Crusader kings 2 made menu micromanagement a meaningful aesthetic design choice. So much game design is centered around a fear of alienating players but its an entire dimension of game aesthetics that’s neglected and treated reductively both by traditional vg press and by enthusiasts (and sb is very guilty of this) who feel that all interfaces should be transparent and never interfere with the player’s access to the “content”. Upper middle class values of minimalism and corporate friendliness undercut the ways that interface itself can be contentful, even beyond gimmicky foddy-esque experiments and toys.
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I mean, dwarf fortress too but I can’t speak meaningfully on that
And cinco paus but that’s something @T can speak more on
We are all pleased at translating alien symbols to use a mechanical device in riven but we balk at learning an alien interface that lets us play a game that is wholly unfamiliar
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to be honest I feel like if I’m ever coming down too hard on this side, it’s directly attributable to feared or actual exhaustion at having to pick up something that’s deliberately unwelcoming. that definitely tracks with the “upper middle class values” bit (and if anything it does so less arbitrarily than associating them with minimalism, which is still basically true but seems like a potshot on its own), but even so I’m not sure it’s quite fair to regard it as a critical failure rather than an understandable bias.
or: it’s strange to read not having infinite capacity to engage with weird art perceived as bourgeois
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I’d quibble that you may be underrating the UI richness and complexity that many mainstream games build up to. I think the convention which is uniform is not vapidity and transparency, but the principles of building to complexity very gradually and to back it by the clearest possible metaphor.
To be sure I think deliberately overwhelming the player with symbols and choices from the getgo is an interesting type of experience that could be pursued more, but late-game RPG UIs are definitely contentful in themselves.
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yeah, stuff like hiring NPCs to “play the game” for you came to mind. it’s a troubling philosophy though since the foundational assumption seems to be that play time is equivalent to work, and that reducing the amount of interaction you have is an inherently desirable thing.
that’s pretty much why candybox left a bad taste in my mouth. i mean i know it’s supposed to be whimsical but it ate up far more time than it was worth.
papers please does the opposite and makes the most “trivial”, routine interactions fun and satisfying! a lot of interface design could learn from it.
i think metroid prime 2 still wins the award for my favourite wonderfully-bad overdesigned pause menu
As for exponentially outwardly-expanding clicker, I give you the only one worth playing, which is actually using that curve to make a philosophical point:
http://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/
(thanx to tulpa for turning me on to this game back in the day)
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tulpa and nedge confirmed alts
i haven’t spent much time in the monster hunter threads, but is the exterior cruft of those games not considered part of the charm?
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Hell no, mmos are a blight
People (myself included) lean towards a preference for transparency and minimalism as virtues in video game interfaces in a way that makes me think of looking at the wirecutter for the best phone charger. That’s where my potshot was coming from.
But yeah, I do think it’s bourgeois to have a preference for the conventional and unchallenging. Understandable biases are critical failures, in the sense that they’re failures of criticism.
But, to restate my perspective: the user interface can do more than just ‘being unintrusive’
Intrusive UIs can be good for a game! Unintuitive UIs can be good for a game! The UI itself being difficult to learn or manage can be good for a game! They’re a part of the aesthetics of a game. Experiencing defamiliarization through interface is just as fundamentally an under-explored subject of game crit as anything else but most people still act like UIs are ideally either non-existent or taught to the player in such a way that they can manage the complexity. There’s far more possiblities than these ultimately ‘consumer product’ approaches to interface.
The problem with that WoW UI is that people know how to use it and they would only see that kind of thing if they inflict it on themselves. That’s just masochism and tastelessness. I want UIs to be something players experiment with, something they play with and sometimes struggle with.
Crusader Kings II is my go to example because it offers the player an incomprehensible maximalism and inadequate tutorial but players learn how to play the game by struggling with it. The sheer flood of information with poor indications of what matters and what doesn’t ironically replicates the feeling of being an underinformed medieval noble. Either way, it produces a fog over expected results from actions.
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Enviro-bear 2000 is essential because it defamiliarizes the act of driving through its interface It makes controlling a car alienating.
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I think the confusing part of this is that UI design is very difficult and usually fails along complexity and confusing metaphor lines. Which is to say, both developers and critics know that UI is hostile as a neutral state and it must be actively ground into something that serves the main interactions.
Choosing to put design into UI, to put learning and mastery, is something that can only be safely done once the game knows its UI needs and has executed on them for its audience, and most games never get there.
Phone game design and the influx of Apple-trained graphic designers was a generational leap forward for game UI in general but it brought over a lot of Apple’s hubris and dogmatism.
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DD mage is boring, back to strider
Nobody should forget Enviro-Bear but in fairness we should probably classify it as a Foddy-like
I’m telling Justin you said that
I can’t believe Envirobear VR Edition only exists in my imagination
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i really like the clickers that just vomit all content at you immediately
idling to rule the gods is my favorite menu hell ive ever experienced
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