Versus Wolves Part I: Introduction
As part of this ongoing series of Space Ape UI Blog stories I will be creating a front end UI design for a R&D project within the Unity 5 engine (currently known as Versus Wolves) and sharing my research on here. The premise of this project is to experiment with turn-based touch screen UX, UI theme and finally Neuroaesthetics. I must stress that this is quite experimental and might end up not quite working as intended, but let’s hope it will be a useful experiment and worth sharing here on the blog :)
Pillar 1 : Turn Based Strategy game UX
Versus Wolves will be a turn based war game in a similar vein to Fire Emblem and Valkyria Chronicles. Although it might come across as quite arbitrary, the more detailed your game mechanic and design brief is, the easier it will be to create a UI.
Mobile devices like the iPad feel like a great fit for the ‘pick up and play’ style of turn based strategy games. Furthermore, quality titles like these seem to be lacking on the Mobile platform so it will be good fodder to work with.
It does seem strange that there are not many good examples of this design working well on the iPad. Perhaps the problems lie within the UX? This is something I would like to address in the Versus Wolves project by approaching the genre afresh, to start from scratch on a new UI based on solid graphic design principles as opposed to following genre conventions.
A lot UX design tends to be based on existing designs in other apps or games without considering the rationale behind the choices those teams made. You end up with an attitude that “this successful studio does it like this, so we should too.” This, combined with the massive scale of user testing that some of these titles go through, can lead to further dilution of the originality of the game.
Pillar 2 : Theme
One issue with a lot of Mobile games at the moment is there are so many direct copycat styles of UI out there. By creating a unique theme and keeping it consistent, I should end up with something that looks a bit different. Coming up with an interesting setting for this fictional game, and avoiding direct genre-setting tropes such as “Ornate Fantasy” or “Blue and orange Modern Military style” will go a long way in helping develop an interesting UI theme.
Pillar 3 : Neuro-aesthetics
Neuroaesthetics is a recent branch of empirical aesthetics. Empirical aesthetics takes a scientific approach to the study of aesthetic perceptions of visual art.
A key aspect of this project will be using principles of Neuroaesthetics in UI design to find new ways of conveying information to the player. The approach will be relying on traditional graphic design skills using known aesthetic tools, such as the rule of thirds and beneficial symmetry.
Neuro-aesthetics should be thought of as a guiding line throughout the project; reinforcing aesthetic changes in UI interactions and elements. One of the core pillars behind Neuro-aesthetics is psychological effect known as peak shift, which is something I’m very keen to play with in this project. Peak Shift is a psychological phenomenon typically known for its application in animal “discrimination learning”.
Animals respond more strongly to exaggerated versions of training stimuli. For example, a rat is trained to discriminate a square from a rectangle by being rewarded for recognizing the rectangle. The rat will respond more frequently to the object for which it is being rewarded to the point that a rat will respond to a rectangle that is longer and more narrow with a higher frequency than the original with which is was trained.
This is called a Supernormal stimulus. The fact that the rat is responding more to a ‘super’ rectangle implies that it is learning a rule. A lot of this new recent research into Neuroaesthetics already feeds into current aesthetic rules that we apply in the arts, such as the previously mentioned the ”rule of thirds”. By approaching elements such as energy bars etc with peak shift in mind, maybe we can have some interesting outcomes in the Versus UI.
