What’s interesting about the way we use items in the world is that they should be self explanatory. The explanations you need with how to interact with something, the better experience you have with it. Simple enough. The complicated thing is getting the complicated out of the thing… yeah, you heard me.
We’ll start at the beginning, before even putting in the game, you have this controller and its design is good enough that you already have an idea of what does what, at least for a few of the buttons. So by design, on the X360 and to a lesser extent the PS3, there are two triggers which signify that they are used in so form of trigger based action. Dark Void is a 3rd person shooter, so by that definition, the triggers should be an offensive type interaction. The right trigger is indeed to shoot, however the left trigger is used to aim down the sights. I feel that this is to be blamed on games like Call of duty or Medal of Honor, where they designed the controls this way but not every game should use this functionality, or at least not map it to the left trigger, there is a left bumper. Then you run into the problem of what the gamer has learnt over past experiences, that the left trigger is aim, even if it is an arbitrary memory.
If you take a look at the first screen shot I took, you’ll see that the ‘weapon’ is on the left and the ‘grenade’ is on the right. The representation of this to how they interact with the buttons is actually backwards. It is your ‘right’ trigger that fires the gun and the ‘left bumper’ that throws the grenade. The player has to learn these things by either reading the manual or trial and error. There is no reason for those things to be placed as they are.
With the help of Photoshop, and some rudimentary editing (I, in no way claim that I’m any good with Photoshop, I’d probably have better results using MS Paint) have simply swapped the order of the weapons. Now it seems to make a bit more sense, since your left item is using your left hand and the right one is with your right hand.
Take the example further, I’ve gone and completely moved them to a new spot on the screen and it just feels much more natural and there is little memorization involved. The argument to that setup, is that the player would have to keep their eyes in two places at once in order to see how much ammo or ‘nades were left but that is simply a question of moving them to the center of the screen, keeping the focus where the action is.
Doors are an interesting object within games. It seems that everyone is trying to find the easiest way to explain to us how a door works. I see it in many other games and you'll start noticing it now that you're reading this that there is much explanation for something that most of us use daily. The ‘simple’ task of opening a door is rendered more complex that it should be. The screen shot that I took, depicts a point much later in the game, so the assumption is that the player has encountered many doors and interactive objects and knows what button does the action. Another arbitrary memorization, but in this case there was very limited choice of which button should be used. They never teach the player what button to press by using on screen cues or never realize that the player is learning as they are playing. They simply lead them to the object and then tell them what to press.
The X360 controller has 4 face buttons that have individual colours (the PS3 has 4 different colours but the example still works) that can be shown on screen to tell the player what can be done without telling them what they have to do. They could have limited the text in the game and better immersed the player in the experience by allowing the player to look for clues as to what button needs to be pressed and where.
Additionally, if the designers felt that they needed to guide the player slightly, in case they forgot what needs to be pressed, they could have integrated the command into the button, creating a seamless interaction between player and environment.
Another example is depicted here. As you take the role as an AA gunner, there is a small diagram on the bottom right telling you which of the four guns you are sitting at and what needs to be pressed to, assumedly, switch guns. Here’s where it gets tricky, the LB (Left bumper) goes to the right and the RB goes to the left. Interestingly enough, this whole mess of a situation could have been avoided, because sitting right in the middle of the screen are some gauges and buttons that could have easily been used to depict which gun you’re sitting at and which one activates next with what button press. Funny isn’t it, they built the answer into their problem.
The last item that I noticed, was their cover system. Everyone loves a good 3rd person cover game, thanks GoW! But do they really have to tell me what I can cover on with a diagram and a button associated with it? Again, this would have been a good time to use colours and visual cues to let me know what I need to do and let me discover it.
Games are about learning not about being told every step of the way what I need to do. Dark Void was actually a fun play through after having put my expectations way down but the point of this exercise was really to explore just how we use a game and how some games hold our hands too much, not talking about game objectives. I hope that after reading this article, you'll not have to think twice about a door, if the designers thought twice about you.
(All photos taken by myself, from the Xbox360 version of Dark Void published by Capcom)
