I spoke to Ian Marsh, one half of Nimblebit, who have had numerous iPhone hits beyond their success with Tiny Tower, including Scoops, Pocket Frogs, Textropolis and more. Ian shared his insight into how understanding player behaviour affects the development of a popular iOS game, and the idiosyncracies of testing with free-to-play mechanics.

A small tower

- Have you been keeping track on people’s reactions to your game since release?

Certainly, we keep a close watch on people’s response to the game through monitoring twitter, app store reviews, various forums, and feedback sent directly to us.

- What’s your opinion of the comment’s you’ve been receiving since Tiny Tower’s launch? Have people ‘got’ it?

It has been a very warm reception. We’ve been pretty blown away by the number of people really embracing the game, and very surprised at how little negative feedback there has been.

- Did you let anyone play your game before release? Did their actions/feedback influence your design at all?

We ran a very transformative private beta involving around 30 people. We learned a lot and made a lot of changes to refine the experience. There will always be aspects of a game that the developers are blind to for one reason or another so getting other people involved during development is essential. (NB: Ian asked players for qualitative based feedback, shared through a forum thread)

- Did you take any conscious steps to test the F2P elements with players?

An enjoyable free experience is the most important thing to us so we usually beta test the game without IAP functionality. This lets us balance the game for free players first, then layer on the IAP in a way that is entirely optional for the player.

some minature shops

- When you update the game, is it based on feedback you’ve received?

We certainly take all feedback to heart and it sometimes leads to new features, but we’re usually working on or have already considered most features that people suggest.

- How far do you think the game was (and is) lead by your own initial inspiration, and how much has been subject to changes based on player reactions to initial builds?

The game changed quite a bit during the beta period. The main goals and idea of the game remained the same but we were able to change certain systems and tweak progression to keep people more engaged, maximize the fun parts, and minimize the boring bits.

- Looking into the indie/mobile games industry as a whole how do you feel the idea of user-inspired development is being received? Is it still the culture of ‘design is law’ and superstar developers such as John Romero.

I think developers should always listen to criticism and feedback for their games but a good developer has a clear vision of what their game should be and knows whether it would actually improve the game or not. There is always the chance that someone will come up with a good idea that simply never crossed your mind.

Ian’s given some really interesting insights into the current debate over player-led vs designer-led game design, and how free-to-play mechanics should come second to a positive user experience. Their obvious success in this area implies they are on the right track, and we’re all looking forward to seeing what they come out with next!

Tiny Tower is available from the iOS App Store

Related posts:

1. Valve’s philosophy with User Research in Games (Gabe Newell & Mike Ambinder)
2. Games User Research Review of 2011
3. Erik Rothoff Andersson (Kick Ass) on testing with users & why you shouldn’t listen to what users say!

Today I’ll be looking at the first 5 minutes of a successful social game, and highlighting which elements have made this game successful. In the future we’ll look at some games which have missed the point, and hence lost a large proportion of their customer base. From this, we can learn how to make an addictive social game.

The Game

The game we were originally going to study was intended to be Farmville, since Farmville is famously the ‘poster-child’ of social gaming success. However it wanted me to connect with my facebook account, and wouldn’t let me play without doing so. Game over!  (Presumably this is just an annoyance to me however, and hasn’t stopped the game’s success)

Instead, I looked at the ‘Top Grossing’ iPhone apps, and found ‘Smurf’s Village’. Like farmville, it’s a landforming game, where the player has to create a new village for the Smurfs, and look after their crops. Most importantly, it’s free, yet still a top-grossing app – clearly a sign of it’s continued success. (or was it all the work of this kid charging $1400 to their parents credit card) So, what happens in the first 5 minutes of Smurf’s Village?

The Experience

The first thing that happens when running the game is that it asks if I want to hook it up to facebook. This is a key business goal for the app developer, since it increases awareness of the game and is a key element to how social games work. Importantly for the user experience however, it is optional (unlike Farmville). I declined at this time:

Linking with facebook

After a very short introductory story, explaining why the Smurfs are moving, the game drops you straight into making a new village. With clear directions, the game tells me to click on the sign and lay a plot of land:

Planting a field

And with that, I get an immediate positive reaction “Quest complete”, and reinforcement of the lesson I just learnt:

Quest Complete

Now the same happens again with ‘growing blueberrys’, where an arrow clearly indicates what I need to do, and I’m given positive reinforcement having completed this task:

Planting berries...

And with that, a level up is gained:

Level up!

The game goes on, with the next level teaching you how to build a house, and crucially linking speeded up progress with using smurfberrys. Since smurfberries are the games in-app-purchase, and hence the primary method the developer makes money, this is an important link to make early on:

In app purchases

This earns me another level up. The game then goes on to repeat this to teach me how to build grass, before letting me play a mini-game to break up the monotony. If I were to continue playing beyond the first few minutes, the game would go on to ‘set me free’ and let me use the lesson’s I’ve learnt to continue to build the village unguided.

The Rules

So, what magic rules did we find that led to a successful first 5 minutes with this game?

1. Explain actions one at a time, let the player do them

• The game takes care to only show the player one action at a time, and first describes the task, before guiding them through performing the task themselves, to ensure that players know how to do it. The game then confirms the correct action has taken place after it has been completed, and tells the player what they did.
• By repeating the action numerous times, the game hence reinforces to the player how the action is achieved.

2. Reward the player for performing an action correctly

• When an action has been performed, there are multiple layers of success shown. Not only are there visible indications that the task has taken place, and the player is rewarded with both experience points and a ‘quest complete’ dialog, but the game also levels up the player’s village.
• Hence there is positive reinforcement that the correct action has taken place, causing the player to want to perform it again, much like Peggle’s Ode to Joy

3. Show the player the potential of what they can achieve

• By setting the game after the destruction of the original village, and allowing them to build a new one from the ground-up, this game highlights what can be done by the player if they were to continue playing.
• This message would potentially be reinforced by introducing the social element of the game, for it will be possible to see other player’s complete villages.

4. Let them take control

• After the tutorial period (admittedly longer than the 5 minutes I played for today), the game will hand over the reins to the player, having shown them what’s possible, and give the ability to create solutions in a manner of their own choosing.
• Although there will be continued goals to achieve, the method to achieve these goals becomes more free-form after the tutorial allowing the player to introduce creativity into their gameplay.

All these factors have been an important part of the continued success of this social game. Soon I will look at an alternative, unsuccessful, social game, and note what factors lead to its failure.

Related posts:

1. How to make an addictive strategy game
2. All Change – Apple’s new social gaming network
3. The usability of iPhone’s Game Center

Adding Games

Having been late to the party with game center, many of the games I owned had already been updated with game center functionality. However you wouldn’t know this from game center itself. I opened up the game center app, to find this:

Where are my games?

Oh, I don’t have any game center games. But that’s not right, as I know I do. I guess you have to press “Find game center games”. So I did. And I ended up on the app store. But I don’t want to buy any new games, I just want to use game center with my existing games.

Instead, to add your games to game center, you have to go through and open each game individually before game center will become aware of it. I have a lot of games. This will take some time. Surely Apple should have automated this, making the app automatically scan your phone for relevant games (or even giving an option if they didn’t want it to be automatic!)

Friends

Having successfully added a game, I wanted to find someone to play it with. I went to the friends tab, and was greeted with this:

Just like school all over again

Oh dear, that’s not very friendly. And the call to action (the + symbol up top right) is given very low priority. Surely that should be the first/only thing displayed on this screen if I have no friends. Currently, they’re just being mean.

(That said, anyone want to be my game center friends? I have none!)

Buttons

You may have noticed, in that first screenshot, what buttons look like in game center.

A button?

Since when has the word art ‘banner’ template ever been an appropriate icon for a button? Buttons generally are styled to encourage clicks, hence techniques such as using embossing to give a ‘3d’ effect, giving a depth that implies something push-able.

Instead they’ve decided to use a banner. Surely a banner implies that they are presenting information, like the page’s title, rather than requiring an action to be taken. Hence the ‘Find Game Center Games’ button looks more like information being displayed, and will prevent some users from taking the necessary action to find game center games (although, as described earlier, this button is not particularly helpful anyway!)

Sign-Up

And last of all, my favourite step of the signup process:

Signing up...

Game Center – great idea, but the execution still needs some work!

Related posts:

1. How to make an addictive social game
2. Perfect Dark – Game Usability from the 90’s
3. How real-world game usability testing is changing

What is a social gaming network?

As seen with Xbox Live, or Playstation Home, social gaming networks essentially all do similar things:

• Store high scores, often with leader boards for comparison with other players, by day/week/all time.
• Gives, and records achievements (or trophies) from within the game: meta-objectives which are publically listed on the player’s profile
• Contains a ‘friends’ list, of other players, with messaging facilities so that multiplayer games with these players can be arranged.
• Match finding, allowing the player to find suitable games that match their criteria, or games with friends.

Admittedly not terribly useful in solitaire...

Problems with social gaming networks on the iPhone.

The problems so far with implementation of these networks on the iPhone are caused by the wide number of competing systems.

Unlike the PS3 and Xbox, which each has one social gaming network on their device, Apple had (until last week) refused to act on implementing their own system, which has lead to the rise of many independent systems. Currently popular are: Crystal, Plus+, Openfeint, Agon and a recently announced competing network by Namco. Even ignoring the smaller, less widely implemented systems, there is still too much diffusion here.

Having a large number of competing systems offers an inconsistent user experience, with similar tasks (i.e. adding a friend) being handled differently on each system, which is ultimately detrimental to the player’s experience. Instead of playing the game, players have to spend too much time setting up accounts and adding the same friends from their other iPhone games.

The lack of a centrally imposed quality control means the implementation of these networks into games is rather haphazard. This can be seen with the free version of the iPhone ‘x-ray’ app, which emulates x-raying the player’s hand. The app has recently added Openfeint support, and so has achievements, leaderboards, a friend list, etc. These features don’t correlate with a single player, non-game. What sort of competition can a faux-x-ray have?

Achievement Unlocked: Found Keys

A closer inspection shows that the achievement points are all given for purchasing the paid version of the game. The social gaming network integration just serves to bribe the player with the chance to pay for points and inflate an artificial score (which can be compared to your friend’s score, see Farmville!).

What will Apple’s new system have to do

Apple’s system will have to improve the disjointed player experience that these systems currently give. To properly emulate the success, and ‘flow’ of the PS3 and Xbox’s networks, Apple should be aiming to entirely replace these competing systems.

The advantages of this would include:

• unifying all players under one system to ensure that friends can find each other, play against each other, without being spread across multiple systems
• The players only need to understand one workflow for each task (i.e. adding a friend), rather than learning the process for each system
• The player will only need to sign up once

• Achievement points earned in one game can be shared across all games, rather than just those on the same network, as currently.

Care would also have to be taken to enforce rules to ensure achievement points remain meaningful, by introducing a form of quality control to prevent poor apps from bribing people to download by handing out points cheaply.

When I ran user tests for an iPhone game last year, the openfeint login/sign up screens confused new users, who were just interested in playing the game. Apple will need to make the network invisible to uninterested parties, to prevent this. Perhaps this can link with their itunes ID, but the implementation of this is not obvious:- families often share an itunes ID across many devices

By introducing their own network, Apple have the opportunity to achieve a consistent, and hence improved, user experience when playing using the iPhone’s social gaming networks, and can only help things get better!

Related posts:

1. How to make an addictive social game
2. The usability of iPhone’s Game Center
3. Desperation & Disappointment: Social interaction in We Dare

Oh no – its playing the Marble Zone theme at full volume! We’ve been foiled, and you’ll never get the sandwiches now!

So what went wrong? Despite having the phone set to silent, the game still had sound. Depending on how diligent the coders were, this has been an issue with the iPhone for a while, as the iPhone won’t automatically silence apps when set to silent – this has to be manually coded. Quick ports or just forgetful coders (usually working in small teams) can miss this.

This becomes an issue because of user expectations – they’d expect the silent switch to work globally, and will be surprised and frustrated when this isn’t the case. As seen in the scenario above, it can lead to the user being embarrassed and worse of all (according to Alan Cooper) feeling stupid!

It’s not simply a ‘design choice’, as a logical look at the situation will tell us. Not only would manually setting the desired volume settings inside an application duplicate functionality that is already implemented in a much more functional manner on the device itself, but I can also think of no scenario where a user would want their phone on silent, but their game to make sounds. It’s just poor design.

So in summary… just don’t do it app designers!

(Also while you’re at it, let me listen to my own music in game!)

Who does this well?

 A lot of games to be honest, as its not really a ‘do well’ thing, rather its just done or not done. So lets talk about Doom Classic, as it does do this. John Carmack’s finally (6 months after it was “almost ready”) released his port of the original Doom for the iPhone. Control issues aside, it’s a faithful port, and includes WiFi multiplayer. Its Doom, so you know what you’re getting, and its just as fun as it was 15 years ago. More relevant, it does respect the silent switch on your iPhone, so I’m justified in talking about it here! We’re all looking forward to when Carmack starts on his port of Quake.

Who does this badly?

Hook Champ, from Rocket Cat Games, is a fun platformer where the only means of getting anywhere fast involves swinging from the ceiling, over lava, through brick walls and away from the scary cursed..fish thing. Its fun, recreating the opening scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s just a pity that the game ignores your silent switch, and so plays at full volume regardless of your iPhone’s settings. You can set the volume in game. But you shouldn’t have too. A disappointing oversight!

Another offender is Sonic 1, but I didn’t feature that as I’ve already talked about it in a previous post (link to previous post). Oh dear!

Also, just quickly, thanks to Brian Franklin from WebHostingSearch for featuring this blog in their ’20 Great UX blogs’. Rather unexpected, but thanks!

Related posts:

1. Controls should be appropriate to the iPhone’s input methods (shake now!)
2. iPhone games should not be interrupted by calls.
3. iPhone Game Design Heuristics

PopCap, they of Peggle and Plants Vs Zombies, commissioned a survey on where most people play mobile games. Results showed that men play more at work (28%) than women (17%). They were also asked when do they play these games. “while waiting for an appointment” came first for both genders, although I imagine this is because “on the toilet” wasn’t an option in the survey (I’m not judging… just saying!). 

waiting for an appointment

What these results show is that people want mobile games to be ‘pick up and play’, and use them to fill time, as opposed to committing a large amount of time to playing them. It is therefore important that game designers facilitate this method of game playing, and make it easy to pick up and play games. The main elements of this are:

• fast start up time (from app load to actually playing)
• low number of extraneous menus to navigate before playing 
• app resumes from where it left off 
• app shuts down quickly, but doesn’t lose progress 

A previous blog post touched on the issue of apps resuming your progress after an exit, and so this topic will focus on the user experience starting (or resuming) a game.

The player, when they start the game, wants to play as soon as possible. Initially they have to sit through a load screen, which beyond the abilities to reduce this by programming optimization is a necessary evil. However, as developers interested in ux, steps should be taken to reduce the number of steps a user has to go through after this to reach the game.

There is a trade off that has to be made here, based on our assumptions of what the user wants to do.  With many types of games we can assume that the user will already be on their right profile, will want to resume a current game, or start a new game. More complex games may have a wider degree of options that they need to present the user (particularly on a first boot). So how do we decide what options the majority of users will require? More effective than experts’ ‘educated guesses’ would be qualitative testing – either through a limited release prior to the app store (I believe apple allows you to distribute your app to 100 people, enough for a good sample group), or through ‘hooks’ in the code of early releases, which will log, and send back, details on user activity. If you then found that 87% of users, on loading a game, went straight to ‘resume game’, you could make the game do this automatically, and reduce their wait.

The design of an effective ‘entry method’ into the game is incredibly well suited to large user tests, based on qualitative tests of user behaviour, and can have an enormous effect on a player’s good will and ‘feeling’ about a game. Put simply, if player’s know that they can load your game quickly, compared to one with a 30 second wait, and 5 menu screens to navigate, they are more likely to pick your game when waiting in a queue or for a meeting.

"anyone for peggle?"

 Who does it well?

Textropolis

Textropolis, the word guessing game by Ian Marsh. Click on the app, and after a short load screen you’re playing the game – no menu options (obviously you can get back to the menu, but the game assumes, correctly, that most players will not need this). The nature of the game (no time crucial element), lend the game to a quick start, so this is also a fine example of a game design being suited to its platform. The game isn’t lacking in features too – the ability to sign in as separate user profiles exists, the game assumes that you will be less likely to want to do this than just play. Textropolis’ quick start up time would make this game a suitable choice for the sort of quick gaming that Popcap’s user survey says mobile gamers are into.

NB: I was going to feature Geared, the puzzle game by Bryan Mitchell here, as it loads quickly, and I cant remember having seen the title screen (it throws you straight into the game). However when writing this, I realised it doesn’t save your progress on a puzzle when you exit/re-enter, and hence it loses user experience points!

 
Who does it badly?

hero of sparta

Hero of Sparta, the (rather epic) hack and slash game by Gameloft (Think those PS2 Star Wars/LOTR games).

So, we’ve got five minutes before the meeting starts, lets play. App started. A load screen, then a one minute cut scene, ok, I’ve seen it before, so I’ll skip this. Another load screen. A title screen. Touch the screen to continue, ok, I’ll do this.  New game, or Continue. Obviously I want continue, so I select this. Select a chapter. Well, I’ll select the one I’ve been playing on. Great. Another load screen. And I’m in.

That’s a lot of stuff to get through between deciding I want to play, and actually getting to play. Probably one of the reasons why I haven’t devoted much time to playing this game.

How could it be improved?

After the first load, I’ll be unlikely to want to watch the opening cutscene again (despite the flashy graphics). The title screen adds needless clicking to my experience. Although I haven’t verified this with testing, I believe the player is likely to select ‘continue’ rather than ‘new game’ after they’ve started playing. And th

Related posts:

1. The importance of usability in Mobile Geolocation games.
2. iPhone games should not be interrupted by calls.
3. 100 Rogues – Playability Heuristics Review

Looking at an iPhone, the immediate thing that strikes most users – compared to other mobile devices – is the lack of buttons. There are 4 in total, and all have very set roles – the power button, the silent switch, the volume control, and the ‘home button’. The home button is the most prominent of these, and sits on the front of the device, below the screen.

All of these buttons are useless for gaming – three have very specific roles, and the home button is exclusively used in the iPhone OS to exit programs and return the user to their ‘home screen’. What this means for gaming is that the device is lacking a critical element that users of consoles have come to rely on – tactile feedback when pressing a button.

Buttons on controllers are important for many reasons.

An Ergonomic Masterpiece

The physical shape and size of buttons are ideally ergonomically placed to make the controller comfortable, and prevent gaming being a painful experience. They should also be placed in places that become intuitive to the user – gamers, like touch typers, should be able to forget about the controller’s physical presence between them and the game, and react naturally to events on the screen without having to think about how to translate their actions through a control pad.

And then theres the iPhone. Game developers aren’t allowed access to any physical buttons for players of their game. They have to innovate (uh-oh!).  Or not.  Some developers, whether its due to the style of game they are trying to present, or just laziness, have just plastered on a ‘on screen joypad’ ontop of their game, with virtual buttons. See, for example, the iPhone port of Duke Nukem 3D.

Lots of buttons!

So that’s 5 virtual buttons, and 4 virtual… test tubes?.. acting as directional controls (two for movement direction, and two for aiming). Obviously the medium of the game (a First Person Shooter), does need a large degree of complex manoeuvres to be performed, but it seems both lazy and ineffective to have these as virtual buttons. Not only does it take up a very large proportion of the small screen’s real estate, but without the physical presence of the buttons, it seems very likely that the wrong buttons will be pressed constantly. This causes the constant need for the player to think about the controls, and will prevent playing from ever becoming truly intuitive. The iPhone does contain tilt sensors, as used in other games as the primary control method, and this could well have been incorporated into the aiming or walking mechanics (although not if you don’t want to draw stares on the bus).

Instead of lazily placing endless virtual directional pads and buttons, developers should be taking the medium into consideration when implementing controls. The iPhone has capability for tilt sensor input, and multi touch (so multiple elements can be selected at once). This has been used successfully to produce games of most formats – in particular Rolando, a tilt platformer, and Doom Resurrection, a tilt FPS being examples of successful implementation of formats traditionally considered to rely on control pads. Moving from a control pad to the iPhone requires novelty and implementing new methods of controlling the games, rather than a simple port. Buttons just don’t work as well without tactile feedback, and totally disregard the other control methods the iPhone allows. As before, I’ll end with an in focus look at two games available on the iPhone, both platformers, one of which successfully implements a suitable control method, one of which fails.

Who does it right?

Rolando, by Handcircus, has been described as the ‘Mario of the iPhone’ (by someone). At heart it’s a traditional platformer, with goals such as getting to the end of the level while overcoming traps, obstacles and enemies. All standard stuff for the genre. However what it does correct is the implementation of this, taking into consideration that it is on the iPhone. To move left or right, the phone is tilted, removing the need for directional controls. A swipe on the screen will cause your character to jump – again no button here. Elements on the screen, such as the lift in the picture, can be manipulated with your finger, which of course your hand is free to do, as you are not restricted by using them to move. So, with Rolando, moving is intuitive, jumping can be done anywhere on the screen, and there is no need for virtual buttons and the problems we’ve identified surrounding them.  

Rolando!

 
Who does it wrong?

Sorry, but its Sonic. Obviously it’s a classic platformer, and an exact port of the version on the master system (so no spin dash!). However the port itself seems lazy – controls being implemented by simply placing a virtual d-pad and jump button on the screen. For a game that involves precision jumping, such as Sonic, this is a huge mistake. Lacking tactile feedback on which direction you are pressing, or whether you have your finger above the jump button, can (and often does) lead to missing jumps, and frustrating deaths. And, with no level-select, three deaths will mean starting the game from the beginning. Ultimately it makes the gaming experience frustrating and removes a lot of the fun that the sonic series used to be about! A design failure.

