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Gaming Usability 101
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?
It's getting pretty bad these days. I can't stand not being able to bypass the logos at startup, never mind long ass cut scenes. Does it occur to the designers that maybe someone might play the game a second time and has no need of seeing the cut scene again?!? My favorite example of designers with their head up their ass is Keiji Inafune. When Dead Rising came out and people started complaing about the save system (one one save allowed). Supposedly, in an interview with Electronic Gaming Monthly, he said that the saves were intentionally designed so that players would feel that there were some consequences for their actions and would be forced to make quick, tactical decisions. Right, don't bother trying to make the actual GAME more interesting. Cripple the save function so the game appears more dynamic..... I really hope if they do a DR2 he has nothing to do with the project.
I've played several games where I am at a difficult section where I need to try over and over again. However, between the difficult spot and the last available save spot would be some cutscene.
If it took 20 times to get by the spot, that was 20 forced brain-numbing times through the cutscene, and often after a few tries I would just put the game down. It wasn't worth a 5 minute wait to get killed again.
When I fail I want to retry as soon as possible.
"I only speak the truth"
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I don't think that's very controversial. Cutscenes really must always be skippable, simply because it's foolish to assume that everyone is playing for the first time. Even if the game "knows" it's a new game (think DS game fresh out of the case) it can't be sure that the player hasn't played the game before and therefore doesn't want to see the stupid cutscene for the fiftieth time.
Don't get me wrong, I generally will allow the cutscenes to play. But some cutscenes are just annoying. For example, when you start the Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, it gives you a recap of the events that occurred during Wind Waker. However I've already played Wind Waker and would have very much liked to skip past the recap to the new stuff.
Massive bonus points for any developers who add TiVo-style controls to their cutscenes. Sometimes I just want to jump back and rehear a line I missed.
In fact, I'd say that the first item, "Never ask a player if they want to save their game" is much more controversial. In a perfect world, that works (when there are enough save slots that auto-save is possible) however the world isn't perfect. In Phantom Hourglass I might not want to overwrite my save slot just because I hit a "save point." This is a limitation of the DS - there are no memory cards, so you're limited to whatever space the game gives you.
However for something like Half-Life 2, the autosaves work well. I don't need to be asked if I want yet another autosave, so it doesn't bother asking.
Otherwise I generally agree with the list.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
There is one of the items I disagree with:
One man's "impossible" is another man's "challenge". Just because it's impossible for you doesn't mean that it's truly impossible. Go check out some Youtube videos of people playing a Bullet-hell shmup on one life. Inspiring feats, to say the least. Yet I know that I need infinite lives to pass these games because I'm simply not that good. Therefore, #8 should really say, "Know thy audience." That way you'll make sure you put the right level of difficulty in the right game.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Subtitles for most (if not all) spoken content would be awesome, even better is when it gets kept automatically in an in-game journal as in Deus Ex. This could be considered more accessibility than usability - but it's very nice when you can pull up that critical conversation that you had a few days ago.
This helps solve one of the biggest gaming problems:
"Am I supposed to escort the Foozle or KILL the Foozle???"
If time is put into the cutscenes, make sure we can watch -- and pause -- them. John Woo's Stranglehold for Xbox 360 is an example where this fails. The game claims to be "cinematic." Please, developers, let me watch the cinema even if the pizza arrives during a cutscene!
Let me skip any and every single cutscene/tutorial, but also give me the opportunity to replay them at my convenience.
If I've decided to skip something that actually has important information, or I decide I want to watch something later because I'm in a groove, where is the harm in letting me access it when I want to?
Heh, yeah I know, there's nothing worse than a non-skipable cut scene.
Oh, wait, I can think of one thing, though it's more a variation on a theme: The un-skipable Summons in a Final Fantasy.
FFVII's summons were absolutely awesome... the first time. They were still pretty cool up through let's say the twentieth time. But after the thousandth time you've used your summon you'll just want to gouge your eyes out waiting. Especially since the power of the summon seems to scale with the length of the cutscene. Okay, Bahamat Zero, would you mind flying to our planet from outer space a little FASTER maybe? Or how about just sticking around in orbit above my head, since you know I'm going to need you again soon...
The enemies of Democracy are
So if you put a fight in the game that the party is "supposed" to lose, you should either include the option of them not losing or make it a (skippable) cut scene because no degree of interaction from the player is going to change the outcome at all.
Additionally, do not kill members of my party off without giving me some way to rescue them. If I completely dominate the boss that was supposed to beat my party and kill that guy, don't kill that guy.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I find it strange that he complains about "17 buttons" on the PS2/PS3 and Xbox.
L1, L2, L3, R1, R2, R3, triangle, O, X, Square. That's ten. Start and Select make 12. The "analog" button isn't used in gameplay, but that's 13. Then what? Counting the d-pad as 4 buttons is silly because in MOST games it, like the joysticks, simply serves one purpose.
Most games ignore L3 and R3, or use it for some function that's tied to the joystick it's on (e.g. using R3 to recenter the camera when the right stick controls the camera).
The start button has done the same thing in every game since the Super Nintendo era, so complaining about it is silly. It's standard. It pauses the game and/or brings up the menu. Period. Select is rarely used and could be gotten rid of. Analog was used on the PSX and some PS2 games for toggling the controller mode (again, standard among every game because it actually applied to the controller), but it had no role in game.
The joystick or d-pad is always used for movement. Granted, some FPS's use the d-pad for things like "switch weapons with left/right and zoom with up/down" in which case it's really two additional functions. (not 4! It's a logical pair and if you know that "right on the d-pad is next weapon" it's obvious that "left on the d-pad is previous weapon"!)
Ultimately, I think the most complicated console game I've played in terms of keymapping are the FPS'es like Timesplitters where all 8 shoulder+face buttons were used and you used the left-right and up-down pairs for weapon swapping and zooming, and the two joysticks did move/strafe and turn/look; making for a total of 12 functions- counting "fire" and "secondary fire" as different concepts.
I don't think 12 functions is too much to expect someone to know for a complicated game.
Compare this to a fighting game, say Virtua Fighter, which technically has an 8-way joystick (or uses the d-pad for 8-way movement) and 3 buttons. Kick, punch, guard. That's simple, right? Well, there's kick+punch, punch+guard, kick+guard, kick+punch, kick+punch+guard, down-forward kick, etc, making for movelists with over 100 commands. Almost every modern fighting game (minus Smash Brothers) has upwards of 50 commands and even Smash Brothers has quite a high number of moves with just "attack, special, shield" thanks to being able to smash them, smash in the air, smash while running, etc.
Shoot, compare it to Nethack, which used nearly every button on the keyboard (lower AND uppercase) for something.
Complaining about console games having "too many buttons" is absurd. PC games are where this "problem" really lies, and if done right (such as Civilization 4- all the buttons were really just shortcut keys to something you could get at through the GUI somehow) it's not a problem.
Granted, if every direction on the d-pad and the 8 general directions on each joystick did different functions that weren't even logically connected, he'd have a complaint, but I'd argue that such a design would be a bad user interface in general because it's not using the expected behavior of the joystick/d-pad.
He's spot on about allowing controller remapping, subtitles for deaf people or kids whose parents make them turn the volume off, forced-death boss fights (I remember one in Chrono Cross where I used a massive number of potions, curative spells, ethers, etc to survive and continually damaged the boss, ultimately giving up and letting him kill me just to see if I was "supposed" to lose it- and promptly reset so I could redo it without losing all the items.)
Also, tutorial levels should damn well be optional. Cutscenes should be skippable (though make it buttonmasher-proof like Xenosaga did) and re-viewable. Not everyone is playing the game for the first time.
I fully disagree with "never ask the player if he wants to save his game", as does anyone else who's ever gotten stuck in Riovanes Castle in Final Fantasy Tactics without a backup save. (Yes, I got through. Yell and Auto-potion are a ridiculous
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Fast main menu load times. HL2 based games are serious offenders here.
Allow fast alt tabbing. Basically every PC game needs to function like World of Warcraft in "maximized windowed mode" I simply can't stand games that hitch and make your PC nearly freeze for quickly changing to another task while you are playing. LET ME READ THE WEB WHILE YOUR GAME LOADS!
Here's a great article and "game" that I found a while back. The author calls it the world's most inaccessible game where each level breaks a cardinal sin of game design. The designer them goes on to describe how it's broken and how to avoid and fix it in the future. I thought it was a great idea and it applies here.
The site I write for also deals directly with usability and accessibility in video games. I think these aspects of gameplay are often overlooked for various reasons and things like unskippable cutscenes and unskippable story sequences (not necessarily cutscenes but just long drawn out blobs of text - see my First Hour Okami review next Monday) are just plain foolish and obnoxious to the player!
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
I'd add a major rule, based on my experience with Knights of the Old Republic. After watching my character whip ass in lightsaber duels with poise and confidence, he was suddenly a complete klutz at a particular challenge.
The challenge was the podrace. My character has the reflexes of a trained Jedi; I do not. Yet *I* had to drive the pod with my pitiful skills. My character's 18 DEX was nowhere to be seen.
So the new rule is:
In a game where the action is judged by statistics based on the character's abilities, such as a role playing game, never add an arcade element that depends on the player's abilities. Or more generally and colloquially stated: remember who is in the driver's seat for a particular style of gameplay.
I'm willing to be compelled to watch the logos, cut scenes, etc...ONCE.
What I do object to is having to watch them over...and over...and over. After I've seen them once, I should be allowed to skip them.
However, there is a reciprocal issue. I want to be able to see any cut scene again if I want to.
I can't think how many times this has happened:
I've finally reached a major cutscene, the reward for the last two hours of play, that finally explains critical plot points.
And the phone rings.
So I hit "start" to pause the game, which works everywhere else in the game.
But because it's a cut scene, it thinks that I want to skip instead of pause.
So now I've missed the cut scene, and the only choices the game offers are to start at the beginning of the next level (missing the cutscene)...or go back to my last save and replay part of the level that I JUST BEAT, just to see the cutscene.
