Episode 42: What Can Games Teach Us About UI Design? With Felix Park (Part 1)
Although web and game development are two different processes in their own right, it’s interesting to note that web development has influenced the gaming industry and vice versa. Video games look and behave more like well-structured websites, while websites and apps strive to look and behave like video games. Due to this trend, this episode focuses on what games can teach us bout UI or user interface design. Today’s guest is game developer, Felix Park, who explains what he does as a game designer, how game design parallels with user experience and user interface design, and how he strives to create an optimal experience by guiding the player to make certain decisions. He also talks about how he creates certain prompts, what affordances are and how they are applicable in game design, and how he establishes a design language throughout a game. Tune in today!
Key Points From This Episode:
- Felix introduces himself and what he does as a game designer.
- Felix explains what it means to be a game designer, using a door in a game as a metaphor,
- Game development and how it parallels with user experience or user interface design.
- How Felix strives towards guiding people through an optimal and less frustrating experience.
- Felix explains what a AAA game is – they are the big-budget, summer blockbusters of games.
- Hear more about what led Felix to game design.
- Going into gaming, Felix had some programming knowledge from his HTML coding hobby.
- How Felix leads a user to make certain decisions, from lighting and UI to manipulating time.
- Felix defines affordances as what’s possible with an object as expressed through its design.
- Felix outlines some examples of how game designers include prompts to guide players.
- Restrictions and repetitions are introduced throughout a game to establish a design language and what the affordances are for the user.
- Felix explains how he balances high intensity difficulty with ease of play through play testing.
Tweetables:
“We have to constantly strive to make sure that people are being guided towards an optimal, not so frustrating experience. Unless we do want to frustrate them, in which case that's an entirely different design challenge. The goal is to make sure that anybody can play our games with the minimum amount of direct interference or touch on that”. — @uhfelix [0:05:07]
“Games are this thing you just make up in [their] entirety. Down to the very weird, basic, physical elements, you can use all of them to influence people.” — @uhfelix [0:14:54]
“Affordance is this concept of how does the design communicate its use to the user? In games, it’s very important because in the virtual world anything is possible. You want to be able to really limit the space of possibility within the player's mind, or else they'll be stuck. They’ll be at a loss as to what to do to progress, or move forward, or to accomplish goals.” — @uhfelix [0:17:57]
“If you have a lot of focus on player experience, then that would lead you to integrate more player feedback into that process.” — @uhfelix [0:25:11]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Special Guests: Felix Park and Ringo Kim.