::scr Re: Cognitive Friction

[Simon Wistow]

On Thu, Dec 20, 2001 at 09:27:15AM -0800, celia romaniuk said:
> I have a theory that the reason people think that games interfaces are
> really intuitive is that the people who make those claims play games a
> lot; and that games follow a certain set of conventions. Hence new games
> are often learnable.

This is definitley true. For example most post-Street-Fighter-II games
have at least one fireball attack based on back-back-forward+punch and
some sort of down-down+forward+forward-forward+punch dragon punch style
thing.

Driving games for various platforms often use the same keys.

This is a good thing in much the same way the Mac Interface Guidelines
are a good thing - except that they tend to be more of an
unspoken/unwritten agreement because the object of a game is to get
people hooked as soon as possible.

Menu systems are weird are either very good (if they suck, people will
just give up on the game and this is much more disasterous for games
people than for app designers. [0])

Some games, mostly the more thoughtful games rather than 'twitch' games,
have very different interfaces c.f Civ II, Sims, Command and Conquer.



> Oh, and that stuff about graphic design vs interface design will be
> perfectly obvious to anyone whose ever worked with a design monkey who
> makes pretty pictures but has no clue about interaction.

*cough Profero *cough*

> Grumpy of Highbury

Beer soon?

Simon