The evolution of the UI in Games
What is a UI or HUD?
The User Interface or HUD (head-up display) is one of the most under-appreciated but most important elements of game development. The UI is the way players can interact with the game and receive feedback of their interaction. A game with a great story, great mechanics but bad UI is going to be most likely an unknown game.
The UI not only provides vital information about characters status and the state of the world, but often is key to shaping player behavior. A simple dot flashing on a map can dramatically affect how players interact with the game.
From Pong to Resident Evil 7
One of the first video games ever created was Pong (1972). Basically two players playing tennis. It was about this time that game developers realized that players get an extra incentive to play when things start becoming competitive with player scores.
With Space Invaders, Pac-man and Super Mario Bros the UI start becoming an important part of the game: the necessity to show how many lives you have left, the high-score, the collectibles (coins in Super Mario). All new mechanics to make the game more engaging and fun.
Later on, video games became more popular and with popularity increase the complexity. The UI turn into a fundamental part thanks to strategy and role playing games (RPG): Final Fantasy, Warcraft or Diablo are some example of that revolution.
When the 3D graphics hit the games industry in the 1990s, It made possible the idea of a ‘first-person’ point-of-view (POV) gameplay, which is pretty much you seeing the action through the eyes of the game character. But also create a new challenge for the UI as since then games and UI were in the same 2D plane. Developer start realising that UI needs to be differentiate in two big branch: Non-Diegetic, a typical game UI layer on top of the game, and Diegetic, which exist in a game world instead of being overlaid. Some Diegetic games examples are: Dead Space or Far Cry 2 where the experience is fully immersive.
In the last decades the technology pushed the realism of video games so high that the typical Non-diegetic UI seems a bit out of place, especially with the advent of Virtual Reality (VR).
That’s why we find a new differentiation of Diegetic UI: Spatial UI where the UI is projected on top of 3D objects (a glowing trail on the floor the player can follow) and Meta UI, appearing as a 2D element, generally linked to an object used by the player.
Lately the Meta UI is also being used in movies and series, to explain the situations and the actions of the actor in a different way, more related on games and interfaces devices.
VR games, the new frontier
The VR world is a completely original experience and the interaction is a new challenge for UI designers, mainly because the game is all around the player and it’s pretty easy lose the point of action. Is an UI duty to maintain the focus of the game narrative on specific points.
A really nice experiment is the latest Oculus Rift short video named “Lost”. A bunch of fireflies in the dark and the 360 degrees audio would help the experience to maintain the focus on the action.
A VR UI could be assisted by the 3D space and potentially play with depth of field and parallax effects to add some vibe and flavour to it. It also need to be clear, and subtle as it shouldn’t interfere with the experience. All the hollywood fancy hud are highly discouraged as create noise and potentially sickness to the player.
Future of videogames UIs
Thinking of the Future of UI we can recalling “Minority Report” or “Iron Man” with their innovative “gesture interface”. The controls will get more precise and intuitive to the player and not only the hands but the full body will interact with the virtual world.
Once the technology will be advance enough we could interact with the game via eye-tracking camera technology, via gestures or even with your thoughts via detection of brainwaves!
Conclusion
The game industry is without doubt a great way to test new gadgets that could be essentials in the next future. Besides, thanks to casual games, You Tube or Twitch Vlogger and full body interactive games, the market increased across all ages and genders. In this scenario the UI has to be very dynamic and evolve continuously with new technologies and the market demand.
Probably most of the people don’t realize that Windows is basically an interface of DOS, it allows people to use a personal computer without learning and writing down impossible string of codes.
Apple created a whole market around a pioneering interface design, their style becomed clearly recognizable and intuitive all over the world. Other examples are given by Wordpress, Wix and Mailchimp, companies that help people to create, with some limitation of course, their own up-to-date websites or marketing newsletters with a very intuitive and smart UI.
In this fast paced life, would you spend your time trying to interact with a device with a poor and confusing UI? Personally, I wouldn’t and that’s why, in my opinion, a good product needs a smart UI which has to keep it simple while driving the user straight to the goal.
