Games as Physical Objects
Games are physical objects. Until we figure out a way to mind-link with computers, we’ll have to use our bodies to interact with them. This means that when designing any system on any machine, the actual way a user will move their body to interact is extremely important. This seems obvious in a lot of ways, I wouldn’t design a menu where the user needs to click the top left of their screen, then the bottom right, every time they want to do a very common action.I wouldn’t design a puzzle game where a user needs to solve a rubix cube every twenty seconds unless I wanted to be intentionally frustrating. Today we’re going to start looking at what this means in relation to the most basic parts of games. I’m not a UX designer, that is an extremely deep field that requires a lot of time, effort, and aesthetic knowledge to master. However, I do think I know something about physically interacting with games, and how to make them less frustrating.
Menus and UI elements are hard, and they can be boring to make. After spending a long amount of time on a game, the last thing I want to do is make a menu that is anything other than some basic buttons. Some people recommend doing the menus first to avoid this problem, but I have never done that and will probably continue to make that mistake forever. This is a mistake because menus are very important for getting players started in a game. Menus and UI are typically the first thing people see, and it should be as easy as possible to get potential players to buy in to playing the thing itself.
The way a menu looks and is organized can shortcut a lot of mental heavy lifting a player needs to do at first glance. This is most easily done well by following standard menu conventions and paying attention to things specific to your game. I would need a good reason in a pause menu to do something other than putting “Resume Game” at the top, and “Quit Game” at the bottom. Sure, I might put different words on those buttons, but that’s where they would go. All the various options and configuration menus will branch off the menu buttons in-between those. I would also probably refrain from putting anything else on the main pause menu screen except maybe a volume slider. Probably nothing that requires a game restart should go in a pause menu, but maybe that comes up often enough that it just has to go in the pause menu for convenince’s sake. The open menu button should also always close the menu. These might not be the optimal ways to do things, but as conventions and rules of thumb, they remove a lot of things a player needs to think about.
All of that previous paragraph is just rules of thumb on where to place buttons and how to organize a menu tree. The buttons themselves can also offer important tactile information. This probably best seen with an airplane cockpit.
Every single button in that video is a different shape, size, or color. The only way for a human to be able to commit all of those functions to memory is to give some mental handles to hold on to. Mnemonics exist for that same reason for mental concepts. To take advantage of this, I’ll make an exit game button a drastically different color than the rest of the buttons, because that should be noticeable (Don’t use bright red though, menus should be usable by color blind people too).
All of this has just been focusing on a pause menu, but it is applicable to any sort of visual element in a game. Things should explain what they are visually, sonically, and how they feel in a tactile sense. It is important to pay attention to things like what sounds players hear. Not everything deserves a klaxon to notify the player, sometimes just a small ping is all that is needed. Perhaps if a player is low on money you can play a cash register noise, or anything, as long as every audio cue is distinct.
All of these details are just small parts of how a player experiences a game. Even in the small snapshot of a pause menu, decisions I would make can be drastically different from what a different designer would make. Is it more important for the quit game button to stand out than for that button’s color scheme to be part of a cohesive whole? Is it more important that a player notices an audio cue or that the audio cue is part of the soundscape? As long as the designer of the game thinks about how a player will take and receive the physical inputs the game gives them, they can remove all the hassle that isn’t the main focus of the experience. I want to spend zero time thinking about menus when I play a game, if I notice your menu for any reason other than liking it aesthetically, it is something to be improved.
Next time I’ll be writing about various controllers and input devices to look more literally at the physical aspects of games. If you want to get in touch with me for any reason, use Twitter.