In the July Computers in Entertainment (ACM), "How computer gamers experience the game situation..." [1.] presents study results suggesting the goal-oriented nature of First Person Shooters (FPSs). The authors have led me to refresh with this twist to a previous discussion on Situational Awareness: should there be different User Interfaces (UIs) to accomodate different player goals?
In Situational Awareness the question distilled down to this:
I wonder if in this age of rapidly approaching ubiquity in game world access (e.g. "Towards Situation-aware Cross-platform Ubi-Game"...) when even our good friend Alice Taylor speculates (AULA presentation) whether Google Earth is going MMO, there may come the need to freshly reevaluate how to design the virtual world experience (interface and all) to effectively communicate an efficient and engaging situational awareness.
Here, the authors conclude, in part, that gaming goals have an important role in shaping the identity of the FPS genre as well as the player's perception of what an FPS game is - its tools, and its mechanics (fn1). In other words, "aspects of the gaming situation perceived to support goal attainment were evaluated positively, while those perceived to hinder goal attainment were evaluated negatively..."
More interesting, however, is the claimed subtle relationship between goals and the levers of a player's gaming circumstance:
goals... (act) as perceptual filters, such that players paid most attention to aspects of the gaming situation perceived to influence most their attainment of gaming goals, and ignored or paid less attention to aspects perceived to have little or no influence on goal attainment.
Thus this question. To the extent that there is a conformity in the UI designs within genres, such as MMORPGs, does this then imply a restriction on the goal-set that can be adequately offered to the player? In other words, taken to an extreme, an open-ended world should have a large number of UI patterns, each perhaps very different? Explorers, Socializers...
Developing and supporting multiple UIs sounds expensive from a developer's point-of-view. But perhaps those costs are part of the cost of admission to open-ended world experiences.
Anticipating those who will again cite client UI customization (e.g. World of Warcraft), the caveat I gave in the previous discussion (Situational Awareness) would be the same one I offer here. Are changes to the UI surface decoration sufficient - or is it, as I suspect, time to think in terms of deeper representational differences. Perhaps Xzin's Army of One and the multiboxing phenomenon in general is but one example of a UI style stressed to accomodate different player purposes in virtual worlds.
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[1.] Delwin Clarke, P. Robert Duimering. "How computer gamers experience the game situation: a behavioral study." Computers in Entertainment. ACM Press. Volume 4, Issue 3 (July 2006).
[fn1.] A few notable references include: Table II (Interface Preferences incl. mouse and keyboard); Table III (Map/Game Environment Preferences).
I agree that the UI should customize itself to the user and specific use.
In my own game, I have four tabs on the top of the screen: "Explore", "Chat", "Combat", and "Misc". Clicking on a tab rearranges and shows/hides windows accourding to the tab. Chat enlarges/emphasizes the chat-oriented windows, while "Explore" makes the first-person view prominent. "Combat" displays combat-specific information. (My combat system as hit locations and non-HP damage that don't easily fit into a single red/blue slider.)
These tabs prove particularly handy on a dual-monitor system since the less relevent information can be shoved off onto the second monitor. (Oh, but I forgot, MMORPGs don't support dual-monitors! Even though all notebooks and most game-oriented video cards support a second monitor. And most people have a spare monitor lying around. )
See http://www.mxac.com.au/mif/screenshots.htm>http://www.mxac.com.au/mif/screenshots.htm for screenshots.
Posted by: Mike Rozak | Sep 05, 2006 at 23:56
When does "accomodate different player goals" become "provide an exploit toolkit"? This is a very fine line and I've seen lots of examples of UI features that didn't seem like exploits to me, but were considered exploits by the devs or other players.
Don't sell Blizzard short by talking about "UI surface decoration" -- the majority of the WoW interface is written in Lua and completely malleable by the player (if the player happens to also be a programmer). For example, players have built multi-monitor support using only Lua. I've written event tracing and code profiling tools that monitor the interface to identify inefficient UI code. This goes far beyond surface decoration.
Interesting examples of goal oriented interfaces in WoW are Auctioneer (to help buy low, sell high in the auction house) and Gatherer (to help remember resource locations).
More illustrative of my first point is the Decursive interface. This automatically notifies the player of dispellable magic, disease, poison, etc. and provides ONE BUTTON that the player presses to (1) target the player with the problem, (2) select the cure spell, and (3) cast the spell. This seems like an exploit, but it's very, very popular.
