Usability is a theme dear to my heart. I’m a staunch believer that every game should have mappable control buttons and allow me to invert both the X and Y axis. Damn you Final Fantasy XII for ruining my ability to turn left and right correctly the first time!
In that vein, LevelUp’s Gaming Tidbits last week pointed me towards Improving Usability in Games. I fully agree with the points in part 1, with particular emphasis on point 5: Know what the f’k I’m doing.
A player should be able to put down a game for a period of months at a time and still be able to hop right back in. Anything else is self-defeating and counter-productive.
This problem is exactly the reason why I’m so passionate about journal systems in games. It applies to games as simple and linear as Army of Two or as complex and unwieldy as Deux Ex: Invisible War. I and so many other gamers, simply cannot afford to play every day or even every week. When we do find the time to get return to a game after a holiday, (or after a month of Guitar Hero 3 obsession ;) we need to be reminded of what the hell we were trying to achieve before RL got in the way. A simple log of what’s just happened and where we could go next would make our game experience so much happier.
I’m not quite as enamoured with part two of the series but James makes some good points about the advantage of an in-game manual and SD-TV compatibility. Read them yourself at How To Make Games User-Friendly: Part 2
Here we are at the conclusion of my post series on computer RPG journal design. I will admit, I am a usability freak. The one thing that will wind me up faster than anything on earth is software design that isn’t based around the user. This website makes my skin crawl.
Please, cRPG designers, think about the journal early in your game design. Unless your game has all the complexity of Doom 3, a journal can make or break your game. Here is your cut-out-and-keep checklist of things to consider:
This is the fifth part in my ongoing series of articles detailing the essentials to consider when writing a journal for a computer-based role-playing game. The previous parts are:
When I pick up an as-yet-unrevealed quest item, please please please, log it in the journal. I can’t stand it when you find odd items like A Toothbrush with no clue as to its importance. I learned my gaming habits from playing Steve Meretzky games. Did anyone else get caught out by leaving the screwdriver back in Arthur’s house in Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy? Or have their Simpleberry Bush confiscated in Spellcasting 201: The Sorceror’s Applicance? Growing up with those games has left me with a healthy inventory-centric paranoia. Continue Reading
Long-time readers of The Average Gamer may have noticed a certain tendency on my part. Every once in a while I come over all excitable about some aspect of gaming. I’ll write an entire series of posts about it. Then the series stops. Abruptly.
Maps are important. Incredibly important. Even when your game isn’t the size of World of Warcraft. I know, it’s not the sort of thing that gets mentioned in reviews. Trust me, the map feature is sorely missed if it’s not there.
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. If I recall, it didn’t have a map. If it did have a map, it was next-to-useless. Remember that giant bird cage in the menagerie? I climbed all the way to the top of that. Then I went on holiday. When I came back a month later I had no idea where I’d been or where I was going. I spent a few days running around in large but unproductive circles before moving on to a more rewarding game. Seamlessly-blended levels are pretty and immersive but make everything look very samey. Continue Reading
This post is all about fleshing out your RPG journal. Make it useful. I’m not about to tell anyone how to write. Rather, I’ll focus on what to include and what’s safe to discard.
Record everything
RPG quests can be horrifically complex. Well-written dialogue provides a lot of information. Journals for computer role-playing games are there to take some of the strain out of remembering. Don’t forget, us gamers are busy people. Between blogging, learning VB.net, having a social life, household chores and everything else, remembering the fine details of a D&D computer RPG quest is pretty low on the list. It is crucial not to overlook pertinent facts when writing a journal. Here’s a list of things you should include in every quest entry. Continue Reading
RPGs are about a story, a world and your place within that world. In such a non-linear environment, the entire user experience of the story centres around two things - 1) the journal, and 2) the way people treat your character. This post is about the importance of journal structure.
Categorise Everything
Gamers have jobs. Gamers have kids. A lot of us just don’t have the time or inclination to work through pages of chronologically-ordered diary entries hunting for that elusive clue that we overlooked the first time.
That’s what computers are for.
As I said previously, keep the journal entries for finished quests separately from the unfinished ones. Keep the entries for ongoing quest A away from the entries for quest B. Make it easy for the player to find the entry they’re looking for.
This can all be done in a fairly small and simple interface, thanks to the worldwide familiarity of hypertext. It’s handy, that Internet. Failing that, use tabs. Click on headers. I don’t care. Just keep it simple. Continue Reading
RPGs. Role Playing Games. Games where the emphasis is on role-playing and story, choosing what missions to complete and how you complete them.
By their very essence, computer RPGs are complex. You can have five or more different tasks to juggle at the same time and for each task you can choose to do them a different way in order to achieve a different outcome. Gee, what would be useful to keep track of this? Why, a journal of course. How convenient that the game developers provided one for me. Now I don’t need to write everything down and lose it because the game will keep track of all the details, right?
I’m a PC gamer. We have more than 101 keys. We have mice. We have high-resolution monitors. We have a long, long history of RPG interfaces being progressively refined for usability from the crappy-looking Gold Box games to the Ultima series, through Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, Dungeon Siege and Morrowind. So why the FUCK have we been shafted with an interface designed for a 12 button controller? Continue Reading
I’m a PC gamer. We have more than 101 keys. We have mice. We have high-resolution monitors. We have a long, long history of RPG interfaces being progressively refined for usability from the crappy-looking 