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Recently I’ve been involved in some training based off of “Heuristics for usability” and “Ergonomics” while at work, and it’s really got me thinking a lot about some of the elements that I’ve already written about. When we talk about Heuristics for usability in the context of a video game, we’re talking about methodologies that we (as developers) can follow to ensure that our games are easy to read and understand. Although a lot of this can be dependent on cultural influences, for example people in North America read left to right so you might structure information this way for this intended audience. While reviewing these, I realized that I had a lot of different opinions regarding the uses of these different Heuristic rules and how they play into modern video gaming. Let me preface this by staying that this are merely my opinions, and I definitely recognize that this is heavily dependent on the type of player you might be. There have been a lot of things written about Usability Heuristics, yet for the context of this post I’ll be specifically referencing one titled “Heuristics for usability in Games” written by Noah Shaffer. I’m using his paper specifically because it does seem to cover a lot of the same topics from other sources, and in more detail. While I’ll be challenging a lot of his conclusions, I want to preface this by saying that I don’t think that he’s inaccurate but instead the industry has evolved since 2007. MemoryEarly on in this brief, Shaffer puts forth that we shouldn’t rely on player’s memory. Specifically that players shouldn’t be asked to memorize level design. I know I’ve talked a lot about DarkSouls in my previous posts, so I won’t go into too much detail… Yet I’d argue that one of the most intriguing aspects of DarkSouls 1 was memorizing the terrain, and learning how one area connected to another. Figuring out the different routes, and being able to quickly recognize where you are in the world without any type of guidance. In an earlier post I talked about playing Far Cry Primal with no hud, for me this really broadened my experience with the game. I felt less distracted by elements in the HUD and felt forced to observe the world and recognize it’s ques. Large visual landmarks that would make it easy to navigate, are ignored when we layer the screen with information that removes the player from the gameworld.
found that a lot of games have been slowly removing the mini-map from the HUD. Games like DayZ and more recently Overwatch have no mini-map, and I found quite a few threads online with gamers asking the question “Would a large open world game be possible to play without a mini map?” Which may force us, as developers, to reconsider when and where to use mini maps in our games. There are two other points that I’d like to cover in “memory” before moving on. “Don’t require the player to count resources like bullets and life” and “All relevant information should be displayed, such as life points, lives, and ammunition.” Of course this is very contextual, and depends heavily on the player and type of game. Yet when thinking about counting how many bullets you have or thinking about your “life points,” I go back to thinking about how much fun I had in Far Cry Primal with none of the above. I had to be conscious of how many spears I had left, when the screen would darken and go red I’d know that I should heal, and it really changed the dynamic from being a resource management system to one of survival. Other games like Metro 2033 bury this type of information, forcing the players to become more conscientious of their equipment. While intriguing to some players, I’m sure this also causes frustration for others. Things we can agree on.
demographic or a hard core one; without swinging hard one way or another. For example I found that the way information was fed to me in Fall Out 4, was a bit much. “Don’t bury frequently used information,” I know I said I wouldn’t talk a lot about Darksouls but I feel as though this is something they’ve worked hard on throughout the years. By modifying the control setup, and adding easier ways to access additional items, Darksouls 3 has made it easy for players to access the elements they’d like to. Games like Skyrim and Fallout, have large complicated menus that makes it clunky to access specific information. Granted this could be due to the style of game that’s being created, these being extremely content heavy, but it’s still a headache on the user. Failure Conditions
harsh but can be quite entertaining. These goals can definitely be convoluted as well… “Light these pillars,” “Kill these bosses,” or “Find pieces to a photo” are all objectives that are very obscured in these games. An odd example I have is actually from the game “I am Bread.” Ostensibly I understand that the goal of each level is to make your bread into toast and not reduce your “edibility” by dropping onto the floor. Within the first level, you’re in the kitchen and have to make your way over to a toaster across the room. In the second level, however, there is no toaster. You’re in the living room, with no visible way of toasting your piece of bread. On the ground I recognized some foot prints as being the same from the first level, and were leading out through a closed door. As a player I thought I had to actually open the door, to follow the footprints to the kitchen and find the toaster. I spent ages struggling as a piece of bread, slapping myself against the door handle… trying to get it to open. After looking online, I found that I was actually supposed to place myself on the radiator in the room to make myself into toast. Perhaps this was obvious to other players, but for me this was a massive change in player expectations… and was extremely frustrating. “Give players the feeling they can make a few mistakes by giving some room for error,” is another point that Shaffer makes and yet I feel as though many games have taken an extremely opposite position on this. Games like Super Meat Boy comes to mind, and is notorious for being very difficult and quite punishing for the player. People often ask me why I play Darksouls, and I know it’s because of it’s reputation of being hard. I think it’s heavily dependant on player expectations, and I imagine it’s the same in Super Meat Boy. As soon as you’re comfortable with death or the failed state, suddenly the game feels much less frustrating. Other players find enjoyment out of conquering something purely because of it’s difficulty and while that’s not the same feeling I have, it’s worth noting.
mechanic for health items. The “health potion” (I’m unsure of what it’s called in the game) in Nioh is quantitative, meaning that you only have a certain amount. So say you go fight a really hard boss, use up a bunch of these potions, and die… before fighting the boss again you might have to go farm other enemies to get more health items only to fight the boss again. This feels so extremely painful for a user experience, especially if you’re expecting to have hard bosses in your game. Perhaps it could be viewed as a reprieve between boss attempts, but I think it could cause a ton of frustration.
