Game UI Analysis
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.
Usability of UI is an intensely personal issue, in my experience. One of the great successes of World of Warcraft (WoW)comes not from the stock UI, but from the multiple addons and UI’s that allow WoW’s users to customize the UI to their desires. Immersion can be maintained using these custom UI’s and WoW’s great success with the extensible nature of it’s UI can be ported over to learning systems as they are designed, which allows users to maintain their immersion, and thus enhance their retention of information.
Exactly! It would be nice to see more learning-oriented software (lms, cms, other systems) take this approach. I recently had a discussion with a friend that relates to your comment about the usability of a UI being intensely personal. That also holds true for your entire desktop OS. A friend of mine hates using other people’s computers for anything, because he feels it’s such a personal device that it just feels…wrong. Especially if you’re someone that runs a lot of custom widgets or other additional utilities on your machine.