Virtual Learning Worlds

Game designer Marcus Andrews recently authored a nice user-interface (UI) article over on gamasutura. The article breaks down UIs from several popular games over the last few years, including Far Cry 2, Team Fortress 2, Dead Space and World of Warcraft. The article begins by breaking down 4 distinct UI categories, but the bulk of the article deals with diegetic vs. non-diegetic interface elements. Diegetic elements are those that are rendered in the game world, where your character or avatar is aware of them. For instance, when you check the map in Far Cry 2, your character actually gets out a map and the camera zooms to specific interest points. In a non-diegetic fashion, the player might press “M” for the map, and the game will pause and bring a map up over the game world (like in Bioshock and many other games).

The article is worth reading to get a sense of how different, extremely popular games put together UI’s, some diegetic, some non-diegetic and some mixed. Ultimately, Marcus delves into the value of a diegetic UI, and if it leads to more immersion.

The success of World of Warcraft sends a strong signal that immersion might not, or at least not always, be in the consumer’s best interest. Maybe they just want to perform at the peak of their ability in harmony with the game.

I couldn’t agree more. A game should strive to be a good game, first and foremost. For me, I do not believe immersion is tightly tethered to a UI category or the quality of graphics. I still consider the original Doom and Contra to be some of the most immersive games I’ve every played.

Immersion has been a huge focal point in the last 10 years with games, but designers really need to be cognizant of what to sacrifice vs. what to maintain when trying to create a highly immersive environment. The same holds true for those of us designing games or simulations for learning. How accurate do our environments need to be to immerse the learners? Should we give up some of the immersive qualities to make the environment easier to navigate and work within? I don’t think there is a clear cut answer here, much the same as there is no clear answer to the usability vs. familiarity balance when using 3D virtual spaces for learning.

My first attempts at a PhD study provided great learning experiences, but ultimately did not work out. Why? Well, in proposal 1 I wanted to study motivation and engagement as it pertains to educational simulations. Not the easiest stuff to measure quantitatively. Next up was a study using the same simulation, but trying to measure user Flow (Csíkszentmihályi). This was even MORE challenging to measure. I’m still very interested in these three variables (motivation, engagement and flow), how games foster these mental states, and how we can try to mimic some of this in education.

With that in mind, I finally dug up the URL for a great story from Game Developer Magazine: Shoot to Thrill: A study of bio-sensory reactions to 3D shooting games. The purpose of the study:

As part of our research activities at EmSense, a San Francisco-based company that uses proprietary brain monitoring EEG and bio-sensing technology to measure engagement and emotional and cognitive responses to content, we set out to understand exactly what defined the successful modern, next-gen shooter title.

Where does it engage, and where doesn’t it?

Too bad I don’t have access to brain monitoring EEG equipment, or maybe I would be Dr. Pursel already! The games they used: Battlefield 2142, Call of Duty 3, F.E.A.R., Gears of War, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2, Resistance: Fall of Man, Halo 2, Half-Life 2.

You can hit the article for the entire read (I highly recommend it, when do you actually see scientific, bio-sensory data measuring engagement?), but some items worth pointing out:

• Cut scenes are not always a bad thing. They do not work very well if you’re just providing basic information that players could find elsewhere in the game, but if you are using scenes for new plot twists or other emotional elements of the game, players react positively.
• Tutorials need to be integrated into the combat. I think this is something that games are finally doing well, but other disciplines still do a horrific job. When I turn a game on (or start a piece of software for the first time), I DO NOT want to be forced to read a 100+ page manual, or walk through an hour of tutorials. I want to try and USE the software out of the box, and I hope it’s smart enough to guide me along with the basics when I begin. This somewhat relates to what I call ‘phased interfaces‘, where the designers purposefully start the user with a basic UI to master, and open additional features and functionality as users master the basics. Other great examples include iPhone setup and registration out-of-the-box and newer television that walk you through basic setup the first time you turn the TV on.
• There is no formula for the creation of engaging media, only trends. It takes a mix of incorporating positive trends,a bit of creativity and attention to detail to create engaging media…and even then, there’s no guarantee.

The folks over at Kongregate posted a nice flash game called “Hunted Forever“. It’s hard to describe…it has a context like Portal, plays like Braid and has a feel similar to what I see in Mirror’s Edge videos.

A couple standout points from the game:

• Directions and hints. These items are often found either in a separate menu or on loading screens. Hunted Forever embeds this content in the early part of the first level in the terrain. The first time you walk up to a cliff, you’re standing on a sign that points out “no fall damage”. Lots of good examples on how to embed direction/navigation within the actual gameplay.
• The flow of the game. It just feels very fluid. You’re character easily shifts in mid-air, wall jumps, and swings throughout the level with ease. The balance between the sensitivity of the controls and the automatic acrobatics makes for a very fluid experience.

Over the holidays, I hooked up my xbox wireless adapter for the first time and began rummaging through xbox live in search of new Rock Band tunes. I quickly found myself searching a vast array of content, mostly demos and trying to find freebie content. This isn’t the first time I’ve been on Live, but it is the first time I’ve been able to simply surf. The main thing that jumped out at me: The Interface.

Overall, I like it, but it can be intimidating at first. I got lost looking for Rock Band content at one point because a few songs were in the “feature” area, a few were in the “new release” area, but I couldn’t find the bulk of the songs. I eventually went to “all games”, found Rock Band, then found the 41 songs I could download (and no, I didn’t download all 41 songs!).

The Rock Band UI for downloadable content is…lacking. When a song is highlighted, in the lower right of the screen a text box appears with content about that song. In many instances, you can only see the name of the song in the box until it begins to auto-scroll. Yes, auto-scroll. Imagine being on a website with a scroll bar that you can’t control. Frustrating. Once the scroll begins, you finally see the artist. As I waited, I just assumed a small preview clip of the song would play. This did not happen. They need to find a way to provide the artist information as well as a small audio preview when a user scrolls over the song. The way it currently is now, I had to sit with my laptop open and hit YouTube for every song to see if I liked it or not. (NOTE: I couldn’t find a page on the web with a listing of all Rock Band downloadable content + links to either YouTube or an audio preview…this page MUST exist?)

My brother also picked up an xbox for his daughters (and partially for himself) with a wireless adapter. The first time he got on Live, he was overwhelmed. All he wanted to do was look for GH and Rock Band songs, nothing else. For the ‘casual’ gamers out there who have consoles and only play a handful of games, Xbox Live is a daunting, complex system that can take a while to sort out.

Two potential improvements:
1. Downloadable content for a game should be accessible via the game menu itself. For instance, I should be able to pull up a list of all DL content for Rock Band within the Rock Band menu structure. As long as I have MS points, I should be able to download straight from here. Stubb’s mentioned that a lot of games do this already, why not try and standardize on this?

2. Create some sort of phased interface system. Upon entering Xbox Live for the first time, provide the user with a quick survey to get a better understanding of his/her needs. Based on the survey, only provide the relevant Xbox Live tabs and menu items. Of course the full feature set can always be accessible by anyone, maybe via preferences, but for the casual or newbie folks…why does this have to be so complex and, at times, frustrating?