I think we’re in a common trend in the industry that is re-evaluating typical game norms and challenging them or doing them in very different ways. I wonder if, as players, we’ve become so accustomed to typical game behaviors that when these items are removed or changed… it’s now exciting or different? Earlier in gaming history developers were still figuring out many of these norms and discovering what pieces of information is best displayed for the user. So for a period of time things like the mini-map and ammo counters might have felt more novel and purposeful. Yet we’ve had these elements in gaming now for more than a decade, and we have grown so familiar with them, that players are now more open to when we change or remove them. Needlessly to say we’re still adapting as a medium and I’ll be interested to see how gaming will continue to evolve and challenge player expectations.
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For the past two weeks I’ve been deeply into Dark Souls 3. I knew I was going to want to do a post about playing this game, but I’ve been really struggling about what I’d like to talk about. There’s so much that I find engaging, from the dynamic enemy animations to the atmospheric storytelling … there’s a lot to be applauded here. Yet what I can’t shake is how harrowing this experience has been. The Dark Souls franchise is known for it's intense experiences that leave players rattled… but Dark Souls 3 has felt different. In this blog post we’re going to talk a lot about lore (major spoilers ahead, but I do not talk about the Dark Souls 3 ending), relationships between Dark Souls 1 and 3, and I’m going to try to be discussing this all in a way that doesn’t alienate people who haven’t been keeping up with Dark Souls lore. I’m going to be making a lot of opinion statements and I may get some of the lore slightly wrong, so I apologize if I do!
away and dying. Dark Souls 3 plays with these emotions in very purposeful ways, by first introducing you to characters that are alive and well. In the very beginning of the game we’re introduced to a blacksmith named Andre. Fans of the series will recognize this blacksmith as the same one from Dark Souls 1, which makes this a very fun moment for the players who recognize him. This immediately sets to the tone as being heavily connected to Dark Souls 1, and leaves the player feeling optimistic about who they might meet and where they might go. It’s purposeful and an interesting choice for the developers to start with. As you complete the second boss of the game, Bat Demons appear to whisk you away into the next area. Those who are familiar with Dark Souls 1 will recognize these guys and this very similar sequence from the first game where these Demons carry you to, the most iconic location in the Dark Souls franchise, Anor Londo. The beginning segments of the game are all about familiarity, hope, and excitement for what comes next. As a fan of the franchise, this really sets up the vibe of the game early on.
Moving ahead, we end up in a place called Smouldering Lake that feels very similar to a location in Dark Souls 1 called the Demon Ruins or Lost Izalith. Izalith is notable from a lore perspective because it’s essentially the birthplace of Demons in the Dark Souls 1 universe. It’s a location filled with lava, old ruins, and is basically a large cave type area. In this area, the player soon finds that the side passageways are full of dead Demons from Dark Souls 1. Stacked in piles, or just sprawling out on the floor are different demon forms that were previously enemies. Seeing this kind of mass slaughter
here!” after discovering him. An odd silver lining to have in such a grim scenario. In the same area the player will also find an old corpse of what appears to be a spider, but after taking a closer look is most likely Quelaan, a character from Dark Souls 1 that is half spider half woman. In Dark Souls 1 you find her half sunken into a wall, blind but you can talk to her.
