Finally, the fun of stamp collecting on your console!

What are collectables?

Collectables in modern games are usually items hidden throughout the game world, found when the player deviates slightly from the game’s intended course. They are often thematically linked to the main story of the game, and can unlock achievements, or in game rewards when collected.

In Alan Wake, the primary collectable are coffee flasks, 100 of which are spread across the game world. They give no tangible benefit to the player in game, however collecting them all unlocks an achievement.

These are however not the only collectables in the game. Throughout the game, there are also 50 or so Manuscript pages, each of which unlocks part of a written story linked to the game’s plot. Achievements are also rewarded for finding all of the TV programmes, radio broadcasts and in-game history text scattered throughout the game world.

Seems like a lot, doesn’t it? Let’s look at the reasons why so many collectables have been implemented.

Why are collectables used?

The key reason why the design decision is usually made to implement collectables is because they can directly extend the game’s life span, by slowing the player’s pace. By hiding items throughout every level, with no indication of where they are hidden, the player is required to travel slowly and explore fully to find the collectables.

It also opens up additional replay value in the game, as completists who miss the collectables on a first run through have the additional challenge of replaying the game while getting all the additional achievements.

In Bartle’s player types, collectables seem to appeal to ‘achievers’, who are interested in visible displays of skill (such as the achievement points unlocked for completing these challenges), and ‘explorers’, who like to investigate the game world, by incentivising them to fully explore their surroundings.

What is the problem with collectables?

In the case of Alan Wake, it seems that the developers hadn’t considered the extent of the effect on player behaviour that the implementation of collectables would have. Unlike Sandbox games, which have also embraced collectables, Alan Wake is a story-led ‘survival horror’ game, where the narrative is crucial to the experience.

By implementing collectables, this disrupts the flow and timing of the narrative experience, by forcing the player to explore each area before moving on. This is exacerbated because the player cannot return to an area once they have left, forcing the players to extensively scour each room before moving onto the next.

This has a huge effect on the pacing, and ensures that the ‘experience’ isn’t received as designed.

The 100 coffee flasks suffer from having no sign-posting as to their location, making it incredibly simple for the player to miss one, which is cause endless frustration if the player was attempting to collect one, due to the aforementioned issue of not being able to return to an area. Their entire ‘run through’ of the game would be wasted, and this oversight would only be discovered at the end of a run, which can take 15+ hours.

Finally, the atmosphere and ‘illusion’ of the game world suffers from the implementation of collectables. Alan Wake can only carry 30 revolver bullets – fair enough. However he also has space for 100 flasks of coffee? Strange priorities!

As has been noted in reviews of Arkham City, in story-driven games collectables can often make little sense, negatively altering the experience. Batman only has a few hours to save Gotham – should he really be spending his time searching for trophies?

Gotta Catch 'Em All!

How should collectables be implemented?

In Batman Arkham Asylum, the Riddler had hidden a number of collectable trophies around the game world. To prevent similar issues to those identified with Alan Wake from occurring, a number of steps were taken to mitigate the effect on player experience of these trophies. The player was given a number of clues as to their location, both through a riddle, and through an indication on the map of the general area in which the trophy was hidden.

For a story-driven game, this helps immensely. By indicating to the player when they should be looking for collectables, it reduces the frustration of the player potentially missing a trophy, and only finding out when they reached the end of the game with 99/100 collected. Perhaps more importantly, it ensured that the pacing of the game during story sections was maintained, since the player would only look for trophies when indicated, and could act naturally for the rest of the game. This is in contrast to Alan Wake, where the player is continually required to search every room, for fear of missing a trophy. It’s also worth noting that in Arkham Asylum the trophies were hidden in areas the player could return to at the end of the game.

Collectables work well in Sandbox games, as the player always has the option of returning to an area. In many other game types, this isn’t possible. Caution should therefore be used when implementing collectables in non-sandbox games, as the effect on player experience will be greatly increased, at the possible detriment to the overall gameplay experience.

Related posts:

1. Get Lost! – Improving player experience through signposting and map design in games.
2. Some great articles on games usability and player experience
3. Improving the Player Experience – How to make great loading screens

Following up from my recent review of the top positive user experience elements in Driver: San Francisco, this week I’ll be looking at the top 5 usability and user experience issues that cause a negative player experience.

