Games: Interfaces and Interaction

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Earl Watkins
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1 Games: Interfaces and Interaction

2 Games are big business Games industry worldwide: around $40bn About the size of Microsoft Electronic Arts had $3bn revenue in 2006, world s 3rd largest games company A punishing industry, particularly for small firms Publishers fund games, Studios build them Only 1 in 10 games make any serious money So very, very, very easy for studios to go out of business 2

3 from the evolution of mario nfg.2y.net/games/mariosprites/ 3

4 Games often drive hardware upgrades Provide great pleasure... but also still an immature or developing medium Still in the early days - in the era of silent movies? Technological advances, but most still play the same old kind of games Male dominated in industry & content Breakthrough product - The Sims, played 50:50 men:women Sport & war dominate as themes (although not in Japan) 4

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6 Game Design Workshop: Designing, Prototyping and Playtesting Games Tracy Fullerton, Chris Swain 6

7 Designing the UI of games Games often suffer from bad UI design e.g. how long does it take to get to the game? Why does it keep asking me for my name? Why did I just delete my saved game? Games can be killed by bad UI 7

8 Usability recap Ease of learning / ease of use Focus on the task Importance of heuristics Test early, test often paper and pencil prototyping 8

9 ...but games are different Compare with work applications If an application is challenging it is less productive Games aren t fun unless they are challenging Consider a solve problem button Best design for work Worst design for games (a cheat function) 9

10 Common design principles Consistency and visibility of design elements Focus on the task not the tool Let players focus on the game not the controls Recognition not recall, or show don t remember Importance of testing early and often in the design process 10

11 Usability testing Different from playtesting games Pencil and paper mockups or low fidelity mockups on the screen Excellent way of catching mistakes Iterative design 50% improvement in design each iteration 11

12 Types of game interface Mouse and keyboard Usually GUI-based, like standard windows interface Some common elements e.g. WASD for 1st/3rd-person games Complex controls, commands and manipulations At extreme in strategy games e.g. Warcraft Joystick/joypad interfaces e.g. Playstation New sensor-based interfaces Pressure sensors: Dance Dance Revolution Accelerometers: Wii GPS etc.: ubicomp games e.g. Treasure 12

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16 Dance Dance Revolution 16

17 Strategy games Many similarities with designing application interfaces Need to break with windows to provide an attractive in game environment, but don t change the behaviour of the interface Stick with the standard interface but use game conventions Metaphors abound... Test the interface 17

18 Control mapping What keys do what? Too often hidden May be a natural mapping but also watch (and copy) what other games do Don t be scared to put things on the screen 18

19 3D games Big innovation: keyboard and mouse play Many games now 3D MoGs - multiplayer online games big growth area, in particular massive multiplayer online games (Everquest, World of Warcraft, etc.) 19

20 Viewpoint Side view or bird s eye view Isometric view Three axes equally foreshortened First person view Third person view 20

21 Side view or bird s eye view 21

22 Isometric 22

23 First person 23

24 Third person 24

25 Multiplayer online games Problems in human-computer interaction become problems with human-computercomputer-human interaction What are you looking at? Talking about objects Visibility of actions to others Tell hell 25

26 Fragmented interaction Hindmarsh & Fraser s experiments with furniture world (1998) default embodiment and simplified its default interface. The Furniture World Interface Crude system but clearly demonstrated the problems faced in current game environments 26

27 Example 5: D30/1/98-15:54:25-VP:P P: Do you reckon it might be better if we moved the TV over by the fireplace? (.) R: By the fireplace? P: Yeah [in the cor- R: [Is there a fireplace in here? ((R Rotates)) P: In the cor- yeah you re facing it now. fireplace. Compare their viewpoints below: Pete s View Rick s View 27

28 Tell hell A lot of these games are about interaction and talk But the support for talk is often relatively crude compared to face to face interaction e.g. you don t get to see what someone is typing until they ve typed a whole line People take part in multiple conversations at one time - type the wrong thing into the wrong window 28

29 Good things games do: lessons for HCI Visual and interaction design Often far superior to everyday work applications Deep customisability Give users the power to modify and extend any aspect of the UI, and allow them to share those modifications (e.g. modding) Fluid system-human interaction Communicate information to users in ways that do not demand attention and do not interrupt the flow of activity Learning by watching Help people learn the application by watching over the shoulder of more experienced users as they play Effortless community Easy to form, join and participate in communities of users 29

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33 Counter-Strike Modification of another game (Half-Life) The most widely played first person shooter 6 billion minutes of play per month 33

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35 Good things that games do: by-products ESP game: von Ahn et al, Cornell University Human computation and games that get people to do things that computers can t do, e.g. tag images for indexing and accessibility Show two people who are playing the game (and don t know each other) a picture Ask them to come up with a tag. If they get the same tag as the other person then they win, otherwise they lose A list of can t use words 35

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37 With 5000 players playing the game all the images on the Internet would be tagged in 31 days, as a by-product of their play Could apply this technique broadly to many categorisation and mapping tasks e.g. finding inappropriate content, mapping wifi and GPS coverage: Treasure Hot topic in research and commerce 37

38 Summary Games are big business Usability in games: same as usability elsewhere Consistency, visibility, task, testing Many types of game and game interface Mouse + keyboard, Joypad etc., sensors... Multiplayer games mean CSCW design issues HCI/CSCW can learn a lot from games too New design areas just opening up Ubicomp games, and games with by-products 38

Gaming. not just for kids! Gaming & your Library. 42% of all adults own a console. Almost 2/3 of adults own a console

Gaming. not just for kids! Gaming & your Library. 42% of all adults own a console. Almost 2/3 of adults own a console Gaming & your Library Scott Kehoe, Advisor - Technology Specialist Massachusetts Library System (MLS), Waltham, Mass. 866-627-7228 x308 / scott@masslibsystem.org / www.masslibsystem.org IM me on AIM -