Princess of Sunlight. In Dark Souls 1 if you attack Gwynevere it’s revealed that she’s an illusion created by her brother Gwyndolin, when the illusion is broken the Sunlight vanishes and plunges the city into a dark night. Gwyndolin is the youngest son of Lord Gwyn, has an affinity for the Moon, and remains as the only god in Anor Londo to protect his father’s honorary tomb. If the illusion is not broken, Gwyndolin remains in hiding as an optional boss to this area (I’ve never broken the illusion and fought this character). Going back to Irithyll, as you descend into this area you begin to find more references to Anor Londo. There’s a room that’s not only guarded by Silver Knights but also has pictures on the wall depicting Gwynevere and other imagery from Anor Londo. As you ascend Irithyll you begin fighting more Silver Knights on roof tops, which is a familiar nod to the same setting in Dark Souls 1 where you have to climb rooftops in Anor Londo while avoiding arrows from Silver Knights. In one
on screen text announcing the name of the area. It’s important to note that in the context of Dark Souls 3 we know that we’re in pursuit of a boss named Aldrich, who has been known for consuming kings… essentially eating his way to the top but at this point that’s all the player knows. From here the player moves forward into the same area that’s before the Ornstein and Smough boss fight from Dark Souls 1, and as you move into the same room you fought them in… you
There’s another item reveals more of the chaos that Adlrich has wrought, which reads : “Aldrich dreamed as he slowly devoured the God of the Darkmoon. In this dream, he perceived the form of a young, pale girl in hiding.” Deciphering this we can understand the God of the Darkmoon to be Gwyndolin that’s being consumed, and we can infer that the young, pale
found Priscilla, the same magic seemed to have been used to block access to Irithyll, and the player is required to find a doll to access the area. Just like Gwyndolin, Priscilla had been left to be and yet found a horrific end. It’s not like Anor Londo was in a great state when we saw it last, but there was still something majestic about it… Finding it defiled in Dark Souls 3, I found myself practically mourning the loss of innocence. Discovering the empty room where the illusion of Gwynevere is meant to be, the city fallen to darkness and cold, and knowing that any vestiges of Gwyn are now truly gone. It’s like returning to your childhood home and finding the tree that held your tree-house has died, and pieces of it is are now just molding and crumbling away. You want to play in that tree-house, and while it’s still physically there, it’s really not your tree-house anymore. In Dark Souls 1, the major theme was about how Gwyn and others saw the end of their era approaching and their attempts at unnaturally prolonging it. Nothing is meant to last forever and yet we can’t help but want it to… it’s such a human emotion and yet we’re seeing it play out in game form. Playing Dark Souls 1 it was very easy to be like “No we need to end the era of Gwyn!” Yet this question has become more difficult. I think it’s cannon to say that the era was prolonged unnaturally at the end of Dark Souls 1 and in Dark Souls 3 we’re seeing the result of that. We’re seeing a world we love, be on life support for too long. It’s such a harsh reality and analogy to make… but this is where Fromsoftware have brought us. I will say that there have been certain “other discoveries” made that’s after Aldrich that pushes the player deeper into questioning this era… and if it’s really right to keep the flame going. Dark Souls guides us through this complicated arc of emotions where we struggle with nostalgia and I think places us in a very similar scenario as Gwyn. Where we feel for this world and in many ways want to keep it going, even when we shouldn’t. Everything fades in time, and we can’t always cling to the past. Dark Souls is teaching us to let go… and telling us to get out of that tree-house, the tree died years ago.
I’d be lying if I said my thesis wasn’t deeply inspired by this article, which relates Dark Souls with dementia (would really recommend a read).
Have you ever done something evil in a video game? Something that’s perhaps a bit morally ambiguous? Who was the target? What made you do it? I’ve continued my journey in The Division and, as you can imagine, it’s got me thinking about morality. A lot of games highlight morality as a feature, “Press R2 to be Renegade,” but we don’t often think about passive morality that can happen within gaming. When it’s not an inherent game choice, doesn’t modify a player stat, or the game won’t tell you that you’re being evil. Today I’d like to explore the question “Do we struggle with morality more when it comes to game characters versus other people?” This is very subjective, and will most likely turn into an opinion piece, but I’ll try to back it up with as much information as possible. Yet if you disagree, all the better! In this post we'll be talking about a variety of games but I don't believe there are any spoilers you should worry about.... enjoy!
you’re asked to perform a paragon or renegade action and in doing so either will actually modify a stat and how your avatar looks. While emotionally strong, these games encourage people to think about their choices in a very active way. In this regard, I want to rule these out of the conversation as early as possible. Life doesn’t have visual feedback for when I perform a “good” or a “bad” choice. When games passively allow for morality choices, it’s much more interesting to see how people react.
A simple example of this, was a story a friend shared with me about an experience he had in Minecraft. Upon first going into “The Nether” or Minecraft’s hell area, he was greeted by the inhabitants of this world… the Zombie Pigmen. Right away he started slaughtering them, only to realize that they weren’t actually hostile at all… just ugly. This stuck with him as a bad choice he made in a game and he always felt a little bad about murdering their village.
universe this is the point where someone has been undead for so long that they have lost all remnants of who they once were and have lost their mind. He wanders his tomb, in a circle, naked with his clothes in the corner, unaware of the player. Vendrick will never attack you unprovoked, yet you can attack and kill him if you’d like. I always found this to be so sad, also knowing his knight was guarding… really nothing. In all my playthroughs of this game, I’ve never killed him.
subsequently died with laughter. While it was initially an accident, it sort of then became a test for me. Whenever I was summoned into this area, I’d go for the switch and see which players would survive, and who wouldn’t. I was a monster, as I watched countless players slowly dip their way into the lava and die.
