The point standing that it was an odd choice for a game controller anyway you cut it and most likely wasn't through some UX problem solving process related to games.
You can't always lab-grow your most creative ideas.
Check out “red means recording” https://youtu.be/7z4hoazra_g
As a self-described inveterate hobbyist, I completely understand looking around a workshop full of parts and saying "gee, what could we do with that?" And buying parts completely at random just to full future sessions of "Mystery Meat Monday"
I'm sure someone could come up with this idea and probably did, but getting to the stage of actually releasing a commercial product with a crank makes me think there is more to the story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaGF4z03UvY
You're literally shoving the other player out of the way.
Everyone loved the crank charger built into it, but it exerted really large forces on the chassis. Our industrial designers came to us and said "This is a totally solvable problem: We just need to make the chassis out of milled titanium!" We were like: "Thanks guys, but that's so far out of budget..."
When I first saw the Playdate I thought the crank was a really odd use, a one-trick pony. Then I saw that Teenage Engineering was partnering on the design and it totally made sense.
Is there a Hurdy Gurdy app yet?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_joystick_port#/media/Fil...
It was a great controller for some games, like Breakout.
Not speculating at all. Just wanted to point that out.
Think about vinyls, cassettes, VHRs, typing machines.
It's all about the cool factor, the "authentic", the "vintage". That's where the crank it's coming from.
The weirdo typing love letters on a mechanical type writer on the park bench. The weirdo cranking this thing on the subway, with his Air Buds on and the expensive sneakers.
Here's what I think happened. They decided that they wanted to make a low power black and white game system for people to use while camping. They decided that a crank charger was the best solution for this and went ahead with development.
Further into the process they discovered that they couldn't get the power budget low enough to make cranking a viable option, but they were too far along to abandon it completely.
Then someone had a brilliant idea. Lets make the crank an input system, and develop crank based games.