Sonic for iPhone

I think app store reviewer Mr Intesity puts it best:
 

Score: 2/5

Subject: I am cooking chicken and rice

Review: It’s alright. Its Sonic as you would expect but with dodgy controls. I’ve played it twice, too fiddly to sit and enjoy I found.

Related posts:

1. Shh! iPhone gaming should respect your sound settings
2. iPhone games should not be interrupted by calls.
3. Usability Fail – Worms (and Worms 2)

The most obvious thing that can be said about iPhone gaming, and yet a factor developers commonly miss,  is that it appears on a phone. There are many ramifications from this, such as where a player is likely to be playing (the bathroom?). The focus today though is on the important factor that a phone is likely to receive calls.

Receiving a call

Text messages are handled by the iPhone OS, and appear as a pop up box that can be dismissed, with minimal interruption of the game (and hence needs no input from a developer). However receiving a call will shut down the game and run the phone program regardless whether the call is answered. This is where good design is required to avoid a usability disaster.

 From a technical perspective receiving a call is essentially the same exit process as if the ‘home’ button (the only button on the main page) is pressed. However from a usability perspective, the important difference is that the user has no control over whether they receive calls or not, and so the software has to accommodate this. If the app just ‘drops’ you, without saving the state of play, and then starts the app from fresh when the call is finished/rejected, this is going to negatively effect the user’s experience. They will be unlikely to want to play again, since they will be redoing aspects of the game they thought had been completed earlier. Furthermore the fear that they will receive more calls, and thus lose progress, is going to be a lasting factor, and prevent the user from investing time to continue.

 It is therefore important for iPhone game designers to consider that the medium is going to lead to unexpected interruptions to game play, and provide a solution which will accommodate this.

Who does this right?

Scoops

Scoops, the casual ice cream tower building game, successfully implemented this in a later version of their game.

In the initial release a call (or ending the game) would cause the game to restart from the beginning (without saving the high score). Despite being a short game (a typical session would probably be under ten minutes), the game’s only measure of progress is a high score table, and so losing progress like this can easily anger players. This was recognised, and fixed in later versions so that now the game will resume from where it left off after returning from a call. Further to this, the game will start paused so that players returning from a phone call can adequately prepare to resume their gaming session. The designer, Ian Marsh, has ensured that interruptions to game play will not hinder player’s progress in the game.

Who does this wrong?

Alive4ever, the zombie survival game ‘inspired’ by Left4Dead, has recently added a ‘horde’ mode, where users must survive waves of enemies of increasing difficulty in order to unlock additional bonuses.

Unlike Alive4ever’s other modes, where games would be in <5 minute intervals, successfully unlocking all the weapons in the new mode would require playing for over an hour without interruption. If the user intentionally exits the game, or receives a call, their progress in this mode is lost, and the user has to start the hour long session from the beginning. The implications of this are that the user will be unlikely to retry this, and the real enemy becomes not the zombies on screen, but the challenge of not receiving calls for an hour!

Alive 4 Ever. Not Left 4 Dead.

As a little bonus to finish on, here is a gem of an app review, for Scoops.

User: FredsYourUncle 
Score: 1/5
Subject: Fool
Review:  “ Tomatos arnt vegetables “

Related posts:

1. Shh! iPhone gaming should respect your sound settings
2. iPhone Game Design Heuristics
3. Controls should be appropriate to the iPhone’s input methods (shake now!)

Their use is particularly important with the ‘home-grown’ scene of iPhone game design, due to the small size of most development teams. Because a development kit costs only $99, and publishing a game requires no budget (except marketing), the iPhone development scene is a lot more small scale than other mobile platforms, and so often teams (or individuals) cannot afford to employ the most thorough methods of evaluating usability, such as expert review.

It would be useful then to have a series of guidelines that developers can follow to identify good and bad iPhone usability game design issues, which is what I’m attempting to achieve in this series of blog posts. Within each topic, I will aim to cover why it’s important, and provide examples of a correct, and an incorrect implementation. Hopefully this will prove to be a useful resource for iPhone game developers. 

For further reading about mobile phone usability issues, Nokia’s study can be accessed here: Nokia Heuristics Study . It was produced before the development of the iPhone, and hence lacks an up to date perspective, particularly with iPhone specific aspects of usability.

Related posts:

1. Shh! iPhone gaming should respect your sound settings
2. Controls should be appropriate to the iPhone’s input methods (shake now!)
3. 100 Rogues – Playability Heuristics Review