Typically when engaging other players in Darksouls, and other games, I do tend to worry that they are going to be trolls in some regard. Yet there was one instance where I summoned another player into my game (a person by the name of Chiri Pepe) for some help. At one point he disappeared and I worried that I was left to my own devices… constantly paranoid of what enemy Darksouls going to throw at me next. I went to open a door and there was a huge enemy preparing to swing his weapon down and kill me. In this moment Chiri Pepe fell, seemingly out of nowhere, and killed the enemy who would have led to my imminent death. Chiri Pepe was a hero, he hadn’t left me to my own devices, he selflessly ran off to protect me from an unknown threat. I remember being in such awe in this moment and Chiri Pepe lived on as a Legend when I think back on Darksouls.
to go to a specified area, call in a helicopter, and wait for it to arrive. While it’s enroute, all other players in the area know what you’re doing, can come and try to kill you, and steal your loot. That’s the scary part about the Dark Zone, players can kill other players and steal the loot they’ve found. Not only do you lose your loot when you die, but you also lose some experience… so it can actually force you to lose levels. Even though when you kill another player, you show up as a “Rogue Agent” that other players have to try to kill within a certain amount of time… it really doesn’t stop a lot of aimless murder. I’ve seen players do some really tricky things to avoid this,like intentionally jumping into someone’s line of fire and forcing that player into a “Rogue Agent” status.There’s also a mechanic for allowing players to hear other players if they are in close enough proximity to them… I once made the mistake of exclaiming loudly that I had found a legendary item, only to find myself quickly a target for other players. It’s pretty nerve racking and the tension is high in the Dark Zone.
tried to be as helpful as possible to other players… yet as I saw some the harshness that is the Dark Zone, it was very alluring to fall to the “dark side.” A friend and I were following these other players as they were running around looking for loot. At the time my friend and I were both level somewhere in the mid 30’s. While following these other players, they weren’t aware that we could actually hear all of their conversations. Their nervousness about us, just egged us on… and when one of them was excited about being level 14, it made us laugh. They suddenly felt like “fresh meat,” and we were the predators. Why did my mind go there? Why did it feel like survival of the fittest? I suddenly felt like I had such inherent power over this other player, so much so I could bully him if I wanted to. Deciding who is your ally and who is your nemesis can happen at a moment’s notice. There were certain players who I felt obligated to help but then other players who became my arch enemies. So much so that if I saw that this player might be extracting their loot, I would definitely go and try to ruin their day as fast as I could.
Although I feel as though I’ve seen a lot of harshness in the Dark Zone, I do feel as though I’ve seen some genuine acts of kindness. At one point there was a group of us together, not in a party, but all hunting down a Rogue Agent. One of the players in the party did accidentally shoot me and become Rogue. I immediately shot back at him, damaging him, and everyone else nearby leveled their guns at him. He quickly used the surrender emote and for whatever reason it gave us all pause. We knew it was an accident, yet we could all easily kill him in this moment, take his loot, get experience, and have no repercussion. After a tense moment, we slowly lowered our weapons… no one fired, we didn’t speak to each other but we all silently agreed that we weren’t going to kill him. It felt like such an interesting moment for me, after seeing so much happen in the Dark Zone.. something about this act really gave me some faith back in people.
behavior is encouraged in these games, due to the mechanics allowing it, and that we’re just victim to the design of the game. Yet I don’t agree, by simply allowing it doesn't make it a core value of the game. I would wonder if there was more negative visual feedback after performing an “evil action” if it would change anything… but I still support the design of the game remaining neutral. At the end of all of this the only inference that I’d make is that players will make drastically different moral choices depending on the style of game they are playing. Not saying that people won’t be good, I’ve experienced acts of kindness in these zones, but it’s just a very different dynamic. One that feels much less forgiving.
This week I started playing the Division, which is such a contrast to what I’ve been playing/writing about recently. Considering the last few games have had little to no HUD and jumping into the Division you quickly realize that this is such a UI intensive game. Much of it well thought out and even more that’s just fun tech fluff on the screen. In this post I’d like to spend some time to break down The Divisions HUD and usability. While I will be talking about elements of The Division, this post should be devoid of spoilers. Yet if you’re concerned about seeing imagery from The Division, you should stop now! To start with, there’s a sort of implied complexity when it comes to the name “Tom Clancy.” It often feels like the name has become synonymous intense and elaborate worlds, that borderlines more on simulations than games. Tom Clancy games are often known for their seriousness and that can be a barrier between itself and casual to mid-core audiences. While Tom Clancy’s : The Division, does a lot of things right… there are areas of the game that aren’t particularly user friendly. Specifically within modding your weapons/equipment, but also within leveling your character up. It’s difficult because these are areas that players do inherently look for additional depth, and yet if you’re not interested in these areas or just starting out… there’s a considerable barrier to entry.
the player a sense of what play-style these elements are referring to. I really have to applaud The Division's use of color when it comes to missions, I instantly know if working towards the Medical, Tech, or Security wings. Ideally there would be a similar way for me to classify my mods, so that I could instantly recognize areas that facilitate my play style. I would also argue that an auto-assign or recommendation feature would be very ideal for more casual users.
exciting either. When I mod my weapon, it should feel impactful and like I’m progressing. Perhaps when the user starts seeing higher percentages late game, it will feel like real progress. If the strategy is to keep the values so low early game, so we feel the progression later, we’re really banking on players sticking around long enough to make it worth it. It’s risky to not have the early phases of the game not feel as rewarding as possible. Seeing my weapon stat bars barely move with a new mod, can be very detrimental to initial user experience.
