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[VIDEO TRANSCRIPT] The credits are rolling on Final fantasy 7 remake and I loved it… But maybe for reasons you don't expect I avoided playing Final Fantasy VII Remake for a long time. But not because of some unhealthy affinity for the original. I believe change is almost always good. Loving something isn't a reason to keep that something from evolving into something else. That's basically Munchhausen syndrome by proxy. You know, that mental condition whereby a healthy person is tricked by a crazy person into feeling unhealthy. By loving the original Final Fantasy VII to the exclusion of Final Fantasy VII Remake you're defining something so specifically that it depends on you in order to be relevant. That's a selfish outlook.Category Archives Video
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Video games are great. Learning from our ancestors is great. So shouldn’t our descendants have access to the greatness of today’s video games? In this video I talk about video game preservation. Why is it important to preserve both physical video games and digital video games? How you can help preserve and archive video game culture?Once the player’s mental model adapts to the understanding that face buttons function differently than shoulder buttons, and those in turn function differently than d-pad buttons, the player’s experience starts to feel intuitive. A well-designed input system never explicitly communicates to the player about these functional categorizations. Smart input design simply reveals it to the player.
Gamepad directional buttons tend to be pressed for longer durations than keyboard arrow keys. This means user input isn't just a preference; it's a gameplay consideration.
Games usability seeks to answer three questions about a game as the player plays it:
- Does the player know what they have to do?
- Is the player able to do what they need to?
- Does the player know how to achieve their goals?
So if unskippable cutscenes can possibly cause player frustration. And skippable cutscenes can possibly cause player frustration. And cutscenes that are skippable midway through can possibly cause player frustration. What’s the solution? The obvious solution is to create cutscenes that are so captivating that a player happily watches them. But that’s not a reality. Different things captivate different players in different ways.
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For a long time I’ve considered button prompts in video games to be an element of lazy game design. “Shouldn’t a well-designed game give players a play space so rich with affordance and feedback that players would frictionlessly and joyously discover the game mechanics and their associated inputs?” Not only did I think this, but I thought game designers were pretty universal in the idea; if button prompts can be eliminated, then shouldn’t it be done? But on episode 55 of the podcast “Play, Watch, Listen” Bithell dismissed the inherent goodness of an absent UI, saying it’s really just an aesthetic choice. I was surprised by this, because Mikey B is an awesome game designer and I had simply assumed every game designer would eliminate overt button prompts if they were capable enough. So in this video I talk about how Mike Bithell helped me rethink user interface design, specifically in regards to on-screen button prompts. Thank you, Mike Bithell. Mentioned: