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Evening Reading
by Garnett Lee, Feb 16, 2011 5:00pm PSTHave you ever stayed away from a game for want of feeling hardcore enough to "really" play it? Or, worse yet, bought a game and then watched it sit on the shelf all the while wondering whether it would be fun or just punishing to give it a shot? Shooters, fighting games--anything with a competitive element--hold the potential to trigger such a response.
But does the root of this issue lie with the game, or the player? In the case of say Call of Duty, where there are so many people playing and enjoying the game, how can the design be at fault? I'll go one further; isn't part of the reason for being concerned about personal performance in the game dependent on liking the game in the first place? If you didn't like the game, you wouldn't really care whether you were any good at it or not.
This relationship puts designers in an interesting spot: Risk undermining the core appeal of the game by neutering some of its competitiveness, or potentially create the "walled garden" effect when the game quickly becomes dominated by pros. Marvel vs. Capcom 3 got me thinking about these questions this afternoon because I've always felt it does a good job of striking a balance where pros and amateurs alike can have fun.
Xav's Marvel vs. Capcom 3 review is just part of today's video game news on the Shack:
I want to high five this article so fucking hard.
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At the end of the day, user feedback is awesome. A lot of things that designers and engineers do in a vacuum doesn't end up working out well when put to the test by the end user.
The M-16 and AK-47 designs are probably good examples. The M-16 as it came out of the design process had a lot of great ideas, but a lot of them failed in the field (i.e. when put in the hands of the users). If the designer tells the user, you're not using it right you need to adjust, the process is backwards.
Design first without user testing is what gives us this fucked up antenna on the iPhone. I lose a lot of calls, or can't browse the net in some instances, if I am holding the phone. I never had an issue with the previous iPhone, but this thing, the design, though beautiful and slick, could have done with more feedback from users.
The experts, if they are smart, are going to defer to the user when appropriate. The answer that Apple gave first shows the whole designer-is-god stupidity: YOU ARE HOLDING THE PHONE WRONG. No Apple, I am holding the phone right. Everyone holds the phone right. You cannot tell users that there is a wrong way to hold the phone in order to protect your beautiful design. It means your design is bad, no matter how beautiful it looks, no matter how iconic or visionary or whatever you want to do that is going to make the design community reach for their penises and begin masturbating. If it fails in the hands of the user, the design is no good.
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