Advance – rolling from one piece of cover to another increase damage done by 2% per meter traveled for a short period of time” or “Death by Proxy – destroying another enemies deployed items (turrets) increases the power of your skill abilities.” While I can, more or less, understand what my talents do… the way these are managed make it very difficult to decide what’s best for your play style. Whereas I’m just happy to unlock a perk, because then I literally don’t think twice about it knowing that it’s just there. I will say that one of the areas that makes this very hard to understand is how you unlock areas in the different wings in your base. Whenever you unlock something in one of the three wings, you can unlock a multitude of Skills, Skill Mods, Talents, Perks (both for your character or the base itself) and it can be a bit much to understand. Instead of writing out each mod I’m unlocking for my turret, maybe just tell me that this will unlock mods for my turret… being concise doesn't mean it has to lack depth. There's also really no substitute for a good Skill Tree, it's always a clear and easy way to illustrate progression to a player. Going into The Division, I was really unsure how I felt about the floating HUD near my character. It felt weird at first and I was unsure if it would become confusing in the middle of a firefight. Yet the more I played with it, the more I really enjoyed the layout. In an effort to better understand their design choices, I decided to do a bit more research into their strategies as well as their competitors. The Division
which it’s UI hidden on the protagonist’s back. There’s something to be said about doing something as bold as this, thinking about Visual Priority and screen real-estate… putting the player’s info in the center of the screen is prioritizing you and your character. This isn’t a side attribute, this is YOU and YOU should be paying attention to it. I think it creates an extremely positive dynamic and facilitates a higher connection with the player and their avatar. Of course this is just my impressions/take away from comparing The Division's HUD to it’s competitors, but it’s interesting to see how they do or do not relate to each other.
Hey guys!
This week I've teamed up with the website GameDais to bring you an article about Visual Priority! In it I take a closer look at games like FIrewatch, Until Dawn, and Outlast! Enjoy! Wes ***update*** It looks like maybe the GameDais website went down, as the URL seems to no longer be functioning. So I wanted to share what I had written for them here, below are my notes from the article I created in conjunction with them. I know I also had images associated with this... but can no longer find them. Hopefully GameDais will return in the future. I went into this entry thinking that I’d like to spend a bit of time breaking down Visual Priority for you. Visual Priority refers to an inherent hierarchy of information on the screen, typically defined by Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary sources of information. These can established through shape/size, color, screen location, and contrast… yet at the end of the day this evaluation is all about taking a step back and trying to analyze where the developers would like us to be looking, and why. Attempting to understand what’s important? What kind of visual real-estate is reserved for this value? Where are my eyes drawn, and why? I think it could be interesting to do a bit of an analysis of strategies used to guide us in our gaming experiences. Visual priority, and how it’s treated, can change drastically between types of games and devices. Specifically strategies and what’s important to display in mobile games are extremely different than the ones used in console gaming. Interfaces (typically) are much more prevalent on a mobile game, than their console counterparts. I was thinking about this recently as I began to dig into this topic, and began to realize that many of the elements that I look for while evaluating mobile games are not prioritized in the same way as you’d see on consoles. The inference I’d make here is that when you’re interacting with a mobile game, you’re also basically looking at the controler…. so there has to be much more information available for interaction. Whereas the trend with console games are typically leaning more on leveraging the play space, and when you are interacting with something… you’re pushing a button on a controller rather than physically on the screen. In this regard, it makes a lot of sense that the strategies would be drastically different. That being said, I’d like to spend a bit of time exploring how console games are helping users understand what’s expected of them. To start with, I began to try to think of games that felt instinctual for navigation. Games that I rarely got lost in, and instinctively knew here to go. I know I’ve talked for many posts about Firewatch already but, I seriously can’t help it…. It’s excellent on many levels. The easiest way to evaluate visual priority is just to take screenshot from a game, and take a moment to evaluate what’s in front of you. Where are you eyes drawn and why? In the case of Firewatch, there’s a complete absence of UI… I mean there’s the occasional walkie-talkie, map, or interaction indication but for the most part it’s all about the world in front of you. Upon looking at imagery from Firewatch, you begin to notice that your eyes are guided. There’s always a direction, a point of interest, or natural flow. It allows the user to be guided in a direction without putting them on rails. That’s not to say that you can’t lose your way, but I would argue that through lighting, contrast, and negative space the developers have done what they could to direct the users in the most natural ways possible. (I’ve talked about this breifly in the past, in my post about Visual Affordance : http://www.wesplays.com/blog/visual-affordance) While it’s possible that colors and hue variation can be used, typically I focus more on contrasting tones to evaluate visual priority. For this, it’s always best to desaturate your examples and look at them in grayscale. Sometimes it can be quite shocking what your eyes are actually be drawn to. In these examples, I’ve tried my best to illustrate my meaning… how points of interest, lighting, and negative space can create a natural flow and understanding for the viewer. In the same vein, I also was thinking a lot about Until Dawn and how the environments often lended themselves to an innate understanding of the space. Granted Until Dawn is pretty structured