Help me get started: USB game controllers

[Axel]

Hello! My name is Axel and I'm new around here so please bear with me..

Ok, so my plan is that I want to build controllers for a Jeopardy style game. I'm planning of using this in my work with children and among my group of friends. When you're playing those kind of games, it's always hard to know which team is the quickest to answer the question. Therefore, my vision is that I would have two controllers with a button for each team that they could press and send a signal to a computer which would display the team name.

I'm thinking of doing this over USB, which probably means that I will have to buy a couple of scrap keyboards and rewire to a single button that sends a certain character to the computer that could be used to identify the team. I guess using an ordinary mouse would only let me send "click" data that would be harder to interpret (same for both controls?), but a game controller or whatever should work. I would like to rewire this into some sort of casing, like a light switch or something like that. The software end would either just be a webpage with javascript interpretation or something written in C++.

Problem is, I don't have much experience around these things and I could use some pointers. First, would you say that this is a plausible project, or to advanced to get into? Second, could you help me with some resources that could be used to get more familiar in this subject? Good books, websites, whatever?

If I get this project started, I'm sure to come back with some more specific questions. And I hope this is the right community and place to post this kind of question. Please yell at me if I'm wrong. Thanks!

[leapinlew]

There might be some useful ideas for you here:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Quiz-Show-Buzzer-System-using-Staples-Easy-Button/

Another option:
http://www.buzzers.com/buzzer/store/product_info.php/cPath/2/products_id/7