Great video! I really don't like the term UX, as it seems to have swapped over from web and app design. In games the focus of UX is much broader due to the nature of the level of interactivity. But it's interesting how insanely important it is for allowing a game(or app) to be enjoyed or even played in the first place. When I researched UI/UX design in games, I came across a very interesting talk from the UX team from Naughtydog on their inventory system in The Last of Us 1. It was incredibly fascinating how important and impactful it was for the overall gaming experience. Instead of just navigating (pure UI basically from a pause screen), it was integrated fluidly so that it basically became a part of the game, as it would allow you to craft in combat without breaking the immersion or flow, while also adding tension as you are crafting things while getting attacked.
100%, i fell into this position on our Indy team and you have to not only work with everyone on the team but basically you know its not quite right when you hear frustration and its usually not even large changes to improve it but you know it's in the right spot when people stop thinking or talking about it at all. UI/ UX can also be a confusion point for the game if an element is technically giving the correct info but can be interpreted in another manner and I think the only way to find those is focus testing. We did our focus testing through EA and I would not show my work to the team till the menu was done internally to get early frustrations out early cause if i said how the menu worked I found I poisoned the well and there would be less friction from the team using the interface but then it would frustrate the players. Doing that also gave the added benefit that the rest of the team really felt the improvements I would make over time and made me feel appreciated for it.
If the UI and UX is done well people will say nothing about UI/UX in the playtests and reviews. If you don't, people will complain about it quite vocally. Our UI lead designer used to say this and now Tim said almost the same thing :) so it has become an universal truth now. I agree this is a bit sad but UI / UX development is still a lot of fun to me. The only time it is annoying is when game designers see UI / UX only as a service to them ("do this or that for me" and "why is it not like I wanted it to be the first time I designed this?") and they don't realize how little they know about the consistency and cohesion of the user experience across the entire game, since they are usually focussed on only certain feature, and that is exactly where UX comes into play: You need to think about these things on a game-wide scale, the player wants to reuse what they learned in a different context and not have to do things differently in each context. Also game designs often would create overcomplicated UX that takes too many actions to do something and then a UX or UI designer can demand changes to make this more digestible for the user, or they see that the design underestimates what the player needs to know about to understand the game mechanics, and enhance the designs to present the user with the information they need.
Since UI designers don't get a lot of feedback, I'll tell it here: The Outer Worlds UI designers did a very good job. I liked the size of the item icons in the inventory in particular. You can sit back in a chair and still see everything. I've started playing BG3 immediately after completing The Outer Worlds, and the interface in there was just killing my eyes, everything is so small.
True, I played OW on a projector sitting on the couch few meters away and it worked surprisingly well despite having a lot of content (I think I used the incresed font size, a very welcome feature as well)
Enjoyed your insight on game dev UX. Over here in enterprise web dev, where everything is UI (there is no game), our distinctions are slightly different. Logical flows, button colours, placement, etc are all UI. Steve Krug wrote a great book about "don't make the user think" that we live and die by. I think you were saying much the same about reigning in complexity and leading/reminding the user. You can make great UI by following those principles but it's not the same as UX (in the web world). UX for us is how the UI makes the user feel. How does it *feel* to use the web app? If you make a great UI for a web app then users can get in, get out and feel great about completing their tasks. UX can include material design where the components obey real world constraints or even skeuomorphic (depending on fashion). UX can also be a thousand tiny, imperceptible animations where things bounce, pop, slide, fade, twist. UX can be shortcut buttons, macros or even a screen that is designed to please just one type of user that needs that thing for that one purpose. I hope that helps shine a light from a parallel industry!
> Steve Krug wrote a great book about "don't make the user think" that we live and die by. Not sure who you mean by "we", but have you looked around? Krug said to make links look like links. Do you see a single link on UA-cam that looks like a traditional link?
@@rabbitcreative Speaking from enterprise web dev and I meant "don't make the user think" is a concept we live and die by. Certainly everywhere I've worked - even when the UI is necessarily complex due to the problem domain, it still should keep the user's thought down to a minimum.
those things are also a large considerations in games. loot boxes would not be nearly as exciting without all the animations. Opening menus also usually has a form of animation to draw players eye to the important info. pressing craft should in itself feel satisfying. With large AAA studios you see it even more. Overwatch's Ultimate's have a lot of UI animation when ready and when pressed, really enforcing how strong they are.
i think theres a lot each industry could learn from the other. im surprised how much division there is in the software industry between gaming and web/FAANG development
My biggest gripe is when UX runs up against hardware limitations. If your MENU has LAG, make it less pretty! Loading and pop-in should be reserved for vast beautiful landscapes, when I'm scrolling through my items to find a potion of potioning I'm less interested in a good visual, I just want raw information. Put the pretty visual underneath an "inspect" option. Have a little 16 bit sprite to represent the item visually if you must.
i play many small indie games with bad UI/UX, i did not know it but i have to say it is a valuable specialization to be an expert in it and over time i started understanding why Nintendo puts (and always did) enormous effort in UX because it matters and matters a lot and even today AAA titles come with terrible UX
Dear Tim, thank you for the insights. It resonates well with your previous video about generalists. When people ask me what I do for a living: I ask them if they ever had a piece of software that didn’t behave the way they expected. (Which is usually answered with yes) That’s where my colleagues failed. Is my answer. UX done right is not noticeable, if done wrong your reputation may never recover.
Hey Tim, just wanted to say I really enjoy your vids. I'm a 10 year vet of the games industry, and your games industry caution videos really resonated with me. Currently I'm working on an indie game (without quitting my day job), because I've accepted the fact that no one is going to pay me to make the 2/2.5D RPGs I want to make. My question is: how do you feel about AAA studios that release "indie" style games (Child of Light from Ubisoft Montreal is a good example), and do you think this trend will continue and/or expand in the future?
As a Senior UX Designer, I can get behind this video. It may sound a bit biased on my part but I cannot emphasize how important UX is to every project. If you compare modern interfaces to iterations prior to UX becoming a dedicated skillset, it's night and day.
UX is huge for me, being a gamer for 30 plus years and being tuned into “flow” (for lack of a better word). I won’t play a game if UX and UI isn’t feeling good.
The one place where UX people do get the props they deserve is in live service games. When the player has to deal with a bad interface and it gets replaced with a good one people go nuts.
I agree that good interfaces are the ones that don't get in your way of experiencing a game, and therefore won't be mentioned by most players, whether these are smoothly navigable menus, or even diegetic elements like Metro's compass, oxygen meter and diary, racing games cockpit elements, Halo and other FPS helmet HP and ammo etc. But when interfaces take full advantage of the world and concept of the game, that's when they can become GREAT and actually being talked about, and enhance the experience. These are rare and the first instance of this that come to mind is Dead Space, where HP and Stasis are physical elements on your armor, and inventory and map are shown in an hologram in the world space, but also Fallout 3's Pip-Boy, which became highly appreciated for the same reasons. Also very stylistic UIs can achieve the same level of appreciation, like Persona 5's over the top UI elements, Destiny's world selection screen, Nier Automata with its meta interactions, and if I can slide a selfless plug, the game I worked on, Worldless, where the skill tree and maps are directly woven to the character and the world. The skill tree in particular seems to have gotten a certain amount of appreciation from users just from the trailers (we'll see how it goes when the game come out)
Weirdly enough, I really like the idea of working a job like that where i get to work on improving something in such a visible and tangible way that I can see for myself what I've done, but the work is there ultimately to make other people's work shine brighter or in sharper focus.
One of your closing comments is incredibly similar to how it feels to work in IT sometimes. If you're doing your job well then people will wonder if you've done anything at all :P
i was so excited to see this video pop up this morning, i havent even eaten breakfast yet! thanks for answering, Tim. im glad to hear you spent so much time and attention on UX and its teams. i think its super important and can make or break a new player's experience! its also something that can trend good or bad regardless of development scale- ive seen AAA and indie games both do great and terrible UX. in some AAA cases, its so consistently subpar, i have to wonder if they have any UX people at all (cough, Bethesda). i hate to see it neglected, especially in otherwise good games. its enough to make me want to specialize in it, if the opportunity arises. also, youre right! 13 is my lucky number. i learned about binary in like 4th grade or something, and have since always used 1101 as My Number™. ive been using Anubis1101 for close to 20 years now, and its cool to occasionally meet people on different sites that recognize me.
The problem with Bethesda UX to me isn't usually the design, it's inventory management in particular. There's always so much stuff, Starfield being the absolute worst, and in previous games the lack of search or any kind of order makes wading through stuff actively painful. At least they alphabetized it in the latest game but you just drown in items and materials. They said that for Starfield people should realise you don't need to pick up everything but regardless you need so many different resources for crafting and outposts that in reality you still need hundreds of different materials. The fact that they shared ship and player inventories, but ignored the storage in the lodge makes zero sense. I can pretty much guarantee that when the mod tools are released virtually the first mod will be linked storage.
@@stuartmorley6894 my best guess for whats going on with bethesda UI is that everyone on the UX team is an artist, but not a designer or programmer. or perhaps a better way to put it is that the UX development is likely headed by the art team. thats why all of their UIs going back to Morrowind look perfect for the game, but are... burdensome to use. youd think after, you know, 30 years or so they wouldve figured it out, but i think theyre at the Pokémon stage of their business model where theyre afraid to change anything or advance their design ideology for fear of losing their position in the market. also yea Starfield's UI felt like it was someone's highschool project the way it was laid out. the character menu was pretty cool, and the tutorials helped walk you through it, but there are so many awful, awful design decisions, some of which you have to figure out on your own. case 0: "oh you built a ship? thats cool. were not gonna let you save it though, you didnt add your weapons to the weapon groups." "where are the weapon groups" "...hm? oh i dunno theyre around somewhere, and DEFINITELY not hidden behind an unrelated menu." case 1: "shit im getting shot up! space combat is harder than i thought." "just use the repair button" "the repair button? where- oh its way over there. let me just reaaaach- oh im dead." case 2: "alright made it back to new atlantis, gotta hurry and go sell all my stuff. i sure hope the keys used for transferring items in the inventory menus are the same" "..." "they are the same, right? theres no way youd scramble them at random for each inventory-access situation, right?" "..."
I do software QA, and I feel the pain of "if you do it well, no one will notice". UX design is like being a goalie: once in a long while people will say "hey, that was really great, kudos", but more often than not you go unnoticed unless a mistake was made.
Love these videos, especially the deeper dives on specific topics like this. Wondering if you could discuss level design. What are your opinions on what makes good level design and how it fits into the process of game design.
i think the biggest reason WoW was so popular early on because Blizzard allowed modders to create custom UI with a script language and basically every single player had different addons and every single player's UI in WoW looked different, even if i played a healer i had a different UI than when i played a DPS, that's what i really really liked in WoW so this is what i dont understand why isn't this just industry standard, there is a basic interface created by the company and here are the tools for modders to customize, there is no way a single interface is good for everybody
It takes a lot of extra development time to allow for modding of such things and at the same time you can't ship it wihout any UI , so you still need to make the base UI + add the potentials for customizability for modders. Tbh If I can't afford it all, then modding possibilities would be one of the first thing I would cut before cutting any core features
When design is well done, it seamlessly integrates with the user experience, almost disappearing into the background. This is true for all design disciplines, not just user interface (UI) design. Interestingly, the term "user experience" (UX) itself was coined by Apple in the mid-90s.
I am a solo dev and this is by far my boggest pain point. No matter what I just can’t seem to grasp what makes ui look and feel good. Making them work, no problem but waaaaay more thought goes into UI design than I could have imagined. Some games have more ui elements than anything
Another really great video, thank you very much for doing these! I am a frontend programmer in the web world so it was interesting to hear a little bit on some similarities across industries. I think a slightly related topic that would be great to hear you talk about would be on the rise of accessibility in games and the topic of accessibility versus difficulty and how much you might believe they are linked. You mention about making a UI focussed on appealing to hardocre RPG gamers versus more general gamers, has there been many other features you have had to balance general accessibility against a more focused target?
People sometimes forget that video games are also *software applications*. Ever used Photoshop? Adobe Animate? Blender? Microsoft Excel? Maybe you worked with some point-of-sale software, or warehouse management software. In the end, if you've worked with a piece of software to get a job done, you can appreciate a piece of software that is easy to use, easy to learn, and just overall, easy to work with. But when the software has a glitch, it's like a rock in your shoe during a marathon. That is the mindset you need when you approach UX. You have to understand that people will be going through a USER EXPERIENCE (hence the term, UX) that YOU design. You have to make things obvious. You have to imagine how your mom will experience your program. You have to imagine how someone, after many repeated interactions will perceive your software. Do your job right, and it will be like a well-oiled and frictionless experience. Do it wrong, and your users will curse you and wish you a fate worse than death. Welcome to the world of UX design.
When I was a child i couldn't understand: "why does a game constantly showing me hints on what button to press in every situation. I'm playing it every day! I know those buttons by heart!" Now that I'm adult and I can afford to play once per week or two I'm like:"I get it now"
Do your thoughts differ much on diegetic interface as opposed to "normal" interface? (Ex: Far Cry 2's map, Metro 2033's watch, or Fallout 4's 1st person power armor display)
Diegetic interfaces can be a fun way to deliver more of the world aesthetic to the player...as long as they are functional and easy to use and understand. If they are hard to use because of that diegetic design, then nope, they go. I am very much a function over form designer, so if form interferes in any way with function, it will be tossed.
@@CainOnGamesexactly! immersion is important, but its useless if its so burdensome it breaks the immersion its trying to uphold. i do wish more games would try, though. i love those kinds of interfaces.
Could you go into more detail about pitching a game? I'm curious as to what the process may look like as well as what materials you should have (prototypes, storyboard things, etc) in order to have a successful pitch.
Can you make more videos on code implementation like the quest implementation video it was absolutely amazing seriously applicable to every programmer.
This is a major pet peeve of mine in video games. I've been playing some VRChat recently and OH MY GOD is it bad. And has been for years from what I hear.
It is posible to sell a vídeogame idea? Im working on a project, developing a Demo and a Game Design Document, and I want to know if it is posible to sell or present my idea to a AAA company. I know it may not be the best option, and also not very normal, but I want to know if it is posible. If it is, ¿what should I do? ¿Should i try to make also the script and everything i can?
I understand the importance of dedicated UX people *in theory*, but honestly, it's been kind of hard for me to appreciate the rise of their perceived importance in game development. I don't really evaluate the average modern game as having a significantly better user interface than games from 15-20 years ago, and honestly, the increased focus on it feels more like a solution to a problem the industry collectively invented by specializing and compartmentalizing development teams so much.
Old games suffer from horrid UX from today's perspective (try Fallout 1, Tim Cain rightfully agrees it has some really horrid UX like the point n click stuff) and in remakes often mainly two things are improved: graphics + UI/UX. And if you don't improve UX and customizability people go mad (including myself)
I can understand why the difference between UI design then and now might not be immediately obvious. Here's an example: designing for fixed screen sizes, like in the past, is vastly different from today's responsive UIs. Today's designers have to deal with a much wider range of screen sizes and aspect ratios depending on the user's device. This adds a layer of complexity that can be exponential. As a result, the goal sometimes isn't necessarily to create a "better" interface, but rather to maintain the same level of quality while adapting to all these new variables and user expectations. Interestingly tho my fav game lately is Minecraft (survival) which has everything but good user interface (especially on console) plus million collectable items that clog your inventory in no time, so maybe games are different after-all...
Hey Tim big fan of just about every game you've worked on. One thing I always wanted to know is why the Enclave felt so disjointed and confusing when you reach the oil rig. For example, why does the president tell you his entire plan of world omnicide even though he knows you're one of the tribals they captured? The Enclave were so cool and mysterious up until you spoke to President Richardson and he just seems so aloof compared to other games final antagonists like the master
I got kind of a weirdly specific question. You've designed a lot of pretty complicated RPGs - How do you know how how to get all the pieces to 'click' together and have it play out as intended?
"A time may come soon," said he, "when none will return. Then there will be need of valour without renown. . . Yet the deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised."
Just a small thought: What about the Persona games or Dead Space? These are games where people actively praise the interface for being so cool or part of the world. So maybe there is a space for people realizing great UI/UX.
Does UX stand for User Experience and not User Interface? User experience is defined as the branch of game design that focuses on the psychology of players, their behavior, and thought processes, with the UI system being a part of it. I believe the person was asking about the broader aspect, but I'm not sure
6 місяців тому+1
"When you do your job, you're kind of not in their way of experiencing the game" - That's what I always tell my team mates. I say "get the fuck out of user's path" but your way is more elegant 😊
I’d love to know your thoughts on the ethics of using ai generated game assets. I’m a solo indy making a 2d mmorpg and quickly approaching 50yo. I’ve got everything covered except for art and marketing so I’m starting to lean into ai and it’s been shocking how far things have come along.
its hard to tell where things will go from here, and thats the hardest part. but there are royalty-safe AI tools out there now, and thats what id bet on. my hope is that it eventually shifts into a sort of "artist support" tool, where you get a somewhat bare-bones AI and train it on your own artists' works. this ensures the artist is still involved, and also that you get art thats closer to the desired style for your project, having full control over what it gets trained on. youd still pay the artist and the AI company, but youd get a lot more out of it with a lot less hassle.
It should be avoided at all costs in my opinion. Firstly the legality of it is still unclear, steam doesn't even allow you to put your game on their platform if it uses AI art. Secondly, and this is mostly my opinion, the control you give up when using text to image algorithms degrades the entire work to a point where you might as well not have bothered. Quite a lot of people are turned of by AI art, in my experience. Learning to create art isn't that hard, especially in 2d, and I think people will forgive somewhat scrappy artwork as long as it communicates clearly and the core experience is solid.
@@Cyliandre441 Steam isn't that strict, it depends on the implementation of it A great example of a game that uses AI art is Stasis: Bone Totem (which is still on Steam last I checked). Mandalore did a great video on it recently. The pros and cons both can be seen clearly there. ua-cam.com/video/l1dyox71Y7o/v-deo.htmlsi=QystFNDamVcxnfQz
What is your opinion on Ubisoft games who has an excessive amount of UX in their games and games like Elden Ring who almost seem to have zero? Is excessiveness too much, and having almost having zero too little? Both have wildly different sales as well, which is interesting to me in terms of the UX used by both companies.
I think a lot of this these days at places like Ubisoft boils down to the gradual feature/scope creep of their games for their big IPs over time. They weren't always like this. But now these franchises just have so many features/systems/stuff going on that has been gradually piled on top of the core game experience, as adding less of them than what is in the previous game in a series may seem like a downgrade and harder to do marketing for. A term for this might be that they are just "over-designed", as they kind of need to be, and I can see the value in IPs getting reset/rebooted to reset expectations and start from a simpler base game again.
Great video about a game part that is often underrepresented! I really suspect that the free versions of both Unity and Unreal don't provide UX templates, because a lot of Indie games don't have the most basic UX stuff like rebinding keys or having a good save/load system.
they dont, because internally thats gonna depend heavily on the game itself. besides, devs should get used to doing their own stuff, not relying on templates. we have enough problems with copy-pasted stuff out there. RIP, Steam Greenlight...
I liked when games had cool U.I elements like the glass globe full of blood on the diablo interface for HP and so on. I never liked the ugly job Bethesda did with the transparent power armor overlay in FO4 and it even failed to function properly at some resolutions which really kills the effect when you see it's just a glorified 2d decal that one always stuck out the worst for me.
Yes. Its a visual element the provides information to players and allow them to make decisions. Should I heal right now? Should i reload my gun before opening this door? Where is my next objective? oh yeah on top of the screen it displays the direction i need to go and distance.
I am still really confused, why BG3 (and Larian RPGs in general) haven’t been extensively criticised on their UI/UX design. I found their hotbar to be very detrimental from my enjoyment of that game. It is not easily readable, dumps al the icons in the same space without clearly distinguishing resource consumption, and there is simply too much stuff to contain in one place. A sheer amount of constant maintenance required to just play infuriated me. There were classes I avoided using just as their key abilities (like shape shifting for Druids), would mess up the hotbar with every use. I also found it rather unpleasant to have to analyse and organise my hotbar for every new class I encountered - surely, UI should tutorialise gameplay systems, not just throw things at a player and say: “deal with that”. This is a wider trend, with Pathfinder games doing something similar - relying on hot bars, with drop down menus being fiddly and impractical to use on regular basis. There must be a point to it though. Low budget Solasta managed to design a plain, but very functional UI for their 5e bard game, and I think PoE1&2 have stickiest interfaces in the business. Is there a benefit to those hotbar heavy RPGs, beyond mimicking language that people might be familiar with from MMOs?
As someone who worked as a front-end dev, I just kinda want Google specs to burn. It's useful, sure. It's well-designed and thought out based on some research or other, no doubt. But man, the homogenization is real (never mind all the times when it's applied incorrectly without any thought to the specifics of an app). Nowadays it inspires in me naught but murderous rage. Sorry for being off-topic, just had to get it off my chest.
Isn't UI separate from UX, though? UI is just the specific set of toggles, switches, and buttons the user sees but UX is more about how a user organically navigates between them and can even encompass other things like documentation and the install experience.
Persona 5 Perhaps the reason good UX often goes unappreciated is because the standard is off the mark. In other words, maybe what should be aimed for is (relatively speaking) excellence.
Hey Tim, I both agree and disagree with your video :D I've worked as a UX designer in tech, and I currently work as UX in games. Here are my 2 cents (A long message incoming). The structure and process in tech are super different from the structure in games. Also, the UX expectations are completely different, but the name of the position is the same. Usually, in tech, you have the Product Team (PT), the Dev Team (DT) + marketing team, and some people teams (Management, HR, etc.). The PT is run by the Product Designer (in games, they are GMs, Game Directors, Creative Directors, etc.) and has 2 branches - UX and Business. UX focuses on the users, and Business clearly thinks about business opportunities, monetization, etc. The Dev Team can be broken down into front-end, back-end, and QA. There is also something called Data Science, which exists somewhere between all of the teams. The UX team can be broken down into many positions, or some of them can be just 1, but in general, they are - UX Researcher, UX Designer, UX Writer, UX Architect, UX Manager + UI/Visual Designer, but I will not break down what each does. In general, they care about the user. So a user-centric product dev studio follows this product dev pipeline: Empathize -> Define -> Ideate -> Prototype -> Test -> Launch with iterations at every step. 1) In the Empathize phase, you make a hypothesis for the users, their needs, and pain points, research competitors, and in general, try to empathize with the users and solve their problems. One BIG part of this is talking with people super early and verifying your hypothesis before investing too much money. There are many methods to do that, but in general, you have 2 outputs - qualitative and quantitative info. One is 1:1s with users where you really can understand their needs, wants, pains, etc., and the other is more granular data - questionnaire. It is best to get both, especially the 1:1, and especially if you use the Guerrilla method where you go and find your users and try to engage with them there and find more. 2) In the Define phase, you gather that info and you try to break it down, understand what it means, and in general, find a way to create something that solves real problems and brings something new to the table. There are many ways to do that - Empathy Maps, User Stories, User Journeys, Problem Statements, Solution Hypothesis Statements, Value Propositions, etc. In general, you have to understand why we are building this and whether it is worth building or even can we build it. 3) In the Ideate phase, you brainstorm solutions and basically imagine all functionalities that your product will need (I say product because this process is used for physical products as well, not only apps). Brainstorming should be done with many people from different teams with a clear focus on solving user problems. With this process, you build functionalities that are not coming from thin air without knowing why you have them. You can trace all decisions back to the user and their problems. 4) Prototype and Test - you need a way to validate your ideas with your users. Basically, you can talk with people after every step. This is a very cool process because the UX team becomes a facilitator between the user and business. Also, in the process above, the stakeholders should be involved from the start. This way when the UX team designs something, there is a clear understanding throughout the whole team structure (because other teams were involved as well). We all are on the same page, and we know that every single decision should lead back to the user. So clearly, the UX team is the A-Team. This is the creative drive for the product. And as you can see, the UI part is the result but not the goal. A UX finding may lead to the need for a physical product and not digital or a combination of both (let's say a VR Headset that is physical and has digital interaction rules as well). However, in games, there is a position called Game Designer who impacts the UX fundamentally. You have something called VFX that impacts UX as well, we have gameplay and genres and fun, and fun means different things to different people, and it becomes very very difficult for UX to exist the same way that UX exists in tech. In games, the Game Design team is the A-Team. UX becomes this small team that focuses on UI rather than the product. It may consist of maybe 1-2 UX designers that do wireframes and Figma/XD prototypes and do some competitive research, 1-2 UI Artists that help with the visual direction, and a few front-end devs that help with the UI layout and implementation. In some teams, the UX is combined with the UI + Layouting. This is why in games it is more popular to say UI/UX designer when you want a person that can do some part of the UX process, but also can do UI design/Art and can do layouting - basically a Generalist. I think that in general, the game industry suffers a lot from not talking with users/players early. And I think it is exactly because they do not follow the design thinking approach listed above, and they do not have facilitators that can push decision-makers to make that step and first validate by talking with players and then build a prototype/a slice of the game and validate again. We always reach that fallacy where because we are the target audience of our games, we know what we want and what we miss. But maybe reaching out to people and just talking may lead to better game design in general. A good example was the accessibility feature that Forza added in their last game. They allowed for blind people to play successfully the game and actually drive the car. They worked a lot with blind people and created great results. As a conclusion, I want to say that this is an ongoing debate in many studios. In games, I see it like this - UX should be a cognitive psychologist individual that runs user research. They act as an advisor to the GM and as a facilitator between the user and the developers. The UI should be handled by a UI team that uses UX data and game design data to visualize the ideas. Another option is for UX to become a work methodology rather than a position - all designers should follow the Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test process. There still should be a person that builds personas and builds user journeys and maybe this person should be the Product Designer/GM/Creative Director. I can definitely say that UX is not UI. I will be qurious to hear your thoughts!
I really hate minimalistic UI design, its one of the big things I dislike about modern games versus older games. Making it efficient is one thing but removing all the style and ornament from it is just soulless. GoW and Skyrim and Destiny, I'm looking at you....
Generalizations... But I guess you are right about generalaudience and public. Personally I always point out great UI/UX/whatever; some of the greatest in history, imo, are UIs of Shadowrun (SMD) and System Shock 1-2. Arcanum is brilliant too, however flawed, just as a whole game - flawed masterpiece.
![ПОЛНАЯ ИСТОРИЯ ЭКЗОРЦИЗМА [Топ Сикрет]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/qBySr6Bt0B8/mqdefault.jpg)
Great shirt you got there, Tim! 🥴
Wonder where he got that sweet thing from :P
Love it too!
Lol
@TKsMantis It is a great shirt. Thank you!
💚💜💚@@CainOnGames
To quote Futurama: “When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."
"A wise man once said that nothing really dies. It just comes back in a new form.
Then he died."
Love and appreciation for all the hard-working UX artists out there! ❤
To quote a collegue of mine who is an amazing UX specialist: "UI is like a joke - if you have to explain it, it's not very good"
Great video!
I really don't like the term UX, as it seems to have swapped over from web and app design. In games the focus of UX is much broader due to the nature of the level of interactivity. But it's interesting how insanely important it is for allowing a game(or app) to be enjoyed or even played in the first place.
When I researched UI/UX design in games, I came across a very interesting talk from the UX team from Naughtydog on their inventory system in The Last of Us 1. It was incredibly fascinating how important and impactful it was for the overall gaming experience. Instead of just navigating (pure UI basically from a pause screen), it was integrated fluidly so that it basically became a part of the game, as it would allow you to craft in combat without breaking the immersion or flow, while also adding tension as you are crafting things while getting attacked.
100%, i fell into this position on our Indy team and you have to not only work with everyone on the team but basically you know its not quite right when you hear frustration and its usually not even large changes to improve it but you know it's in the right spot when people stop thinking or talking about it at all.
UI/ UX can also be a confusion point for the game if an element is technically giving the correct info but can be interpreted in another manner and I think the only way to find those is focus testing.
We did our focus testing through EA and I would not show my work to the team till the menu was done internally to get early frustrations out early cause if i said how the menu worked I found I poisoned the well and there would be less friction from the team using the interface but then it would frustrate the players.
Doing that also gave the added benefit that the rest of the team really felt the improvements I would make over time and made me feel appreciated for it.
If the UI and UX is done well people will say nothing about UI/UX in the playtests and reviews. If you don't, people will complain about it quite vocally. Our UI lead designer used to say this and now Tim said almost the same thing :) so it has become an universal truth now.
I agree this is a bit sad but UI / UX development is still a lot of fun to me. The only time it is annoying is when game designers see UI / UX only as a service to them ("do this or that for me" and "why is it not like I wanted it to be the first time I designed this?") and they don't realize how little they know about the consistency and cohesion of the user experience across the entire game, since they are usually focussed on only certain feature, and that is exactly where UX comes into play: You need to think about these things on a game-wide scale, the player wants to reuse what they learned in a different context and not have to do things differently in each context. Also game designs often would create overcomplicated UX that takes too many actions to do something and then a UX or UI designer can demand changes to make this more digestible for the user, or they see that the design underestimates what the player needs to know about to understand the game mechanics, and enhance the designs to present the user with the information they need.
Since UI designers don't get a lot of feedback, I'll tell it here: The Outer Worlds UI designers did a very good job. I liked the size of the item icons in the inventory in particular. You can sit back in a chair and still see everything. I've started playing BG3 immediately after completing The Outer Worlds, and the interface in there was just killing my eyes, everything is so small.
True, I played OW on a projector sitting on the couch few meters away and it worked surprisingly well despite having a lot of content (I think I used the incresed font size, a very welcome feature as well)
Enjoyed your insight on game dev UX.
Over here in enterprise web dev, where everything is UI (there is no game), our distinctions are slightly different. Logical flows, button colours, placement, etc are all UI. Steve Krug wrote a great book about "don't make the user think" that we live and die by. I think you were saying much the same about reigning in complexity and leading/reminding the user. You can make great UI by following those principles but it's not the same as UX (in the web world).
UX for us is how the UI makes the user feel. How does it *feel* to use the web app? If you make a great UI for a web app then users can get in, get out and feel great about completing their tasks. UX can include material design where the components obey real world constraints or even skeuomorphic (depending on fashion). UX can also be a thousand tiny, imperceptible animations where things bounce, pop, slide, fade, twist. UX can be shortcut buttons, macros or even a screen that is designed to please just one type of user that needs that thing for that one purpose.
I hope that helps shine a light from a parallel industry!
> Steve Krug wrote a great book about "don't make the user think" that we live and die by.
Not sure who you mean by "we", but have you looked around? Krug said to make links look like links. Do you see a single link on UA-cam that looks like a traditional link?
@@rabbitcreative Speaking from enterprise web dev and I meant "don't make the user think" is a concept we live and die by. Certainly everywhere I've worked - even when the UI is necessarily complex due to the problem domain, it still should keep the user's thought down to a minimum.
Pretty cool to know. Thanks!
those things are also a large considerations in games. loot boxes would not be nearly as exciting without all the animations. Opening menus also usually has a form of animation to draw players eye to the important info. pressing craft should in itself feel satisfying. With large AAA studios you see it even more. Overwatch's Ultimate's have a lot of UI animation when ready and when pressed, really enforcing how strong they are.
i think theres a lot each industry could learn from the other. im surprised how much division there is in the software industry between gaming and web/FAANG development
I know one fallout youtube creator that is going to be over the moon after seeing this video! You're the best, Tim!!
Good UX = completely unnoticed
vs.
Bad UX = glaring
My biggest gripe is when UX runs up against hardware limitations. If your MENU has LAG, make it less pretty! Loading and pop-in should be reserved for vast beautiful landscapes, when I'm scrolling through my items to find a potion of potioning I'm less interested in a good visual, I just want raw information. Put the pretty visual underneath an "inspect" option. Have a little 16 bit sprite to represent the item visually if you must.
That is so true! I was greatly annoyed by laggy UI in Borderlands 3, no matter how polished the looks
i play many small indie games with bad UI/UX, i did not know it but i have to say it is a valuable specialization to be an expert in it and over time i started understanding why Nintendo puts (and always did) enormous effort in UX because it matters and matters a lot and even today AAA titles come with terrible UX
"I did not see you for camouflage training yesterday, private!"
"Thank you sarge!"
Dear Tim, thank you for the insights. It resonates well with your previous video about generalists.
When people ask me what I do for a living: I ask them if they ever had a piece of software that didn’t behave the way they expected.
(Which is usually answered with yes)
That’s where my colleagues failed.
Is my answer.
UX done right is not noticeable, if done wrong your reputation may never recover.
Hey Tim, just wanted to say I really enjoy your vids. I'm a 10 year vet of the games industry, and your games industry caution videos really resonated with me. Currently I'm working on an indie game (without quitting my day job), because I've accepted the fact that no one is going to pay me to make the 2/2.5D RPGs I want to make.
My question is: how do you feel about AAA studios that release "indie" style games (Child of Light from Ubisoft Montreal is a good example), and do you think this trend will continue and/or expand in the future?
As a Senior UX Designer, I can get behind this video. It may sound a bit biased on my part but I cannot emphasize how important UX is to every project. If you compare modern interfaces to iterations prior to UX becoming a dedicated skillset, it's night and day.
UX is huge for me, being a gamer for 30 plus years and being tuned into “flow” (for lack of a better word). I won’t play a game if UX and UI isn’t feeling good.
UX designer is similar to bass player or drummer then, :D
The one place where UX people do get the props they deserve is in live service games. When the player has to deal with a bad interface and it gets replaced with a good one people go nuts.
I agree that good interfaces are the ones that don't get in your way of experiencing a game, and therefore won't be mentioned by most players, whether these are smoothly navigable menus, or even diegetic elements like Metro's compass, oxygen meter and diary, racing games cockpit elements, Halo and other FPS helmet HP and ammo etc.
But when interfaces take full advantage of the world and concept of the game, that's when they can become GREAT and actually being talked about, and enhance the experience. These are rare and the first instance of this that come to mind is Dead Space, where HP and Stasis are physical elements on your armor, and inventory and map are shown in an hologram in the world space, but also Fallout 3's Pip-Boy, which became highly appreciated for the same reasons.
Also very stylistic UIs can achieve the same level of appreciation, like Persona 5's over the top UI elements, Destiny's world selection screen, Nier Automata with its meta interactions, and if I can slide a selfless plug, the game I worked on, Worldless, where the skill tree and maps are directly woven to the character and the world. The skill tree in particular seems to have gotten a certain amount of appreciation from users just from the trailers (we'll see how it goes when the game come out)
Weirdly enough, I really like the idea of working a job like that where i get to work on improving something in such a visible and tangible way that I can see for myself what I've done, but the work is there ultimately to make other people's work shine brighter or in sharper focus.
One of your closing comments is incredibly similar to how it feels to work in IT sometimes. If you're doing your job well then people will wonder if you've done anything at all :P
i was so excited to see this video pop up this morning, i havent even eaten breakfast yet! thanks for answering, Tim.
im glad to hear you spent so much time and attention on UX and its teams. i think its super important and can make or break a new player's experience!
its also something that can trend good or bad regardless of development scale- ive seen AAA and indie games both do great and terrible UX. in some AAA cases, its so consistently subpar, i have to wonder if they have any UX people at all (cough, Bethesda). i hate to see it neglected, especially in otherwise good games. its enough to make me want to specialize in it, if the opportunity arises.
also, youre right! 13 is my lucky number. i learned about binary in like 4th grade or something, and have since always used 1101 as My Number™. ive been using Anubis1101 for close to 20 years now, and its cool to occasionally meet people on different sites that recognize me.
The problem with Bethesda UX to me isn't usually the design, it's inventory management in particular. There's always so much stuff, Starfield being the absolute worst, and in previous games the lack of search or any kind of order makes wading through stuff actively painful. At least they alphabetized it in the latest game but you just drown in items and materials. They said that for Starfield people should realise you don't need to pick up everything but regardless you need so many different resources for crafting and outposts that in reality you still need hundreds of different materials. The fact that they shared ship and player inventories, but ignored the storage in the lodge makes zero sense. I can pretty much guarantee that when the mod tools are released virtually the first mod will be linked storage.
@@stuartmorley6894 my best guess for whats going on with bethesda UI is that everyone on the UX team is an artist, but not a designer or programmer. or perhaps a better way to put it is that the UX development is likely headed by the art team.
thats why all of their UIs going back to Morrowind look perfect for the game, but are... burdensome to use. youd think after, you know, 30 years or so they wouldve figured it out, but i think theyre at the Pokémon stage of their business model where theyre afraid to change anything or advance their design ideology for fear of losing their position in the market.
also yea Starfield's UI felt like it was someone's highschool project the way it was laid out. the character menu was pretty cool, and the tutorials helped walk you through it, but there are so many awful, awful design decisions, some of which you have to figure out on your own.
case 0:
"oh you built a ship? thats cool. were not gonna let you save it though, you didnt add your weapons to the weapon groups."
"where are the weapon groups"
"...hm? oh i dunno theyre around somewhere, and DEFINITELY not hidden behind an unrelated menu."
case 1:
"shit im getting shot up! space combat is harder than i thought."
"just use the repair button"
"the repair button? where- oh its way over there. let me just reaaaach- oh im dead."
case 2:
"alright made it back to new atlantis, gotta hurry and go sell all my stuff.
i sure hope the keys used for transferring items in the inventory menus are the same"
"..."
"they are the same, right? theres no way youd scramble them at random for each inventory-access situation, right?"
"..."
I felt like a lot of my time playing starfield was going out of multiple menus to get back to the game@@stuartmorley6894
I do software QA, and I feel the pain of "if you do it well, no one will notice". UX design is like being a goalie: once in a long while people will say "hey, that was really great, kudos", but more often than not you go unnoticed unless a mistake was made.
Love these videos, especially the deeper dives on specific topics like this. Wondering if you could discuss level design. What are your opinions on what makes good level design and how it fits into the process of game design.
i think the biggest reason WoW was so popular early on because Blizzard allowed modders to create custom UI with a script language and basically every single player had different addons and every single player's UI in WoW looked different, even if i played a healer i had a different UI than when i played a DPS, that's what i really really liked in WoW
so this is what i dont understand why isn't this just industry standard, there is a basic interface created by the company and here are the tools for modders to customize, there is no way a single interface is good for everybody
It takes a lot of extra development time to allow for modding of such things and at the same time you can't ship it wihout any UI , so you still need to make the base UI + add the potentials for customizability for modders. Tbh If I can't afford it all, then modding possibilities would be one of the first thing I would cut before cutting any core features
I've heard similar remarks on lighting in clothing stores; you can barely tell where it's coming from at the high-end boutiques.
The first time I played Apex I was like "this is the best UI/UX I've experienced in years!". It's amazing how stealthy good UX can be.
When design is well done, it seamlessly integrates with the user experience, almost disappearing into the background. This is true for all design disciplines, not just user interface (UI) design. Interestingly, the term "user experience" (UX) itself was coined by Apple in the mid-90s.
I am a solo dev and this is by far my boggest pain point. No matter what I just can’t seem to grasp what makes ui look and feel good. Making them work, no problem but waaaaay more thought goes into UI design than I could have imagined. Some games have more ui elements than anything
Cool shirt! 🙂
My university only offered one UX class and it was bureaucratically rendered inaccessible even to most CS majors
Another really great video, thank you very much for doing these! I am a frontend programmer in the web world so it was interesting to hear a little bit on some similarities across industries. I think a slightly related topic that would be great to hear you talk about would be on the rise of accessibility in games and the topic of accessibility versus difficulty and how much you might believe they are linked. You mention about making a UI focussed on appealing to hardocre RPG gamers versus more general gamers, has there been many other features you have had to balance general accessibility against a more focused target?
People sometimes forget that video games are also *software applications*. Ever used Photoshop? Adobe Animate? Blender? Microsoft Excel? Maybe you worked with some point-of-sale software, or warehouse management software. In the end, if you've worked with a piece of software to get a job done, you can appreciate a piece of software that is easy to use, easy to learn, and just overall, easy to work with. But when the software has a glitch, it's like a rock in your shoe during a marathon.
That is the mindset you need when you approach UX. You have to understand that people will be going through a USER EXPERIENCE (hence the term, UX) that YOU design. You have to make things obvious. You have to imagine how your mom will experience your program. You have to imagine how someone, after many repeated interactions will perceive your software. Do your job right, and it will be like a well-oiled and frictionless experience. Do it wrong, and your users will curse you and wish you a fate worse than death.
Welcome to the world of UX design.
"Do it wrong, and your users will curse you and wish you a fate worse than death." Well said. I may have done that myself a few times.
When I was a child i couldn't understand: "why does a game constantly showing me hints on what button to press in every situation. I'm playing it every day! I know those buttons by heart!"
Now that I'm adult and I can afford to play once per week or two I'm like:"I get it now"
Do your thoughts differ much on diegetic interface as opposed to "normal" interface?
(Ex: Far Cry 2's map, Metro 2033's watch, or Fallout 4's 1st person power armor display)
Diegetic interfaces can be a fun way to deliver more of the world aesthetic to the player...as long as they are functional and easy to use and understand. If they are hard to use because of that diegetic design, then nope, they go.
I am very much a function over form designer, so if form interferes in any way with function, it will be tossed.
@@CainOnGamesexactly! immersion is important, but its useless if its so burdensome it breaks the immersion its trying to uphold.
i do wish more games would try, though. i love those kinds of interfaces.
Always thought Dead Space did these really successfully, without compromising the function.
Could you go into more detail about pitching a game? I'm curious as to what the process may look like as well as what materials you should have (prototypes, storyboard things, etc) in order to have a successful pitch.
Can you make more videos on code implementation like the quest implementation video it was absolutely amazing seriously applicable to every programmer.
This is a major pet peeve of mine in video games. I've been playing some VRChat recently and OH MY GOD is it bad. And has been for years from what I hear.
Do you use much graphing techniques like UML?
Do you have any insights on remote work? E.g. pros & cons, how to make it work better, etc.
Hey! Rad shirt! 🎉
It is posible to sell a vídeogame idea? Im working on a project, developing a Demo and a Game Design Document, and I want to know if it is posible to sell or present my idea to a AAA company. I know it may not be the best option, and also not very normal, but I want to know if it is posible. If it is, ¿what should I do? ¿Should i try to make also the script and everything i can?
My short answer is no, it's not possible to sell it.
My longer answer is here: ua-cam.com/video/HqCe8tS47jg/v-deo.html
@@CainOnGames Thanks, very helpful!!!
#1 Tks-Mantis fan
I understand the importance of dedicated UX people *in theory*, but honestly, it's been kind of hard for me to appreciate the rise of their perceived importance in game development. I don't really evaluate the average modern game as having a significantly better user interface than games from 15-20 years ago, and honestly, the increased focus on it feels more like a solution to a problem the industry collectively invented by specializing and compartmentalizing development teams so much.
Old games suffer from horrid UX from today's perspective (try Fallout 1, Tim Cain rightfully agrees it has some really horrid UX like the point n click stuff) and in remakes often mainly two things are improved: graphics + UI/UX. And if you don't improve UX and customizability people go mad (including myself)
I can understand why the difference between UI design then and now might not be immediately obvious. Here's an example: designing for fixed screen sizes, like in the past, is vastly different from today's responsive UIs. Today's designers have to deal with a much wider range of screen sizes and aspect ratios depending on the user's device. This adds a layer of complexity that can be exponential. As a result, the goal sometimes isn't necessarily to create a "better" interface, but rather to maintain the same level of quality while adapting to all these new variables and user expectations.
Interestingly tho my fav game lately is Minecraft (survival) which has everything but good user interface (especially on console) plus million collectable items that clog your inventory in no time, so maybe games are different after-all...
There is a saying that the best dressed man in a room is the one you don’t notice.
Hey Tim big fan of just about every game you've worked on.
One thing I always wanted to know is why the Enclave felt so disjointed and confusing when you reach the oil rig.
For example, why does the president tell you his entire plan of world omnicide even though he knows you're one of the tribals they captured?
The Enclave were so cool and mysterious up until you spoke to President Richardson and he just seems so aloof compared to other games final antagonists like the master
Enclave is F2 on which team worked only shortly, so not sure he will have answer.
I got kind of a weirdly specific question.
You've designed a lot of pretty complicated RPGs - How do you know how how to get all the pieces to 'click' together and have it play out as intended?
"A time may come soon," said he, "when none will return. Then there will be need of valour without renown. . . Yet the deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised."
Just a small thought: What about the Persona games or Dead Space? These are games where people actively praise the interface for being so cool or part of the world. So maybe there is a space for people realizing great UI/UX.
Here early for my morning cup of Tim
I know NV wasn’t yours but would you ever consider going to the New Vegas celebration in Goodsprings perhaps next year
"Let me just get some chips, start up youtube and listen to one of the most influential game designers explain stuff to me. For free."
- 2023 -
Does UX stand for User Experience and not User Interface? User experience is defined as the branch of game design that focuses on the psychology of players, their behavior, and thought processes, with the UI system being a part of it. I believe the person was asking about the broader aspect, but I'm not sure
"When you do your job, you're kind of not in their way of experiencing the game" - That's what I always tell my team mates. I say "get the fuck out of user's path" but your way is more elegant 😊
I’d love to know your thoughts on the ethics of using ai generated game assets. I’m a solo indy making a 2d mmorpg and quickly approaching 50yo. I’ve got everything covered except for art and marketing so I’m starting to lean into ai and it’s been shocking how far things have come along.
Tim has already done a video on AI - ua-cam.com/video/7MRx_i9gvWw/v-deo.html
its hard to tell where things will go from here, and thats the hardest part.
but there are royalty-safe AI tools out there now, and thats what id bet on.
my hope is that it eventually shifts into a sort of "artist support" tool, where you get a somewhat bare-bones AI and train it on your own artists' works. this ensures the artist is still involved, and also that you get art thats closer to the desired style for your project, having full control over what it gets trained on.
youd still pay the artist and the AI company, but youd get a lot more out of it with a lot less hassle.
It should be avoided at all costs in my opinion. Firstly the legality of it is still unclear, steam doesn't even allow you to put your game on their platform if it uses AI art.
Secondly, and this is mostly my opinion, the control you give up when using text to image algorithms degrades the entire work to a point where you might as well not have bothered. Quite a lot of people are turned of by AI art, in my experience.
Learning to create art isn't that hard, especially in 2d, and I think people will forgive somewhat scrappy artwork as long as it communicates clearly and the core experience is solid.
@@Cyliandre441 Steam isn't that strict, it depends on the implementation of it
A great example of a game that uses AI art is Stasis: Bone Totem (which is still on Steam last I checked). Mandalore did a great video on it recently. The pros and cons both can be seen clearly there.
ua-cam.com/video/l1dyox71Y7o/v-deo.htmlsi=QystFNDamVcxnfQz
What is your opinion on Ubisoft games who has an excessive amount of UX in their games and games like Elden Ring who almost seem to have zero? Is excessiveness too much, and having almost having zero too little? Both have wildly different sales as well, which is interesting to me in terms of the UX used by both companies.
I think a lot of this these days at places like Ubisoft boils down to the gradual feature/scope creep of their games for their big IPs over time. They weren't always like this. But now these franchises just have so many features/systems/stuff going on that has been gradually piled on top of the core game experience, as adding less of them than what is in the previous game in a series may seem like a downgrade and harder to do marketing for.
A term for this might be that they are just "over-designed", as they kind of need to be, and I can see the value in IPs getting reset/rebooted to reset expectations and start from a simpler base game again.
Is it weird that every time I think "Hi Tim!"?
Great video about a game part that is often underrepresented! I really suspect that the free versions of both Unity and Unreal don't provide UX templates, because a lot of Indie games don't have the most basic UX stuff like rebinding keys or having a good save/load system.
they dont, because internally thats gonna depend heavily on the game itself.
besides, devs should get used to doing their own stuff, not relying on templates. we have enough problems with copy-pasted stuff out there. RIP, Steam Greenlight...
I liked when games had cool U.I elements like the glass globe full of blood on the diablo interface for HP and so on. I never liked the ugly job Bethesda did with the transparent power armor overlay in FO4 and it even failed to function properly at some resolutions which really kills the effect when you see it's just a glorified 2d decal that one always stuck out the worst for me.
Is the HUD part of the UX?
Yes. Its a visual element the provides information to players and allow them to make decisions.
Should I heal right now?
Should i reload my gun before opening this door?
Where is my next objective? oh yeah on top of the screen it displays the direction i need to go and distance.
I am still really confused, why BG3 (and Larian RPGs in general) haven’t been extensively criticised on their UI/UX design. I found their hotbar to be very detrimental from my enjoyment of that game. It is not easily readable, dumps al the icons in the same space without clearly distinguishing resource consumption, and there is simply too much stuff to contain in one place. A sheer amount of constant maintenance required to just play infuriated me. There were classes I avoided using just as their key abilities (like shape shifting for Druids), would mess up the hotbar with every use. I also found it rather unpleasant to have to analyse and organise my hotbar for every new class I encountered - surely, UI should tutorialise gameplay systems, not just throw things at a player and say: “deal with that”.