in the sense that the movement possibilities are a lot less extensive than a game like Firewatch. Yet each scene is definitely crafted, intentional camera angles, lighting, and focal points created to give the player an understanding of interaction/movement possibilities. Upon further investigation into Until Dawn, I really noticed that they used perspective to their advantage in many cases; aligning elements along a vanishing point and facilitating this flow with lighting/contrast. In many cases there’s literally a source of light at the point in which we’re expected to move. A game that always resonated with me was also Outlast. While there were definitely times of confusion, there was something about the layout of this game that facilitated intentional progression. Lighting placement, points of interests, and elements that specifically catch your eye (blood spatter, creep silhouettes, etc) gave way to player progression in a way that feels more like exploration than developer handholding. I can’t help but bring up an approach that Splinter Cell : Conviction used, which was to literally project quest objectives on the walls and on the environment to guide the player. This was just such a fun and creative approach to marrying UI within the environment. Not only are you spelling it out for the player, but the placement of the message is also a subtle hint to where you’re intended to go. It goes to show that sometimes that being a little more in your face, can actually be a good thing and not pull you completely out of the game. Next time you’re playing a video game, take a moment and ask yourself “What’s the intent here?” This will help you to develop a deeper understanding of the clues you’re being presented but also a little more insight into the developers themselves. Conversely, if you’re lost and confused… it’d be interesting to take a moment to attempt to recognize where the design is failing you. This way we can start identifying both strong and weak design principles, that’ll help guide us in the future. Hey guys! I’m a new guest author on GameDais.com! If you’re interested in reading more about topics like “Visual Affordance,” “Gamifying your Play Experience,” or “Quantifying Art” feel free to visit my original blog at www.WesPlays.com Thanks for reading! Today I’d like to talk about something different and perhaps a bit less scholarly than my previous posts. I want to share with you some gaming experiences I’ve had and an idea that my friends and I call “Gamifying your Play Experience.” Have you ever set additional constraints or rules to yourself in a video game? Ideas like, “I’m only going to play non-lethally” or “My character will never use Magic.” I think that adding these types of limitations can add a lot to the experience, and specifically how much you personalize the game..
Which is all interesting but what made my character really intriguing was that I didn’t want him to be Dovahkiin (the main protagonist in the game). My way of accomplishing this was that I never initiated the first quest in Whiterun (one of the cities in the game). Since I never started this mission, within the game my character never pursued the Dovahkiin quest line and there were no dragons spawning in my world. The very thing that Skyrim was marketed with, didn’t exist in my game. My world wasn’t plagued by Alduin (the main antagonist), and I was just a dude. Oddly enough this was the playthrough that really stuck out for me and I put probably another 100 hours into this character that spent the bulk of his time gathering herbs.
Recently I started playing Farcry Primal, and a good friend was telling me about how she was playing the game with no HUD. As I started looking into the HUD options, I had a lot of questions... “Really no targeting reticule? No interaction prompts??” … “Nope, none!” Inspired by my experiences in Skyrim and more recently Firewatch, I chose to start the game this way. I didn’t want to know what I was missing or become too used to playing this game with a HUD.
Something I noticed with Farcry Primal, and Firewatch after removing the location indicator, was that removing elements of the UI forced me to focus more on the game world and I felt more connected to it… less distracted if that makes sense. Something I hadn’t realized that in other games I use the minimap as a crutch, really ignoring the world around me and navigating purely by it. It’s interesting how a piece of the UI that’s meant to aid the player, could potentially invalidate the work of a good level designer. I’m definitely not suggesting we remove UI/HUD elements from our games, there’s a broad spectrum of users (some more casual than others) and you don’t want to alienate you demographic. Yet there’s something really liberating about having to navigate a world by your wits, actually remember how many arrows you have left in your quiver, or manage a headshot without a targeting reticule. That’s all I had to share with you today! Hope you enjoyed this post, even if it was more about sharing gaming experiences. I'm still playing around with the idea of doing a post on visual priority next, but we’ll see how it goes! Thanks again for reading! Have you ever been asked to making something look “more fun?” What about more user friendly, interesting, or even magical? As an artist it can be very difficult to have productive conversations about art or art qualities, qualities like “fun” or “magical” can have drastically different meanings based off of the individual or project context. Not to mention if you’re working with individuals where English may not be their primary language, it can be very difficult to come to an understanding about artistic intent. In this post I’d like to explore this a little bit, and share some of my experience as a Lead Artist working on mobile games. Quantifying Art really comes into play heavily during pre-production, where you're lacking visuals and trying to establish the artistic direction. So often it feels easy to fall back on broad terms and simplified descriptions, but these can really cause a lot of problems. Not only can it become vague and hard to follow for your clients, but it's also really unfair to the artists that you're working with. People are quick to infer their own meanings and it leads to a lot of misinterpretation. So what can be done? I'm sure there are a lot of different strategies out there, but I'm only really going to be talking about how I approach it. This really isn't mean to be the definitive "how to" but hopefully it should give a little more insight into some new ways of thinking...
