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Do Games Know The Secret Of UI?

Posted by Hemos on from the better-then-most-interfaces dept.

A reader writes "There is a nice interview at the BBC talking about how computer games are the ones pushing the envelope. Particularly interesting is it doesn't just deal with the tech aspects, but goes into the user interface aspect as well." Having conversed with her on a number of occasions, I can attest to JC being smart. Good interview.

2 of 256 comments (clear)

  1. Games pushing hardware is great ... by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ... I mean, I'm all for faster CPU's, more RAM, better video cards, higher bandwidth, etc.

    But I don't see games pushing the UI envelope in a way that's useful to most user tasks. Sure, game developers put an enormous amount of effort into creating detailed, realistic virtual environments, and that's great -- for games. But attempts to introduce such elements into OS's in general, and into general-purpose applications like word processors, graphics programs, and browsers, will lead only to clutter and bloatware. You don't need realistic lighting and fog effects when you're writing a letter ...

    Browsers are an area that deserve special mention. I've seen a few attempts to use game-type visual metaphors to turn cyberspace into something Gibsonian (anyone remember Hotsauce?) and the effect is always ugly, pointless, and slow. Make the hardware fast enough, of course, and "slow" will go away, but "ugly" and "pointless" will remain.

    When I'm playing a game, I want to be immersed in a virtual world. When I'm writing, or designing graphics for a Web site, or pounding out code, or looking for information on some obscure subject, I want a clean, simple interface that makes it as easy as possible for me to get, create, or manipulate my data. And that's it.

    --
    The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
  2. Re:incremental disclosure and game UI by kabir · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Fans of UNIX will, of course, disagree. The popularity of archaic command-line interfaces in the UNIX subculture could perhaps be understood as a consequence of gamer-like behavior among hobbyists and tinkerers.

    I wouldn't have thought that the popularity of "archaic command-line interfaces" had anything to do with their being cryptic, or figuring them out being entertaining... it seems to me that those sorts of interfaces are popular because they tend to be extremely powerful. My personal experience of interfaces has shown the general trend where GUIs tend to be less powerful/flexable than command line interfaces. Though I freely admit that my opinions are colored by many years of UNIX usage, so I'm not really all that objective.

    Solving the "problem" of an interface, while somewhat rewarding, isn't exactly an experience I go looking for. I've dealt with this both with command line UIs and GUIs - crappy is crappy either way - and it's never fun. I think it's just that command-line UIs tend to be a bit more featureful than GUIs simply because there is less aversion to complexity, probably because people expect a command-line to be more complex. I generally consider the command-line being more cryptic to be the price I pay for greater power and flexability.

    Or I could just be so used to UNIX everything else seems a little weird ;)
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