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Gaming Usability 101

Posted by Zonk on from the don't-do-what-donny-don't-does dept.

Next Generation (now happily fully merged with Edge) is carrying a story entitled Videogame Usability 101, attempting to lay out some standards for interacting with games. Some of them, like '3. Always let players remap controller buttons to suit their preferences' seems fairly straightforward and hard to disagree with. Others may be a bit more controversial: "4. Always let players skip cut scenes no matter how important they are to the story. What a predicament cut scenes create. As a designer, you want all your hard work to be acknowledged, even the cut scenes. Sadly, interactive entertainment is the name of the game, and it always comes first. That's why gamers play these things. So rather than assume every player wants to watch your story-telling chops, allow them to bypass cut scenes, tutorials, and even speed up the showing of logos when a game boots up. Tell your story through engaging gameplay, and you'll easily be remembered and praised regardless of what you accomplished in a cut scene, tutorial, or start screen branding." Anything on there that you categorically disagree with?

4 of 305 comments (clear)

  1. Blank screen? by tepples · · Score: 3, Informative

    I can't stand not being able to bypass the logos at startup Would you rather have a blank screen while the game loads from optical disc? That's what the logos are partly designed to cover up.
    1. Re:Blank screen? by blighter · · Score: 3, Informative
      Not always.

      Crackdown, for example, has a series of unskippable logos when you put the disc in. At the end of those you get to "press start" and then you get the loading screen.

      Thank god for pic in pic so I can watch tv and still see when the game is finished with its unskippable logos and has finally actually loaded.

  2. Limitation of DirectX by tepples · · Score: 2, Informative

    Allow fast alt tabbing. DirectX graphics itself has a limitation that you have to reload all of VRAM, including all textures, whenever you switch display modes. So fast task switching would require either playing the game on a separate machine from the PC or playing a simplistic 2D game.
  3. Would you want to quickload in EVE Online? by tepples · · Score: 3, Informative
    Anonymous Coward wrote:

    The hell it your point? Some products that the populace sees as "games" are more like a simulation or a virtual place than like "a physical or mental competition conducted according to rules with the participants in direct opposition to each other" (Merriam-Webster). Some of these simulations are intended to have long-term consequences for the players, especially products such as EVE Online.