It's safe to say that so much of this is subjective, but you have to try to use your best judgement with these evaluations. Once you've defined and established the key words you're using to evaluate, you can start placing elements along the chart that can help you to start to identify the spectrum. It'll be hard at first but with the more examples you have, the faster you'll be able to really see the gradation you've established between "iconic" and "realistic." With your filled chart, you can then evaluate what you're looking at and pick a "Sweet Spot." The Sweet Spot, in the way that I'm defining it, is a circular spot area on the chart that you can say that you'd like your visuals to fall into. Within this area you can easily see other visuals that match the style that you're looking for. Using this, you should then come up with a definition for your sweet spot and what it means to be in it. This could be specific details about shape, color usage, and other identifying factors you'd like to include. This is definitely not the "end all" of establishing your visual target, but it should be helpful in defining pillars in your game for you and your artists to follow. Something else to consider... while you may spend a lot of time working on and defining who you are and what you're visual target is, it's also good to really consider who you're not. After you've established your Sweet Spot, defined it, and even have come up with examples of what it means to be in that area... spend some time actually making opposite pillars. i.e. Our buttons do not have realistic lighting, our buttons do not feel thick, etc. Coming up with examples and ways of identifying what isn't your visual target, is also a really good way of helping everyone see the direction your art is heading.
Once you've established a Key Value, in this example we'll be using Lovecraft, you'll want to identify where this Key Value is prevalent in other forms of media. Find movies, video games, comic books, and other forms of media that feature the same Key Value. If I was evaluating Lovecraft, I'd look to examples like Hellboy, the movie "The Mist," The Skyrim DLC - Dragonborn, Deadspace, the Amnesia games, etc. Look to these examples and search for commonalities among them. What makes this all feel like "Lovecraft."
"It's all about finding your Key Value, and defining the Elements that make up that Key Value." There are many other areas I'd like to cover but for the sake of this post and keeping things concise, I'll leave it with these few thoughts. Hopefully this was insightful and provides some strategies on ways of discussing art and how you might evaluate these types of things in the future. I may make a post soon that talks a little bit about Visual Priority and how to design visuals that makes it easy for your users to look where you'd like them to look. That's it for now though! Hopefully you enjoyed this post.
When playing a new game on your console or mobile device, do you ever take a moment to think of how much is explained to you? We might complain about lengthy tutorials or long dialog boxes, but we may not recognize there are smaller details that aid us in our comprehension of the game world itself. In this post I’d like to spend some time exploring this, and a concept referred to as “Visual Affordance.” What’s Visual Affordance? Well wikipedia would suggest the following : “An affordance is a relation between an object or an environment and an organism that, through a collection of stimuli, affords the opportunity for that organism to perform an action. For example, a knob affords twisting, and perhaps pushing, while a cord affords pulling. As a relation, an affordance exhibits the possibility of some action, and is not a property of either an organism or its environment alone.”
The Witness is literally all about Visual Affordance… it might as well be it’s tag line. The way the game is structured helps guide users on the initial onset of the game to explore the island and interact with it’s puzzles. There are clues meant to provide hints to the player as to how to proceed, some more cryptic than others. I really have to applaud some of the uses of visual affordance in The Witness’ puzzle design. When engaging with these puzzles that feature different colored swatches, the player can understand pretty quickly that they have to isolate the different colors from one another. Other puzzles feature this tetris styled pieces. We can quickly recognize these shapes, and after some trial and error, can also understand how it fits within the puzzle.
The Witness certainly isn’t without it’s faults. I’ve found that several of its puzzles are not user friendly, don’t provide enough information to the players, and are cryptic for the sake of being cryptic. That being said, I completely recognize that I haven’t finished the game and perhaps the way I’ve explored the world has removed me from experiencing elements in the proper order…. but that in of itself could be seen as a fault to the design of the game. The example that I’ll use here are these colored star puzzles that I’ve found in the game. Having found them after the color swatch puzzles, I would assume that it may act in a similar way. i.e. I have to isolate the different colored stars from one another. Yet that isn’t the case at all,and my previous learning experiences in the game didn’t help to further my understanding of this puzzle. Evaluating how games make use of Visual Affordance, is also in some ways evaluating our own understanding and how we take in/interact with specific stimuli. In any case both Firewatch and The Witness make some very interesting uses of Visual Affordance, in very different ways. I look forward to continuing to discover ways that the Witness is hiding things for it’s players… and me. Recently I had the pleasure of diving into one of the most hyped games of 2015 “Fallout 4.” If you’re at all a fan of RPGs, you know they can’t be quite massive. Certainly Bethesda has been well known to produce some of the largest games out there, with typical playthroughs running well above 100 hours of gameplay. I’ve spent my fair share in these worlds, being guilty of 200+ hours in Skyrim and have still yet to finish “The Witcher 3.” Just speaking from my own gaming experience, it’s safe to say that I’m quite veteran to these types of gaming experiences. Yet Fallout 4 managed to surprise me in such a way that I didn’t think possible. For the first time, in a long time, I felt overwhelmed. I found myself having a hard time grasping all of the mechanics, balancing what I was supposed to be doing, and understanding simple things like leveling up my character. Not that I’m saying that the beginning stages of the game weren’t enjoyable, yet I did find myself wading into the deep nuclear muck that