Posted by: Ken Fox | Sep 06, 2006 at 08:00
Am I missing something? Or is the result of this research that "gamers pay attention to the parts of games that are important to getting done what they want to get done?"
Uh... that's true in, well... everything. It's not a game related phenom. Certainly not a videogame/MMO related one. We call it "attention" and "focus" and all kinds of stuff like that there. It's a basic fact of life. If you enter a bar with the intent of picking up a gal, you'll notice gals. That's the "goal" and you won't, if asked later, retain anywhere near as much info about the bar decor, the music on the jukebox, etc. If, however, you are sizing up the beer list because you're really looking for a good brew pub to frequent for a nice, rare pint after work... you'll remember less about the girls.
We pay attention to those things that help us do what we've come to do. And many games are built around specific goals. So those things that are more relevant to the goals will get remembered. We needed research for this one?
As for customizable UI... again... what are we arguing about? Whether or not it's a good thing? How could it be bad? And if a more social/free-form VW has more free-form goals, then... sure! Give me a more free-form UI. As long as it doesn't bump into yours, sounds great. Let me mash my experience as much as possible.
Posted by: Andy Havens | Sep 06, 2006 at 09:05
Andy>
We needed research for this one?
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As I noted in comments in this discussion often the point of research is getting the details right. At some level of abstraction most folks will agree on most things. The hard part is in squaring the details. In this case, what are the UI and mechanical means that players see as important to the goals of an FPS?
To repeat myself from the earlier discussion:
To my crude google-metrics, I count several hundred instances of where the word immersion/ immersive/... has been used on Terra Nova...
Now my pop theory holds that Tetris can be "immersive", and so can WoW, and so can Second Life, and so can email. But frankly these are pretty useless claims. The point of research is as much about refining and discovering the boundaries of ideas as it is about discovering new meaning.
Andy>
As for customizable UI... again... what are we arguing about? Whether or not it's a good thing? How could it be bad? And if a more social/free-form VW has more free-form goals, then... sure! Give me a more free-form UI. As long as it doesn't bump into yours, sounds great. Let me mash my experience as much as possible.
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I think I missed the argument. W/R/T customizable UIs, the question is whether the degree of customization they offer is sufficient, not whether the degree of customization they *do offer* is useful.
Posted by: nate combs | Sep 06, 2006 at 21:59
Andy>
We pay attention to those things that help us do what we've come to do. And many games are built around specific goals. So those things that are more relevant to the goals will get remembered.
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I don't think this in itself is a shocker. But it does offer this quandry. To the extent that I optimize my UI to achieve Goal A, to what extent does it undermine my ability to attempt Goals B, C...
In some sense the point of the post is to question the trade-offs in multi-functional UI design.
Posted by: nate combs | Sep 06, 2006 at 22:03
The study may be too general to provide useful insight for game designers -- who is the target audience of the article? There were only 11 subject participants all drawn from the same local gaming group. It sounds like the authors published this to justify another, larger, focused study. If it were software, I'd call it a proof of concept. :)
The goal oriented section IMHO was weak. The most interesting thing that popped out for me was:
[quote] LAN MP (multi-player) was viewed as a far more enjoyable social activity than internet MP, and had much less cheating (though cheating by looking at another player’s screen was still a minor concern). By contrast, internet MP was seen as largely an anonymous activity with little social benefit, to the extent that one interviewee compared it with playing against very intelligent bots in single player mode [end quote]
Another interesting point is only 3 of 11 participants felt that voice chat contributed to a good user interface even though the preferred gaming environment is a LAN party. There is an interesting conflict there. Why do players like "voice chat" at a LAN party and not over the Internet?
Posted by: Ken Fox | Sep 07, 2006 at 07:53
Ken>
Another interesting point is only 3 of 11 participants felt that voice chat contributed to a good user interface even though the preferred gaming environment is a LAN party. There is an interesting conflict there. Why do players like "voice chat" at a LAN party and not over the Internet?
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Idle speculation here. But a guess would be that it might have something to do with privacy and multi-tasking (at home) vs. a (LAN) party - a deliberate and self-contained social activity! Perhaps it is true for FPSs, but I think it would be even more likely for MMOs - who would be brave enough to reveal hours of idle background noise and phone conversations at home over TS, for example, while managing a low-intensity grindy online experience?
Posted by: nate combs | Sep 07, 2006 at 20:02