This is a wider trend, with Pathfinder games doing something similar - relying on hot bars, with drop down menus being fiddly and impractical to use on regular basis.
There must be a point to it though. Low budget Solasta managed to design a plain, but very functional UI for their 5e bard game, and I think PoE1&2 have stickiest interfaces in the business. Is there a benefit to those hotbar heavy RPGs, beyond mimicking language that people might be familiar with from MMOs?
As someone who worked as a front-end dev, I just kinda want Google specs to burn. It's useful, sure. It's well-designed and thought out based on some research or other, no doubt. But man, the homogenization is real (never mind all the times when it's applied incorrectly without any thought to the specifics of an app). Nowadays it inspires in me naught but murderous rage.
Sorry for being off-topic, just had to get it off my chest.
Isn't UI separate from UX, though? UI is just the specific set of toggles, switches, and buttons the user sees but UX is more about how a user organically navigates between them and can even encompass other things like documentation and the install experience.
Persona 5
Perhaps the reason good UX often goes unappreciated is because the standard is off the mark. In other words, maybe what should be aimed for is (relatively speaking) excellence.
see comments section, live & learn gnome saiyan 🍀📿
1.5k views 2 hours ago
i hate current UX standards. playing without HUDs is the most immersive experience, but most game devs nowadays think shiny UI shit is good.
Hey Tim,
I both agree and disagree with your video :D
I've worked as a UX designer in tech, and I currently work as UX in games. Here are my 2 cents (A long message incoming).
The structure and process in tech are super different from the structure in games. Also, the UX expectations are completely different, but the name of the position is the same. Usually, in tech, you have the Product Team (PT), the Dev Team (DT) + marketing team, and some people teams (Management, HR, etc.).
The PT is run by the Product Designer (in games, they are GMs, Game Directors, Creative Directors, etc.) and has 2 branches - UX and Business. UX focuses on the users, and Business clearly thinks about business opportunities, monetization, etc. The Dev Team can be broken down into front-end, back-end, and QA. There is also something called Data Science, which exists somewhere between all of the teams.
The UX team can be broken down into many positions, or some of them can be just 1, but in general, they are - UX Researcher, UX Designer, UX Writer, UX Architect, UX Manager + UI/Visual Designer, but I will not break down what each does. In general, they care about the user.
So a user-centric product dev studio follows this product dev pipeline:
Empathize -> Define -> Ideate -> Prototype -> Test -> Launch with iterations at every step.
1) In the Empathize phase, you make a hypothesis for the users, their needs, and pain points, research competitors, and in general, try to empathize with the users and solve their problems. One BIG part of this is talking with people super early and verifying your hypothesis before investing too much money. There are many methods to do that, but in general, you have 2 outputs - qualitative and quantitative info. One is 1:1s with users where you really can understand their needs, wants, pains, etc., and the other is more granular data - questionnaire. It is best to get both, especially the 1:1, and especially if you use the Guerrilla method where you go and find your users and try to engage with them there and find more.
2) In the Define phase, you gather that info and you try to break it down, understand what it means, and in general, find a way to create something that solves real problems and brings something new to the table. There are many ways to do that - Empathy Maps, User Stories, User Journeys, Problem Statements, Solution Hypothesis Statements, Value Propositions, etc. In general, you have to understand why we are building this and whether it is worth building or even can we build it.
3) In the Ideate phase, you brainstorm solutions and basically imagine all functionalities that your product will need (I say product because this process is used for physical products as well, not only apps). Brainstorming should be done with many people from different teams with a clear focus on solving user problems. With this process, you build functionalities that are not coming from thin air without knowing why you have them. You can trace all decisions back to the user and their problems.
4) Prototype and Test - you need a way to validate your ideas with your users. Basically, you can talk with people after every step.
This is a very cool process because the UX team becomes a facilitator between the user and business. Also, in the process above, the stakeholders should be involved from the start. This way when the UX team designs something, there is a clear understanding throughout the whole team structure (because other teams were involved as well). We all are on the same page, and we know that every single decision should lead back to the user.
So clearly, the UX team is the A-Team. This is the creative drive for the product. And as you can see, the UI part is the result but not the goal. A UX finding may lead to the need for a physical product and not digital or a combination of both (let's say a VR Headset that is physical and has digital interaction rules as well).
However, in games, there is a position called Game Designer who impacts the UX fundamentally. You have something called VFX that impacts UX as well, we have gameplay and genres and fun, and fun means different things to different people, and it becomes very very difficult for UX to exist the same way that UX exists in tech. In games, the Game Design team is the A-Team. UX becomes this small team that focuses on UI rather than the product. It may consist of maybe 1-2 UX designers that do wireframes and Figma/XD prototypes and do some competitive research, 1-2 UI Artists that help with the visual direction, and a few front-end devs that help with the UI layout and implementation. In some teams, the UX is combined with the UI + Layouting. This is why in games it is more popular to say UI/UX designer when you want a person that can do some part of the UX process, but also can do UI design/Art and can do layouting - basically a Generalist.
I think that in general, the game industry suffers a lot from not talking with users/players early. And I think it is exactly because they do not follow the design thinking approach listed above, and they do not have facilitators that can push decision-makers to make that step and first validate by talking with players and then build a prototype/a slice of the game and validate again. We always reach that fallacy where because we are the target audience of our games, we know what we want and what we miss. But maybe reaching out to people and just talking may lead to better game design in general. A good example was the accessibility feature that Forza added in their last game. They allowed for blind people to play successfully the game and actually drive the car. They worked a lot with blind people and created great results.
As a conclusion, I want to say that this is an ongoing debate in many studios. In games, I see it like this - UX should be a cognitive psychologist individual that runs user research. They act as an advisor to the GM and as a facilitator between the user and the developers. The UI should be handled by a UI team that uses UX data and game design data to visualize the ideas. Another option is for UX to become a work methodology rather than a position - all designers should follow the Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test process. There still should be a person that builds personas and builds user journeys and maybe this person should be the Product Designer/GM/Creative Director.
I can definitely say that UX is not UI.
I will be qurious to hear your thoughts!
I really hate minimalistic UI design, its one of the big things I dislike about modern games versus older games. Making it efficient is one thing but removing all the style and ornament from it is just soulless. GoW and Skyrim and Destiny, I'm looking at you....
A fine example of a poor ux is BG3’s inventory management
It's absolutely fine. There will never ever be a worse inventory management than Bethesda's Oblivion. Especially for pc players with kb and mouse.
@@adomolisNo. Play Starfield, they've gotten worse 😂😅
Why is it that most of the bad ux i see now is not indie games but big studios?
Generalizations... But I guess you are right about generalaudience and public. Personally I always point out great UI/UX/whatever; some of the greatest in history, imo, are UIs of Shadowrun (SMD) and System Shock 1-2. Arcanum is brilliant too, however flawed, just as a whole game - flawed masterpiece.