Or sometimes, somebody comes in and interrupts me while the cutscene is running, and there is no way to pause it. And then when I want to go back and watch it without interruption, I find that I can't.
The "skip cutscene" button should NEVER be the same as the button you use to pause the game--and that button should pause the cutscene, just like it pauses at any other point in the game. And if you do somehow miss the cut scene, there should be a mechanism for seeing it again without having to replay the entire level.
I have little enough time to play games as it is, and the time I have is intermittent and scattered.
This presents a different problem for me: because of the time between plays, I sometimes forget what's going on in the story. It would be really nice if all games gave you the option to replay cutscenes you've already seen.
1) allow cutscenes to be paused. i hate it when the phone rings in the middle of one and i can't pause it. who knows how many phone calls from hot women i may have missed when i chose to watch the cutscene instead =P
2) allow cutscene skipping BUT don't make it so easy to skip. i hate when i accidentally hit a button and skip a cutscene and all of the sudden i'm in a situation that leaves me with a "wtf?" expression on my face. i think it was one of the xenosaga movies, i mean games, that when you paused the cutscene a little note at the top said "press x to skip" or something of that nature.
i know many people want to be able to skip it very quickly, but you don't want to punish the ones the game was targeted at (those who want the story line). if you want, you could go as far as making it an in-game option to allow quick-skipping or forcing the pause plus an extra button to skip. I think this would satisfy everybody. everybody could set it to what they want.
on a different note, i think saving should be allowed at *any* point in the game. sometimes you just *have* to stop playing but hate it cause you'll lose like an hour's worth of work just because you haven't reached a savepoint yet.
I like the idea of this article. I think it would be a good idea to make more that are specific to genres. I'm a hardcore fighting game player and here is a list of things that are really annoying when not followed:
#1 If you want your game to have longevity, make sure you get the best players to spend a lot of time beta testing it. Soul Calibur 3 is a good example of what goes wrong when you don't have good players test your game. There is a character in that game with a move that can instantaneously reverse almost all attacks without risk and leads to a followup that does >50% damage. Most other characters can do a max of 25% after doing a RISKY juggle. Any mediocre player would notice this as a problem immediately. Soul Calibur 3 was popular for about 4 months and then totally died. Soul Calibur 2, which did not have any obvious problems like this, was popular for over 2 years.
#2 Have a great practice mode for the console version. The Soul Calibur 2 practice mode is seriously lacking and there are tons of basics that require another person to help you test. It should be possible to do every basic system feature (rolling, 'tech rolling', laying on the ground and getting up as soon as possible, etc.) without needing a friend to come over. The Japanese console version of Tekken 5: DR doesn't even have a practice mode. When the normal version of Tekken 5 does, this looks like a step backwards and pisses off the hardcore gamers.
#3 Update your game to fix problems. Virtua Fighter 4, the most popular fighting game of its time in Japan, updated its game more than once and fixed a lot of balance problems each time. In the original Tekken 4, the biggest balance issue was a single attack by a character named Jin. Tekken 4 was updated at least 3 times and this attack's properties were never modified. This pissed off the fanbase each time. Tekken 4 is currently ridiculed as one of the worst in the series.
Hit player 2 on the back of the head for taking so long.
But if you've remapped the controls to the point where they are unusable, how would you get back into the menu to make them usable again?
Easy, don't let them remap the start button and have the remapped controls be the gameplay controls, not the menu navigation controls.
I hate, hate, hate game scenarios where you have to protect (or maybe just want to protect) a supporting character who dies absurdly easily. While I understand that this can occasionally make for interesting gameplay, devs often don't take into account the increasing difficulty levels on games. Watching my NPCs blown to pieces is frustrating, especially when my character is much stronger than anything else on the screen.
I call this one the "Groundhog Day Effect."
I hate it when a game is clearly designed in such a way that the ONLY way you can learn how to solve a puzzle or beat a boss is to be killed (GAME OVER) and try again from the last save. I don't mind dying from my own stupidity, but the game should be solvable in theory without ever having to back up to the previous save point. There are quite a few games where there was no information available about the solution until after you'd committed the fatal mistake and hit a point of no-return-except-RESET.
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5) Cameras can get annoying, quite true, so getting them right is important. One thing I am wondering: On a TV/movie set walls are often removed to make room for the camera, allowing the camera to be placed in location that are outside of the room itself and would be physically impossible if the room would be real. Games on the other side basically never do this, instead they let the camera collide with the fourth wall. Any reason for this? Or any games that do otherwise (aside from top-down RPGs that leave away the roof)?
The only game I've ever played that did this was Oni by Bungie.
I'd love it if World of Warcraft added this feature, since the camera gets so cramped in smaller rooms (or inside huts, or other indoor areas that quests require) that you can't see anything beside your own character's backside. Even worse if you play a Tauren, who are fricken' huge, or a druid that can shift into bear form (also fricken' hug.) It makes you tempted to play a gnome just to avoid the camera issues.
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