Visibility

One element of some games that sometimes seems to be an afterthought, is the idea of visibility for the player.  Primarily I'm talking about the visibility of the User Interface (UI) elements.  Part of the reason for this perhaps, is that if the UI in a game is good enough you really don't have to think about it.  The reason you don't have to think about the UI?  Because it's easy to read, understand, and just continue playing the game.  Deciphering what the UI is telling you should not be a chore.  The difficulty of your game should never be artificially inflated because it's impossible to read information that you absolutely need to play the game.

The first thing to keep in mind that a game is NOT generally a static image.  Sometimes there are a few dozen things on screen that are all demanding your attention.  When all of the action is happening on screen, the player's biggest stress shouldn't be trying to figure out what the near invisible UI reads.

How annoying is this text to read?  Wouldn't you love to make quick decision based on information you could only read this quickly?

Whether you can read it or not isn't the point.  Most of the time you CAN read it.  It's just significantly more difficult and takes substantially more time than it otherwise would.  Colors and designs that you use should be a conscious and very deliberate choice, and not an afterthought.  I'll see other Design students who make posters, and then put dark text onto a dark background and to me that speaks volumes about whatever game you're working on.  Some people people might think that's unfair but in truth, if I can't even read a static image like a poster easily why would anyone assume that your games will be any better?

 

 

Posted on Aug 7, 2015 10:22:13 AM by Admin in Blogs, in User Interface, in visibility, in Game Studies

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