How Video Games Take UX Beyond Gamification
How Video Games Take UX Beyond Gamification
How Video Games Take UX Beyond Gamification
By Gianluca Caico
July 06, 2020
Summary
During a time when the time spent on video games has reached record breaking heights, due to excessive time indoors, gamification has more of a place now than ever before.
Usability via Recognition over recall
Early on, the player is taught that botany plays a huge role in the game. The player is encouraged to collect flowers via in game tutorials, whilst roaming the open world. Flowers are used for crafting provisions.
Accessibility via Help and Documentation
Accessibility is clearly at the forefront of navigating the UI/ menu. Players can easily access resources by pressing their controller’s touchpad. On press, a full screen menu is activated.
Value via Player Control and Freedom
Horizon Zero Dawn is an open world style game. The freedom in roaming the open world is a bi-product of the stories key objective — to save the world from evil takeover by Ancient Machines. Quest progress, runs the setting gamut, ranging — snow, desert to jungle.
This provides a direct link to the ergonomic design of contemporary gaming tablets and how they have signified a change in the way devices are geared towards an individual’s motor movements. Comparing a tablet to a control pad, the control pad is not as sensitive as a tablet. Control pads have buttons that will either correspond to it being pressed or not. Certain games on tablets will incorporate more sensitivity, depending on the game, which adds to the overall user experience.
Credibility via Diagnosing and Recovering from Errors
Games are one big problem just waiting to be solved.
The core problem is split into hundreds of mini-problems how to implement the sequence to obtain a reward.
Findability via Consistency and Standards
Within the weapons inventory is a 1/4 split circle, split into top/ bottom/ left/ right segments. Each segment is a weapon slot.
This begs the question…
Other than a reward system, what else can the software/tech/design industry learn from immersive video games like Horizon Zero Dawn? On the surface it appears that our/next generation are wasting away their brains by playing video games; this is definitely not the case.
Reference
Caico, G. (2020, July 06). How Video Games Take UX Beyond Gamification. Retrieved July 07, 2020, from https://medium.com/super-jump/how-video-games-take-ux-beyond-gamification-92a16c519608