COSenna t1_j2sdbdn wrote
Reply to comment by Protonis in The Laws of UX - beautiful website explaining 21 rules for effective UX design by Quackerooney
Honestly, most games have horrid UX in menus and elsewhere, especially from an accessibility standpoint.
I find it amazing that some game developers spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing a game (looking at you, R*) and their menus feel like they were designed by a 9 y/o. Horrendous information architecture, layouts, readability, performative actions, etc.
RDR2’s menus are some of the worst offenders and that game is absolutely brilliant.
ejensen29 t1_j2sklgv wrote
I always thought the weapon wheel on RDR2 was well designed, for how many items you have available to use.
COSenna t1_j2smkxg wrote
The weapon wheel is just OK. Not great, not terrible. The problem is they were trying to go with a certain aesthetic and it makes all of the items incredibly hard to differentiate being that they’re all white on black with no labels. This is far worse a problem in the satchel menu and what not. The weapon wheel was easier since the shape definitions were easier to differentiate.
ejensen29 t1_j2snc1h wrote
Your points are definitely fair. I just felt like I adapted to RDR2 rather quickly, whereas I still can't figure out GTA.
COSenna t1_j2so4fv wrote
That’s a fair assessment. Perhaps they made some slight improvements compared to GTA5. I wonder how bad the menus will be in 6 lol.
Years ago I found R*’s lead UX designer on LinkedIn but was unable to message him. I wanted to see if he know what he was doing, and if so, how much leverage he had in the company to promote proper UX practices. I kinda want his job lol
Fair_Bat7623 t1_j2t4ad6 wrote
Probably not much. UX is undersold in a lot of companies because its not a money maker and doesn’t drive sales. You’d think that a good looking game would, but UX gets left on the back burner a lot compared to graphics or other tangible elements.
Working in UX is an underappreciated job. UX is essentially “making the obvious look easy”, but doesn’t realize how easy it can shift from good to bad
K_ttSnurr t1_j2tpiif wrote
Also because companies doesn't know the difference between UX and UI.
rainmace t1_j2u458t wrote
I would argue UX for a video game, a 3dimensional world, is completely different than for a website. In a video game, everything is the UX. That’s the entire point. The entire world of the video game is UX
COSenna t1_j2wrpes wrote
I definitely agree, though UX is never really associated with this level of interaction. The way the engine responds to your movements through a controller relates directly to your experience. Bad physics would yield unwanted results, thus giving the user a bad experience.
I only work on interfaces, but I’ve always thought I’d be good at “designing” game physics, or at least testing and relaying needed adjustments. It all come down to getting something to work as efficiently as possible, I suppose.
sweetalkersweetalker t1_j2sya1v wrote
It was super hard to differentiate between the options though, most looked alike. Colors would have been nice
Heffe3737 t1_j2v7hw7 wrote
/me cries in mouse and keyboard.
smengi94 t1_j2u1i2g wrote
Sometimes things working is more important then things not working.. sometimes even with angular a small change in UX means a lot of work OR even if it td suppose to be an hour or day of work it ends up being 1-4 weeks and then your breaking other stuff to get this to work. Even when according to documents it should work. Sometimes the issue is that particular version of the code or ide or servers etc that isn’t working and an unknown bug pops up. Etc I’m sure at some point they were like we gotta make this easier but to do that we would be better off waiting months of testing because it means for a small change we need to change everything anyways right? So why not just in 6 months or next warzone update or whatever we will just do it then if we need to go thru the entire code base might as well make a lot of changes. I’m not sure if I’m making sense
IllegitimateLiteracy t1_j2t9o18 wrote
>I find it amazing that some game developers spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing a game (
Makes perfect sense to me.
UX Guy: "Hey Senior Leadership I want to bring in a team of 5-10 UX developers who do nothing but make sure the menus are good. "
Leadership: "how about I hire 5-10 engine developers to make the game not run like ass instead?"
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