1. USABILITY AND GAMING
Megan McKeever
Information Culture
Oct. 8 2012

2. Why should game designers care about usability?
• Game playing is voluntary
• “Even the smallest glitch or hiccup in the user interface may render
an otherwise good game into a rather annoying experience.”
(Laitinen, 2005)
• A lot of competition within the gaming market (many system and
thousands of games)

3. * The first rule of
game usability:
Never ask a player to save their game;
instead, have the game save automatically.
“Simply display subtle on-screen text that says
"Saving…" as popularized on consoles by Halo
and be done with it. To ensure gamers can
play back their favorite levels, don't overwrite
level data. Rather, keep tabs on a gamer's
progress and grant them access to the areas
they have already visited.”
– Blake Snow, BusinessWeek

4. *Rule #2
Press any key to start!
For a newbie gamers, having them
press a certain key (i.e. the start
button) can be a difficult challenge.

5. * Rule 3
Allow players to “remap”
game buttons. For example, if
Space = Jump and Control =
Duck, a player could set their
preferences and choose
different buttons for those
commands.
*Rule 4
Allow players to skip
background scenes.

6. * #5 and 6
• Never let a camera get too close to
a player or bump into a wall.
• “Nothing frustrates a gamer more
than having the view of the action
compromised by a shoddy camera
system. Mario 64 came out 11 years
ago. With our powers combined, I'm
confident we can overcome this
inconvenience sooner than later.”
• Never make use of every controller
button just because you can.
• XBOX 360 and Playstation 3 each
have 17 buttons!
Xbox 360 Controller

7. * #8 - Always present in-game tutorials, FAQs,
and help menus for newbie gamers.

8. *
• This is an expert evaluation of a
game called Shadowgrounds
• The evaluation was done 6 months
prior to game release
• In total 135 usability problems were
found.
• Out of these problems 2 were
classified catastrophic, 30 severe and
60 intermediate. The remaining 43
problems were either minor or
cosmetic. The distribution of the
problems is illustrated in Figure 2.

9. Works Cited
• http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2007-10-
12/gaming-usability-101businessweek-business-news-
stock-market-and-financial-advice
• http://www.irit.fr/recherches/ICS/projects/twintide/u
pload/447.pdf
• http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2333/better
_games_through_usability_.php
• http://www.behavioristics.com/