The creative talk was originally presented internally to the staff of StreamElements.
Introduction
I’ve been involved in games for over 15 years, creating tabletop RPGs, hosting gaming podcasts, and currently working on commercial video game development. Today, we’ll explore game literacy, primarily through examples, and discuss how visual design helps games teach players without overwhelming them with text.
What is Game Literacy?
Think of game literacy as the language of games. Similar to how websites and apps share design conventions – like menus and buttons – so do games. However, games have the added layer of interaction. This is key to understanding how games communicate. Remember the saying “show, don’t tell”? Games take this a step further – they let players do it instead of just being told what to do.
This is where game literacy comes in. Modern games expect players to be familiar with specific conventions. For example, most players know to press “space” or “A” to jump and move left or right in side-scrolling games. They also understand basic color associations. For instance, red and green are often used to indicate health, with red representing low health and green signifying good health. However, this can be problematic for players with color blindness, highlighting a need for developers to be mindful of inclusivity.
Visual Design in Games
Games use visual design to convey information and guide players subtly. Let’s look at some examples:
- Color Coding: In “Star Renegades,” essential information like health (red) and shields (blue) is color-coded, making it easy for players to understand their status at a glance. This is a common practice seen in many games.
- Quality Indication: Different colors often represent item quality. For example, in “World of Warcraft,” white, green, blue, purple, and orange indicate increasing item quality, a standard adopted by many games since its introduction. However, this approach can become diluted when most items are of the highest quality, as in “Destiny.”
- Subverting Conventions: “Persona 5” playfully subverts typical color associations by using green and blue for health and red, pink, or purple for energy, reflecting the game’s unique visual style.
Challenges for Non-Gamers
These established conventions can create a barrier for non-gamers. They lack the built-up knowledge and intuitive understanding that experienced players possess. This is evident in the video experiment mentioned, where a non-gamer struggled to grasp basic game mechanics due to a lack of prior gaming experience.
Visual Cues:
Beyond conventions, games use visual cues to subtly guide players. For example, in “Mirror’s Edge Catalyst,” red highlights areas players can interact with, like ledges for sliding or jumping. However, the first-person perspective can limit the player’s ability to see all the red cues at once, adding a layer of challenge.
Balancing Information:
Finding the right balance between providing enough information and not overloading players is crucial. While visual cues can be helpful, some games intentionally remove hints to increase difficulty. Ultimately, the goal is to create an engaging experience that allows players to progress without feeling overwhelmed.
Moving beyond the basics of game literacy, let’s delve deeper into how games use visual cues to subtly guide players.
Color Coding and Intuitive Design
In Borderlands 3, yellow areas become your climbing map, highlighting the game’s increased focus on vertical exploration compared to its predecessors. Similarly, Dark Siders: Genesis bathes its hellscape in red, with blue highlights marking the few areas you can actually climb. While the color-coding is clear, the first-person perspective can limit your ability to see all the cues at once, adding a layer of challenge. Striking this balance between providing enough information and avoiding overwhelming players is an art form in game design.
Beyond the Obvious: Games sometimes go beyond established conventions to offer subtle cues. In Doom, for instance, green highlights interactive objects you can punch, as the accompanying symbol beside the object reinforces.
Using In-Game Logic and Player Knowledge
Survival games like The Long Dark rely on realistic environmental cues. Birds circling overhead might indicate the presence of carcasses, a natural source of food in the harsh wilderness. This approach blurs the line between gameplay visuals and immersive design, as it feels logical within the game world.
Some games also reference existing lore or player knowledge. The ongoing debate about “treasure foxes” in Skyrim highlights how players can interpret and make sense of design elements, even if they are not explicitly explained.
Reinforcing Mechanics and Subtle Guidance: The “Spidey Sense” in Spider-Man visually alerts you to incoming dangers, reinforcing the established gameplay mechanic and cleverly connecting it to the character’s comic book origins. In Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, textured lines on cliffs act as a cue for wall running, a specific game mechanic. While not immediately obvious, players who have encountered this mechanic before will understand its purpose.
Balancing Aesthetics and Mechanics: While visual cues can make games more approachable, some players might prefer the challenge of figuring things out on their own. Shadow of the Tomb Raider offers difficulty settings that allow players to remove these visual guides for a more challenging experience.
Diegetic Design: When Form Meets Function
Dead Space takes an interesting approach by integrating gameplay elements seamlessly within the game world using “diegetic design.” The character’s suit displays health, ammo, and energy levels, eliminating the need for separate UI elements. While immersive, this approach can sometimes be impractical, as seen in the example of the health meter being placed on the character’s back in a third-person perspective game.
Balancing Immersion and Clarity: Games like Firewatch and Far Cry 2 use the map as a physical object held by the character, enhancing immersion. However, traditional UI elements can be more practical for clarity and ease of use.
Technical Design: The Invisible Guide – Colliders
Every game object has an invisible “collider” that determines how it interacts with the game world, distinct from the visual model players see.
Hitboxes and Player Experience: The hitbox is the area of a character that registers a hit when attacked. Hitboxes are typically larger than the visual model to ensure a fair and enjoyable gameplay experience. Imagine the frustration of aiming perfectly at an enemy only to miss because the hitbox doesn’t match the visual model.
Balancing Hitbox Sizes: Making hitboxes too small can lead to frustration and unfair gameplay, while overly large hitboxes can make the game too easy and affect balance. This concept has existed since the early days of gaming, even in 2D point-and-click adventures like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. In such games, pixel-perfect clicking could be frustrating, leading to the term “pixel hunting.”
This exploration of visual cues, balancing aesthetics and mechanics, and the technical aspects of colliders provides a glimpse into the fascinating world of game design. By appreciating these intricate elements, we gain a deeper understanding of the creativity and thoughtfulness behind game development.
Conclusion
The language of games is a complex yet fascinating one. Much like how we learn to understand visual cues and conventions in other media like film and websites, games have their distinct grammar. Masterful game designers leverage color, visual symbols, and subtle environmental cues to guide players without breaking the immersion or overwhelming them with instructions.
This talk demonstrated how deeply intertwined aesthetics and gameplay can be. From color-coding climbable areas to using realistic bird behavior for survival elements, games often teach us how to play them without relying on traditional tutorials. Understanding the technical aspects, such as hitboxes and colliders, further reveals the hidden considerations that go into balancing fun and fairness.
The line between clear communication and player discovery is a delicate one. Some games deliberately remove visual guides to heighten the challenge, while others prioritize immersion by seamlessly integrating elements within the game world itself. Ultimately, the most successful games strike a unique balance, using visual language to create an intuitive, engaging, and rewarding experience – a testament to the art and craft of game design.