21st Century Game design

Chris Bateman and Richard Boon, 2006, 21st century Game Design, Charles River Media

For reading this book I focused on Chapter 7, Principles of Interface Design, page 123-147. Here are the notes I made and things I found interesting.

A weak, disorganized or overly complex interface is a barrier to enjoyment for all players, and therefore every interface should strive to be as simple as is feasible to express the required game actions.

Five Golden Rules: Be consistent, Use the simplest interface feasible for the game play, Draw from the familiar, One button, one function, Structure the learning curve.

Five cautions: Shortcuts are for advanced users only, icons for speed, text for clarity, Allow skipping of non-interactive sequences, Provide options and save options, Document it.

Learning curve: Adjust the curve to your audience. Gradually introducing, easy to learn hard to master, prior knowledge influencing the curve.

Action depth: The amount of sub actions needed to perform an action. The action depth should always be as low as possible. Minimizing action depth makes the interface easy to learn and fast to navigate and minimizes player frustration. 

Tutorials: Control Flashcard, Training movie, Linear Exercises, Goal oriented tutorials, Help signs, Imbedded manual, Context sensitive Commentary, Checklist with prompts, Staggered complexity.

The designing of interfaces should be done with the target audience in mind. Hardcore players actively require character actions to deliver a sense of competence and might be frustrated when the game offers them insufficient options for controlling their character. Conversely Casual players require simplicity and generally want an interface that favors mimicry.