For each issue, I’ll also discuss potential fixes that could be implemented in order to create a more positive game playing experience.

Image by wiiloveit (Flickr)

1.  Boost Implementation

Early in the game, the player is given the ability to ‘boost’, gaining a temporary speed advantage, by pushing the left analogue stick up. However, because this shares a control with steering, a number of usability issues occur.

I encountered a large degree of accidental activation, particularly in missions which required precision driving, since I was using the stick to steer also. This accidental activation caused the car to lurch forward, and made completion of the precision driving difficult.

Although it may be a design decision, I also encountered issues with steering while boosting – because the player is required to push the stick forwards, this reduces their ability to steer to the left or right to the same extent.

Instead, the boost control should be mapped to a specific button, which it doesn’t share with any other controls, and hence accidental activation would be minimised.

2. Unclear definition of Mission Goals

Throughout Driver: SF, I found that the game was good at telling the player what their goal was, but not the steps to achieve this. For example, a very early mission finds the player driving an ambulance, and tells the player to “keep the patient’s heart rate above 20”.  The phrasing of this objective implies that the player can take action to raise or sustain the heart rate, however no indication is given to the player towards the game mechanics that can achieve this.

I encountered a similar issue when first running from the cops. The game told me to ‘escape the cops’, yet gave no indication of the techniques or skills needed to achieve this. It was not until I failed the mission where the game explained that the player should “weave through traffic to escape the cops”.

Through improvement of the hint system (detailed further below), and increased communication to the player prior to mission start (for example, on the mission acceptance screen), there is the ability to communicate the techniques required, and guide the player to the successful completion of their mission goal.

3. Hints

In Driver: San Francisco, the player can press a button to see a hint related to their current mission at any time. However my experience of the hint system was that the hints were often unhelpful, and either repeated, or paraphrased the objective. For example, an early mission said “go to the garage”, and the hint was “drive into the garage”.

Objective...

...and its hint.

A player would only be pressing ‘hint’ when they were unsure of how to complete their current objective, and would therefore find no benefit in being told the objective again. Instead, through thorough user testing, and evaluation of the nature of the problems that user’s encounter, it would be possible to anticipate the real problems players have, and provide context relevant hints.

4. The MiniMap

The expanded mini-map

Driver SF’s MiniMap suffers from a few usability issues.  Primarily, even in the expanded view, there is no key to reference what the icons represent. In the screenshot above, it’s evident that there are different mission types (a flag, a star, a padlock, lightning?), however the player has no ability to discern what each of these icons refer to.

Secondly, no indication is given on this map view of the relative differences in distance between each mission. Should the player be using this screen to decide what mission to complete next, they are not given the full information required to make an informed judgement.  This could easily be resolved by using transparency to indicate each map item’s relative distance to the player.

Finally, one of the icons on the screen is a padlock. If the player travels to this area, they will find that they cannot do anything once they arrive there. The mission is locked. As the player cannot interact with this area, there is no reason to indicate it as a place of interest on the map, since this will only potentially cause the player to travel there unnecessarily.

5. Investigation Screen

The investigation screen

Finally, I was confused by the investigation screen. This page was accessible from the main menu, and (likely) intended to sum up the plot so far. Pictured above is the investigation screen after two hours of game play.

This screen offers no interactivity, and is exactly as pictured above. The pictures aren’t selectable, and there is no additional information. This page therefore fails to communicate the story, or serve as a reminder for what the player has learned so far. To improve it, each item should be selectable, and offer increased context on what each picture represents, based on what the player has learned through the game’s story so far.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed Driver: SF, however as noted above, it did have a number of usability and user experience issues, which can cause the player experience to suffer. Through increased use of user research to understand and anticipate potential issues, these issues could have been avoided. Jason Avent, formerly of Black Rock Studios has said that user research can add 10% to a metacritic score, which would have pushed Driver SF into the coveted ‘85%+’ bracket.

Related posts:

1. Driver: San Francisco Usability Review (Part 1)
2. This week’s gaming usability roundup – Portal 2, Deus Ex, Driver San Francisco.
3. 100 Rogues – Playability Heuristics Review

now that's just silly

Portal 2

• Entering the evil mirror-universe is not made explicit to the player. Consider giving Chell a goatee for emphasis.
• Asimov did not have a fourth law requiring all turrets to refer to the player as ‘Your Holiness’.
• Inclusion of the companion cube as an inert but playable character in co-op leads to a poor player experience. Consider allowing cube to rock side-to-side.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

I wanted orange, it gave me lemon-lime

• Permanent sunglasses prevent the player from navigating dark areas of the game. License and implement Specsaver’s reactions lenses.
• ‘X’ button is currently mapped to philosophise. This should be auto-activated throughout.
• Tracer Tong is unlikely to be related to Pete Tong. Remove in-game references to his love of Garage and House music.

Driver: San Francisco

• Soundtrack continually loops David Bowie’s Life on Mars. “Next Track” button just increases the volume. Replace with Ashes to Ashes.
• Cars currently talk to the player in the voice of KITT from Knightrider. Appeal to a wider audience by adding the voices of Brum and Herbie.
• Shifting near the Ghostbusters can cause permanent player death. Replace with a minigame based around Dan Aykroyd trying to convince Bill Murray to be in a 3^rd film.

Barbie’s Dream Adventure

• Ability to put injured citizens out of their misery is currently context dependent based on player’s decisions in the ‘pro-life vs pro choice’ round. Allow the player to euthanise civilians throughout.

Related posts:

1. Driver: San Francisco Usability Review (Part 2)
2. Driver: San Francisco Usability Review (Part 1)
3. [Prototype] – Some UX and Usability thoughts.

Today, I’d like to share some articles on usability and user experience in games that I’ve enjoyed recently, in case you missed them. I’d also be interested to hear recommendations of things I should be reading, feel free to leave a comment!

Personality And Play Styles: A Unified Model

@Pejman_MB  shared this one with me, a Gamasutra article summarising the different models out there for defining player motivation. This has been a pivotal aspect of the research I have been working on recently, and is a recommended read for anyone wanting to accurately target games to specific player types.  The article can be found here.

Why Are Tutorials Terrible?

Graham McAllister and Seb Long from Vertical Slice collaborated on an article last week, in Graham’s regular Edge column.  By looking at examples of good and bad tutorials, they help pinpoint what it is that successfully teaches players how to play your game. Read on here.

Some Hows And Whys Of Usability Testing

@EmeraldSong  gave a great introduction to usability testing in games, highlighting how it can be invaluable throughout the development process , can find issues missed in other forms of playtesting , and can be done on a budget. Gamasutra has more.

Resetting Accessibility in Games

Mike Ambinder from Valve software, who was featured in this blog last week, has been interviewed in more depth about Valve’s take on accessibility, as part of this article by Dennis Scimeca. Mike’s feedback is really insightful for how commercial development can balance the needs of disabled gamers, and can be found on page three of the article here.

Scary Game Findings: A Study Of Horror Games And Their Players

Finally, Gamasutra also featured an article on Vertical Slice’s novel application of biofeedback techniques to try and understand what makes a game scary. Originally appearing in Xbox magazine, this article features examples of five scary games, and works out what makes them tick! Read more on Gamasutra.

That’s all for this week!

Related posts:

1. Valve’s philosophy with User Research in Games (Gabe Newell & Mike Ambinder)
2. Improving the Player Experience – How to make great loading screens
3. Get Lost! – Improving player experience through signposting and map design in games.

Blammo!

It’d be fair to say Prototype is an ‘average’ game, having received 78% on metacritic (it’s sad that this counts as average, but that’s inflated review scores for you!). It does some things fantastically, and obviously has sold well enough for a sequel to be in development. So, what impressed me?

The Best of Prototype

Relatively early on in the game, the player gets the ability to glide, with subsequent upgrades increasing their potential mobility while in the air. The glide ability is successful in both appearing in-context of a superhero game, and allowing the player to navigate the game world quickly and reach destinations in an appropriate time. By giving the player great freedom of mobility, this reduces the time between the player’s missions, prevents the game feeling ‘sluggish’ and avoids issues with difficult navigation that have been found in many open-world games.

As an anti-hero, the protagonist of Prototype, Jim SomeGuy, has a habit of eating people. The ability to gain health by eating NPCs works in the context of the game, and ensures that the player is never ‘stuck’ without the ability to gain sufficient health to complete their mission, due to the prevalence of both enemies and civilians. As a method of healing the player, it is less dependent on suspension of disbelief than a shower of health packs, and more unique than the health regeneration seen in many modern games. However eating an NPC requires the player to stand still, often making it impossible to heal while being ganked by enemies – I’d query this design decision, since it significally heightens the game’s difficulty.

The Worst of Prototype

You wouldn't like him when he's angry

 As in many games, progress in missions gives you money to upgrade your abilities. However when upgrading the player’s abilities through the in-game menus, the upgrade structure is unclear, both in its UI and its execution. When abilities (such as the ‘overdrive’ ability) are dependent on other skills to be useful (i.e. it must be partnered with specific other powers), this is not indicated and allows the player to buy a potentially useless ability. When purchased, the execution of new abilities is taught through a description of what buttons to press, lacking crucial information on timing and context of successful activation.

A minor annoyance is the range of UI issues in the menu presented on start-up. Prior to loading the main menu, the game requires the player to press to continue past a pop-up dialogue – a needless delay. The menu also highlights ‘New Game’s as the first option, despite the use-case for ‘Load Game’ being a lot more common. The game knows if you have a saved game, and could highlight the appropriate option automatically. Minor annoyances like this are an easy fix, and should have been picked up during development.

Conclusion

Prototype has a huge amount of potential, and is undoubtedly fun to play. Compared to other open-world games I’ve played, it seems to have extensive variety and some unique game mechanics, such as eating people to disguise as them, which help to keep it compelling . However, a number of small issues with the UI let it down, and detract from the player experience. More extensive user testing, throughout the development process, would pick up these ‘quick-wins’, and could knock the game’s metacritic score into the 80s or above!

Related posts:

1. Usability Thoughts – Mass Effect
2. The importance of usability in Mobile Geolocation games.
3. Driver: San Francisco Usability Review (Part 1)

Today I’ll look at the major usability problem in this game, and how it would be fixed if Perfect Dark was made today!

When playing Perfect Dark, the immediate difference I noted to current-gen games was how long I spent lost, with little idea of where I should be heading, and with a severe risk of failing or missing objectives without any prior-knowledge.

Level Design - Then and Now

As is obvious in the picture above, level design has changed. In the nineties it was common to make the player trek endlessly through corridors, searching out key codes or objectives to extend the playing time of the game.

Throughout the game, Perfect Dark is guilty of this, leaving the player to wander endlessly through corridors with an ill-defined objective, only randomly stumbling upon the item they need to proceed. This is particularly evident in the plane crash level, where the player is left in an arctic tundra to search for a “medical scanner” (without mention that it looks like a suitcase), with no direction as to where this can be found across the miles of map, and no ‘signposting’ to indicate when the player is close.

Later on, the player is exploring a boat and has to trawl up and down endless staircases and corridors. Without visible landmarks, the player quickly becomes disorientated, and can only tell if they’ve walked through an area before by the bullet holes in the wall…

How would Perfect Dark be different today?

Games today are a lot better at guiding the player, since the player’s experience while enjoying the game has become more important than the game’s longevity.  How to do this correctly is the sort of thing usability can solve.

Perfect Dark's secret shout out to Usability Testing

Focusing on the player experience has lead to the creation of a ‘toolkit’ for games that can be used to direct player attention to specific items, a few of which I’ve listed here:

• Audio cues
  • Either a narrative voiceover or having key in-game objects make distinct noises can help guide the player
  • Best used in combination with other cues, since players often play without sound on, and for accessibility reasons!
• Visual cues
• Literal, or metaphorical signposts can indicate which way a player should be heading.
• Landmarks, and visually distinct areas, help players to orientate themselves.
• Moving objects, and unexpected events can direct player attention to a specific object in the immediate area.
• Maps
• Allowing the player to access a map, and place waypoints, can help them to navigate large areas without getting lost.
• It’s also useful to highlight unexplored areas, to give the player an indication of where they are yet to explore
• Mark key objectives on the map
• Checkpoints
• Checkpoints can give the player an indication that the path they are taking is correct, and reassure them that they are making progress.
• It can also allow them to go back and retry if they do feel like they are in an unrecoverable situation.
• Barriers
• If the player will not need to backtrack to a specific section, and has completed the objectives for that area, prevent them from going back
• This limits the playing field to only the relevant areas, and constrains how lost a player can get!
• Works best if the barrier is presented using in-game devices (no invisible walls!)

Any, or all of these in combination, can lead to a better player experience and overcome major usability issues around player attention and goal definition.

Related posts:

1. The thirty minute facebook game usability test
2. Usability Thoughts – Mass Effect
3. Game Usability: Advancing the Player Experience Book Review

Let’s start with some back-story. While in Hong Kong recently, I found the most amazing watch I could possibly imagine. It’s Chairman Mao, and it waves with each second. I had to have it, and bought it straight away from the local market.

Hi There!

Probably because I bought it from a market, it’d broken before I got back to the UK – it wouldn’t wind up, and just stopped waving. I was heartbroken. Watch repair shops refused to touch it (possibly due to the watch’s cheap and nasty nature!). It looked hopeless until I found a shop online which sold the very same watch for just £5. I was once again happy.

Here’s the page I was going to buy it from:

A saving of £25? How could I go wrong? So I added it to my basket:

Oh hey, I get a free ‘thing’ too. What’s that? Doesn’t really matter does it, I still get my watch for £5.

On closer inspection, the other item in the basket is not free. It’s the opposite of free. It’s expensive. It’s a subscription to their ‘RedSave’ programme, which costs £20 a month. Googling RedSave turns up a wide range of complaints about people who have fallen for this scam, and unwittingly signed up for a monthly charge without realising, and ended up with a huge bill.

Removing RedSave from your basket jacks up the price of the watch to £30. So, to buy the watch at a reasonabe price, you have to sign-up for this monthly charge. Because of this, and particularly because this transaction is snuck into your basket without advertising the full terms of the deal, this meets the “sneak into basket” dark pattern discussed by Harry Brignull. This must surely be bad business sense from a customer experience perspective– customers are either going to be unhappy because they were forced to sign up for a subscription, or oblivious to the huge charge they’re racking up – which must be RedSave’s true business goal!

I still haven’t replaced my watch.

You can find more examples of Harry’s Dark Patterns here

Related posts:

1. Perfect Dark – Game Usability from the 90’s

We Dare is a collection of mini-games. The game’s unique selling point is that these mini-games are meant to be risqué, and include activities such as stripping and spanking. This advert on youtube will give you a clear indication on the content in game.  Sexy right? Just like a trip to GAME.

Hot Stuff

In the studies I’ve been working on currently, we’ve tried to define the key behaviours noticed in social situations while playing games. These typically can be divided into categories such as “Sharing awareness”, where the players discuss game mechanics or what’s happening to their player, and “Trash Talk”, where players smack each other’s bitch up. These interactions can typically be found in most multiplayer games, from Mario Kart to Little Big Planet.

However We Dare seems to encourage a whole new group of interactions. Here are some of the potential behaviours you may see while playing:

Avert Eyes

• Can also be combined with “pretend to get a text” or “fake a coughing fit”
• Like that time when you were stuck in the pub with that newly-dating couple, it’s time to bust out this move when you really can’t stand to look at the horror-show in-front of you anymore. Hey, I’d never noticed how interesting the pattern is on the carpet before!

Ironic “I’m into it”

• “Sure I’m playing this game with my brother because I don’t know any girls, but isn’t it funny!”
• Careful about this one , it can be a worrying front – If the host is only playing it ironically, why did they buy the game in the first place?! (twist by M. Night Shyamalan)

Drink to forget

• More of a long term game-plan than a short term interaction, but the pure awkwardness of this ‘swinging-for-dummies’ title may make you want to forget about the entire experience.
• How about taking a shot each time in the evening you wish you’d stayed in school?

Make light conversation

• “Hey, how about that football thing last night, right? What a game. I liked the ….goals”
• Just like your grandma when a sex scene comes on TV, an easy way to deal with your host putting a Wii controller down your trousers is taking a sudden interest in the weather, or anything far far away from the here and now.

Leave

• The nuclear option, for when you can no longer deal with an overweight nerd removing his trousers to show you his Wiimote. Best deployed immediately after someone says “Hey, I’ve got a game we can play….”
• Protip: The only way to keep your dignity when playing We Dare.

Ultimately We Dare seems to have been designed to create a very very creepy experience, and a fascinating field to study! It’s just a shame the game itself is rubbish.

Related posts:

1. multi.player Conference Review – Social Interaction, Bartle and Orcs!
2. How to make an addictive social game
3. All Change – Apple’s new social gaming network

Whats in it?

The book is a collection of design best practices, like so many sourcebooks before it. But Tidwell expands upon this idea, and makes it more than just a sourcebook of design patterns – she also makes important steps in justifying why these patterns are the correct choices with users, as you will see.

Each section is comprised of a list of potential alternative designs for an interface (for example, various ways of having navigation, or a homepage, or a control panel). For each potential design, Tidwell goes through and covers the important questions that you would need to consider – what it is, when to use it, why use it, and how to implement it. This is then followed with interesting examples, linking the abstract concept with relevant examples you will recognise, such as Google or popular news sites.

The book also includes guides on how to do page layout, and alignment correctly and how to display rich and complex data meaningfully, making it a useful guide for most web-based design problems.

Even more interesting is the chapter Tidwell includes on social media. As a emerging field, it is often an area that companies often do not know how to handle, with disastrous results:

How not to do social media...

The first instruction in the chapter on social media is to “listen”. How often have companies failed to grasp this, and used twitter/facebook as a one way channel? Hopefully this mistake is being seen less and less, with individuals and companies using social media as a method to share information in both directions, rather than just another advertising space.

And what of User Experience?

Early on in this book, it makes great leaps in establishing why we are designing for users, how their perspectives can differ from the designers, and how to aid them in completing their goals, not just meeting the ‘features’ they request.

Although the chapter is brief, it does attempt to cover the basic of user testing, observation, surveys and personas in a few paragraphs. Most importantly this chapter is first – the right place for engaging users in the design process! A criticism would be that this section could be fleshed out more, since it only covers the basics, however it’s fair to admit that this isn’t the focus of the book, and praise it for justifying design decisions in user research at all!

An interesting point raised in the book is the idea of creating behaviour patterns, through generalising how people act and designing for those behaviours. As a quick design tool, this is much better than a typical ‘design’s-vision’ approach that many websites will employ.

In summary, Designing Interfaces proves to be a useful design resource for anyone tasked with created a webpage, or application. It shows positive steps forward in the field, by taking user input seriously, and hence is highly recommended!

Related posts:

1. Evaluating User Experience in Games – Book Review
2. Selling Usability by John Rhodes Book Review
3. Effective UI by the EffectiveUI team – Book Review

However there was one area where the port to iPhone fell down, and became a usability nightmare. A main theme in Monkey Island 2 is swapping books at the library to solve puzzles, and the books are found using the card catalogue. The card catalogue is a collection of draws, as can be seen in the background here:

Note this picture is from the classic PC version

Each draw has lots of cards in, as pictured below. There are 207 cards in total in the catalogue.

And around 20 cards in each draw

You poke each card to read it, which can then be swapped for the correct book. The problem? First of all I thought there were only 5 cards in each draw, since that is the number of rows I could see – not realising that each tab was a different card. When I figured that out, the impossibility of the task became obvious.

The iPhone screen is only 5cm wide and 7cm tall. Each of those tabs can only be a few millimetres wide. I don’t have fat sausage fingers with hamburger hands, but I still found it incredibly difficult to select the right tab by poking my iPhone screen (remember the iPhone doesn’t have a stylus, which would be more suited to this type of interaction!).

This made the card catalogue puzzle a lot more difficult than intended, and difficult in the wrong way – surely not the developers aim. A method of cycling through the cards would improve the interaction here, or a large ‘hit space’ for each card. As it stands, the interaction is a legacy from when the game was mouse driven, and doesn’t work.

The only other problem I had with Monkey Island 2 was that I didn’t remember the game at all – apart from the ending! Doh! Amazing game though.

Related posts:

1. Usability Fail – Worms (and Worms 2)
2. Usability Fail – Twitter on iPhone
3. Usability Fail – Lotus Notes