles, and home computers, something that has gone pretty much effectively unchanged to this day (with only the computational prowess of the hardware and the ergonomics of controllers being the main things that have progressed).

Ironically, the 1980's is also fondly remembered for what it did not have, as it gives nostalgic feelings about "the time before" such-and-such fancy new things.

For example, while the internet did exist pretty much for the entirety of the 1980's, it was extremely primitive and just a privilege of the very few. It wasn't but the latter half of the 1990's and the early 2000's that the internet became a widespread commodity. In the 1980's pretty much nobody had access to the internet, so it was pretty much the last decade "before the internet". This had a great deal of influence in society and how for example information was conveyed to the wider public. For example magazines, such as video game magazines, were extremely popular in the 1980's because they were almost the only way to get any sort of information about new video games. Likewise communication between people over large distances was much harder, as calling people via telephone, especially abroad, tended to be very expensive, and sending them physical mail was very slow (sometimes a letter taking even weeks to arrive at its destination).

The same can be said, to some extent, about television and newspapers, as prior to the internet they were pretty much the only way to know what was happening in the world, or even your own country (although this was still largely the case well into the 1990's and somewhat into the early 2000's, so it's not that strongly associated with the 80's particularly.)

Similarly, affordable and viable cellphones did not become a thing until the 1990's, so the 1980's was pretty much the last "cellphone-free" decade. Landline phones were the norm, and when you were away from home, you were pretty much disconnected from the rest of the world outside your immediate surroundings. Phone booths were extremely common in this decade precisely because of this reason.

I believe these are some of the many reasons why the 1980's, from all the decades in the past half a century or so, is particularly significant and influential, and why it tends to be the decade that's most fondly remembered and causes the most nostalgia. People rarely reminisce about the 1960's, 1970's or 1990's as much as about the 80's.