Beyond the HUD - User Interfaces for Increased Player Immersion in FPS Games

Beyond the HUD User interfaces for player immersion in FPS games Magnus Lorentzon Erik Fagerholt Interaction Design Master’s Programme IT-Universitetet, Chalmers Tekniska Högskola

Beyond the HUD How do we design interfaces for player immersion in FPS games? 1. Studied and player 20+ contemporary FPS’s 2. Studied innovative games in other genres 3. Interviews, focus-groups and play-testing 4. Extensive litterature study

FPS games played The following titles were included in the preliminary game study Hour of Victory America's Army: True Soldiers Turning Point Legendary Conflict: Denied Ops Haze Clive Barker's Jericho BlackSite: Area 51 Turok TimeShift Call of Juarez Mirror's Edge The Darkness F.E.A.R.2 Tom Clancy's GRAW 2 Resistance 2 Left 4 Dead Bioshock Killzone 2 The following titles were included in play-testing Halo 3 CoD 4: Modern Warfare Battlefield: Bad Company Far Cry 2

other games of relevans Other games played or studied during the thesis work as examples of innovative UI solutions Jurassic Park: Trespasser Peter Jackson’s King Kong Call of Chuthulu: Dark Corners of the World Metroid Prime Tom Clancy’s Splinter cell: Conviction Heavy Rain GTA 4 Rockstar’s Table Tennis Dead Space Resident Evil 5

from this…

… to this “ In a participatory medium, immersion implies learning to swim, to do things that the new environment makes possible." (Murray, 1996)

The interactive illusion is an illusion in itself… ludology not

what is immersion?

what is immersion? When the player accesses his real world perception, reasoning skills or emotions to play the game or voluntarily adopt the game world as a primary world, and reason from the character’s point of view rather than having to refer directly to the rules of the game in order to understand it

guidelines

guidelines 1. Know your design space 2. Know your game 3. Establish player agency 4. Strengthen the player-avatar perceptual link

know your design space

know your design space Every UI element can be categorized based on two fundamental properties: FICTION SPATIALITY

Fictional map, non-fictional tutorial text

Spatial runner vision, non-spatial subtitles

know your design space

Non-diegetic elements (non-spatial, non-fictional)

Meta-perception (non-spatial, non-fictional)

Meta-representation (non-spatial, fictional)

Geometric elements (spatial, non-fictional)

Diegetic elements (fictional, spatial)

Signifiers (fictional, spatial)

know your design space The user interface is not restricted to visual elements. Don’t forget to make use of… … the auditory dimension … the haptic dimension

know your game

know your game Distinguish games of progression from games of competition Single player vs multi player

Non-diegetic HUD elements, justified given that the nature of the game is highly competitive (Battlefield: Bad Company)

know your game Distinguish games of progression from games of competition SP games can be highly competitive

HUD elements added to the more competitive Time Trial mode of Mirror’s Edge

know your game The fiction of the game determines the possibilities of diegetic UI elements Consequently, fiction provides opportunity to explain why certain information is available to both the player and the player character, bringing the player closer to the avatar that he or she controls.

A glimpse of the highly diegetic UI of Dead Space

know your game The game fiction also determines what UI designers can get away with outside of the diegetic area… … would Runner Vision feel right if Faith wasn’t a ”runner”?

establishing player agency

Percieved Affordances

Signifiers

Material Constraints

Formal Constraints

remember… Exsisting affordances might need to be amplified Non-existing ones might need to be supressed.

Amplification using signifiers

Supression AND Amplification

Demonstrated Affordances

"Hey, Resident Evil 5, I'm well aware that I'm supposed to throw a grenade into the boss monster's mouth. I kind of got the message from the way grenades keep getting spawned… So that's what I've been trying to do for twenty minutes by actually equipping a grenade and throwing it at the boss monster's mouth … I had no idea you expected me to walk directly up to the boss monster's mouth, at which point I would be prompted to press a button to script equipping and tossing a grenade. Last I checked, a grenade was a ranged weapon." breakdown… - Tom Chick

strengthen the player-avatar perceptual link

strengthen the player-avatar perceptual link Due to the fact that the player is only connected to the game world through graphics, audio and haptics, much of the way we act within the real world is lost when transferred into a game experience. This must be compensated by the game UI!

strengthen the player-avatar perceptual link The most significant loss of perception is the broken perceptual link regarding the internal states of the player character Meta-perception – a straight forward strategy towards linking the player closer to the senses of the player avatar

Meta-perception by simulating tunnel vision (Call of Duty 5)

Meta-perception using ”blood on camera lense” metaphor (Killzone 2)

Meta-perception to give an increased sense of speed (ME)

strengthen the player-avatar perceptual link It is also important to consider perceptually linking the player to the external game world For example, use signifiers to leave environmental traces that strengthens the player’s sense of direction

Shoe smear marks in Mirror’s Edge, increasing sense of direction regarding explored environments

Blood traces, strengthening the player’s sense of direction regarding unexplored environments (Dead Space)

strengthen the player-avatar perceptual link If non-fictional UI elements are used to guide the player, it is important to balance between providing the player with too much information and too little. While players appreciated the increased sense of direction that Runner Vision provides in ME, they actually preferred discovering their own paths through the game environments, without using Runner Vision

http://publications.dice.se	8653
http://www.slideshare.net	21
http://dice.se	6
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	4
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com	3
https://twimg0-a.akamaihd.net	2
http://74.125.77.132	1
https://schoolisgood.com	1

Beyond the HUD - User Interfaces for Increased Player Immersion in FPS Games

by DICE on Feb 24, 2010

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

8 Embeds 8,691

Statistics

Beyond the HUD - User Interfaces for Increased Player Immersion in FPS Games — Presentation Transcript