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?

Comments

I couldn't agree with TFA more....

[Iguru42]

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.

Re:I couldn't agree with TFA more....

[Aladrin]

Absolutely. 'Consequence for actions' works great in real life, and keeps people from running out into a stream of bullets. It does -not- stop little Johnny from doing the same while playing a game. As for me, it only pisses me off and makes me curse the designer of the game, not the careless action I just pulled. Dying and having to try over and over and over is bad enough, I don't need them to add artificial pain as well.

If they wanted 'consequences for actions' they should have perma-death and NO saves. There have been games like that and they generally just piss me off, but there are those that like them.

Re:I couldn't agree with TFA more....

[surajbarkale]

It's a game not real life. Immersion comes from being able to recreate any moment in the game I want. I can compare this with my style of reading books. I go through it at a high speed marking the places where I would like to spend the time and then read those again just to increase the value.

Re:I couldn't agree with TFA more....

[xouumalperxe]

I was about to bring up nethack myself. The trick is how you look at the game. I'll give you a moderately similar example -- chess.

The first few games of chess you play, you'll get your arse handed to you in a platter within 10 moves. Then you start making sense of how to protect yourself from elementary attacks, and you get owned after, say, 20 moves. Then you actually start getting the hang of the early game, and can keep yourself alive for long enough to see the mid-game. At this point you might even win a few matches, get a few neat combo plays, whatever. Etc. etc. etc. Anybody who ever got into chess knows what I'm talking about.

The key issue here is how the game is designed. Some games (JRPGs come to mind) are meant to take you through one looooong, mostly linear, trip. Replay value is either nil, or limited to a few different endings, and there's no real reward for playing it much more after you've cracked all the secrets and explored all the finales. So you save and you save and you save yet again, trying to keep your options open, so you won't have to go through 20 hours of gameplay to change the course of that one decision you made that killed off half the game world or whatever. Other games, like Tetris, Chess, Checkers, etc are oriented towards playing loads of individual matches. As a learner in chess, you might want to take back a play or two to explore different angles and as a learning experience, but mostly these games are made of having a very real chance to lose. How quickly would chess become BORING as hell if you were allowed to backtrack all your mistakes once you found out they were wrong? Such a game model should give the possibility to adjourn the game, but never, EVER to allow you to actually backtrack without consequences.

Nethack clearly fits into the category of games where you can play through the game several times in one day, and the focus is on playing loads of individual games, not on progressing in one long thread of gaming. So having only the option to adjourn the game is the way to go.

Since we already have nethack up, let's measure it against these usability rules!

1. Nethack never, EVER prompts you to save. You either go on playing, #quit, die, or type 'S' to save (and adjourn the game)
2. After asking you a few questions about your character, Nethack gives you a short message and prompts "--more--". Sure, it's not "press any key", but both space and enter, the biggest keys on any reasonable keyboard, will proceed forwards. Not perfect, but hardly the worst ever
3. Nethack doesn't let you remap the controls, other than choosing between two basic layouts, whichever is most appropriate for your keyboard. It also has the most extensive key list ever, but at least all the actions are bound to sensible keys, and there's nothing you can do (other than movement) that can't be cancelled, so you'll never get really hurt by missing a key. All in all, bad, but not the worst
4. Cutscenes? No dungeon crawler worth its salt has cutscenes. Next!
5. Top down camera that always shows the totality of the level you're in. If your character knows it, you can see it. It's primitive, but once you think about it for a few minutes, it's actually one of the best interface design choices ever.
6. Nethack uses loads of keys because it needs to. The alternative is making it much more verbose and difficult to play. But I'll grant you that using every bloody letter in the keyboard is pretty hardcore, so no cookie here.
7. I don't really think accessibility even applies to nethack, so I'll skip this one.
8. Unbeatable opponents? Now *this* is one of the game's crown jewels. There might be some pretty close to impossible monsters, but you can get out of most situations if you play your cards right. In fact, that's what the game is all about.
9. In-game is actually pretty good: simply pressing '?' will result in you being given help on mostly anything that you're not supposed to learn through playing,

Re:I couldn't agree with TFA more....

[damaki]

I totally agree. I bought Final Fantasy 12 the month it was released. I haven't played it much. Why? While I could play continuously for many hours when I was a student, now that I work, my gaming time is more restricted. Yeah, I know the "don't save whenever you want" paradigm of the FF, but I never felt it was as annoying as now. I cannot play it for twenty minutes then stop, only because I cannot choose when I save and I cannot be sure I will be allowed to save my game when I need. Yeah, it breaks the game flow, players can exploit the save, blah blah blah...
I'm still trying to figure out why I shouldn't be allowed to play a japanese style RPG only 20 minutes in a row. And please, realize than even FF4 to FF5 on GBA have quick save. If a GBA can quick save, why a PS2 could not? I don't care if it takes a whole memory card as long as I can have the damn instant save.
Dear game creators, please take in account that most gamers are not kids any more and that they have a life. Even a half assed save like in the 360 version of Oblivion is far better than nothing, at least I can save whenever I want, though the character will not spawn exactly at the same place on load.

Cutscenes MUST always be skippable

[_xeno_]

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.

Always let players...

[AKAImBatman]

...skip cut scenes using a non-gameplay key. There's nothing more annoying than missing an important cut-scene because you accidentally hit the Fire button. Especially when the cut scenes intrude on the game suddenly and unexpectedly.

There is one of the items I disagree with:

8. Never use insipid, indefensible enemy attacks.
"It's impossible to get out of the way every third attack!" I shout at the on-screen boss in despair. Ah, the indefensible enemy blitzkrieg. This technique was more prevalent in the age of quarter-munchers where arcade makers needed to extend profits at the expense of cheap gameplay, but any remnants of this move should be completely abolished from interactive entertainment.

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.

Subtitles!

[machinecraig]

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???"

But also let us pause the cutscenes...

[Ted Stevens]

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!

Yes, but..

[\\]

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?

I'd Include

[Greyfox]

Never throw the player into a boss fight they absolutely can't win. The JRPGs in particular are fond of making you fight a boss early on in the game with absolutely no possible way you can win. It's annoying and unnecessary to do so. It's strange how this is handled with varying degrees of competence in the same game. Suikodan III, for example, lets you level up early on and win several of those fights you're supposed to lose. One of the characters will call you a cheater if you beat him. Later on in the game though you fight a duel with a guy and it's impossible to win it.

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.

controls

[JoshJ]

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

NetHack

[tepples]

I would consider the Holy Grail to be a game with a storyline, in which you cannot use information gained in a previous game, in a new one, nor retain useful information past a reload. NetHack: Levels are random. Saving is automatic. Death is permanent.

The KoTOR Scenario

[GMFTatsujin]

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.