is Fallout and wondering what the hell I was doing. This got me thinking… How much content is too much content? Seems like a crazy question to be asking, in a world where we’re all looking to consume as much content as possible and still beg for more. Developers struggle to maintain these demands by pushing out content updates, DLCs, and other forms of media to help meet their consumer’s needs. Is Bethesda wrong for releasing a game that is packed so full to the brim? I don’t think so, but to help answer this question I wanted to dive a bit deeper into what’s being expected to us as the user and how people actually learn information. Bare with me… To start, we should take a look at some of the early phases of the game and examine what’s being asked of us. (I’m going to be quickly summarizing the major learning points that appear in the early phases of the game, and skim over some of the plot points.) In the very early stages of the game we’re exposed to the Vault and character creation, which is not new to any RPG. We’re asked to distribute points around to our specials, there isn’t a clear explanation as to how you level, and how the specials correlate with your perks. I had a friend who believed that they had to actually level each special up to 10, before they could begin accessing the individual perks, and this person was an avid Skyrim fan. Next we have to “Escape the Vault,” here we have our first introductions to combat, the VATS system, sneaking, hacking, lockpicking, and item usage (stimpacks). From here we make our way to Sanctuary, find Codsworth, learn about companions, and missions. We have our first official mission to head to Concord and “Save the Settlers from Raiders,” here we learn about Power Armor, have a bit more heavy combat, and head back to Sanctuary. Now there’s a bit of a jump off on the learning curve… We’re introduced to this new thing called “Settlements,” learning about citizen requirements for food, water, beds, power, defense, etc... Many of these systems are very glossed over and can be convoluted to understand, even for hardcore gamers. I must have spent ages trying to get walls to appropriately align at 90* angles before realizing that you had to build a floor for them to snap onto. Whether you got all of the mechanics or not, I think it’s safe to say that a lot is being asked of players in the very first few hours of the game. Before diving into more of my opinions of the game’s mechanics, I wanted to learn more about how people learn and retain information. I reached out to some old friends of mine, specifically from my time at Champlain College in Burlington Vermont. Alan D. Stracke was a professor of Sociology during my tenure at Champlain. I’ve always found him to be extremely knowledgeable about people in general :) So I asked him for a little help in breaking down the basics of how people learn and retain information… which I’ll attempt to summarize in the most “layman's terms” possible. We should start with the “Learning Block,” we’re exposed to the information in a formal or informal way. From here “we have to consciously engage in the “thinking” process in order for our brains to do anything with the information.” This is the “Integrator” step, where the information must be engaged in, retrieved and practiced, in a targeted manner. This would be like introducing a character to the lock pick and them asking them to open a lock. From here we need time to “Consolidate” the information, the part of the brain that is loaded with the “thinking cells” requires time following the learning block to consolidate or process the information that has just been retrieved. For this to be truly effective we need to minimize the duration of the Learning Block, maximize the meaningfulness of the information, and follow each learning block with a non-interfering activities (the goal would be not to think). The brain requires retrieval or targeted practice of the materials as soon as possible after the non-interference break, as well as practice material. When you vocalize, write or reflect upon information in an engaged manner, specific cells within the brain actually change in shape in size and your brain begins to personalize the information. Using the lockpicking analogy above, this would suggest that we should expose the player to another opportunity to lockpick relatively quickly after a period of rest. “Memory is stored as information fragments, it must be consolidated.” Learning is always sure to take place when the learner is engaged, and when the brain is given enough time to consolidate the information. Interferences with this consolidation process is the reason why we do not remember or why we forget. Does this apply to Fallout 4? In some ways it does, I’m not saying that we’re forgetting the information being taught to us but there are some problems in the structure of how the content is being provided, and that can make it difficult to personalize the information. I would infer is that there isn’t necessarily “too much content” in Fallout 4 but due to the lack of consolidation time and practice, it makes it difficult to grasp the depth of the information provided. If we were provided additional time for “non-interfering activities” between learning new elements, and had an a bit more structure to re-engage in the elements we had just learned, it would have provided a smoother transition into the world of Fallout 4. Many arguments could be made against this point... knowing that this is an open world game and that we’re able to pretty much do whatever we want, whenever we want to, it’s very easy for the player to mess with how the flow of the information is being provided. Yet if we follow the early on main quest objectives, there are many problems with how the content is delivered to the user. Many gamers do like being left a bit lost in a game, and not having their hands held, but there’s a certain about of usability that we shouldn't be forgetting about. I did have a lot of fun figuring out elements to Fallout 4, and still considerate to be one of the great games of 2015. Even if it did feel as though they were asking us to learn basic math and calculus on the same day. Hopefully this was at least half way interesting, I think it might have been a bit dry at times but my hopes with this blog would be to think critically about the games that I’m playing, and be able to explore questions in a thoughtful way. As both a gamer and developer, I hope to use this space to explore topics like these into the following year. Hopefully the next ones will be more interesting than this, but hey… gotta start somewhere? Thanks for reading! |
AuthorI make games, I play games... and sometimes I have some thoughts about that. Archives
March 2024
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