A Usability Primer

Once the player has been onboarded, they are then into the core gameplay. It’s here where the player will put into practice what they have been taught so far, in addition to acquiring new skills and features as the game progresses.

Here are some examples of core gameplay issues you should want to check for in a usability playtest:

• Objectives and goals - having a clear objective or goal to work toward is a key motivator in games. Without a sense of purpose players may quit.
• Controls - can the player issue their instructions in an efficient manner. It’s difficult to single out one usability issue that is more important than any other, but if I were forced to, then I’d say controls, or interaction, is it. The feeling of control can impact on a game’s fairness - ‘hey that wasn’t my fault it was the controls’!’, and overall joy of use - ‘Ugh, it just never does what I want’. In most games interaction is something which happens with high frequency, many times a second is not uncommon, so any friction in this area is a sure-fire way to push players away. Controls are often mentioned regularly in games reviews by professional critics and players and usually in a negative manner. When done well, usability issues rarely get a mention, it’s only when there is a problem do they tend to get mentioned.
• Visibility of game status - this is often shown in the game’s HUD and lets the player know what state the player and world is in. From a usability perspective, it’s desirable if the state of the game can be quickly readable, so aspects such as icon legibility and grouping would be important. For those parts of the player status which are critical, such as low player health, they should aim to capture the player’s attention easily so the situation can be resolved. As the processing for this UI information happens in the player’s mind, we can only be certain if the game is doing a good job of communicating its status by interviewing the player and seeing if they were aware of any change of state.
• Feedback - this is the game’s response to the player’s interaction. Feedback is important as it confirms to the player that the game received their instruction. When it comes to designing and evaluating feedback there are two properties in particular that are important - timing and perception. For feedback to be effective is has to be provided at the right time, and more importantly, the player has to notice it. If the player is not perceiving feedback when it matters then this could lead to them regularly failing at the game and not knowing why, creating a potential exit point.

Although not strictly gameplay, usability is also critical when it comes to the menus and systems that are frequently accessed during gameplay. Examples would include:

• Inventory menus
• Skill trees
• Weapon selection systems
• Maps and navigation

Any friction in these systems can delay the player getting back to gameplay, and in some cases such as weapon selection UIs, any friction could result in the player failing their objective. If the player fails at any point in a game, we want them to feel that it was their current level of ability at fault and encourage them to try again, rather than the player blaming the game and quitting.

Key takeaway

In core gameplay, usability is key to instilling a sense of purpose (goals), communicating the current game state (UI), creating effective controls (interaction), and providing feedback on performance.