So Nielsen's usability laws. Seen all them before. They're all good. Colour, spacing etc. Yeah, I've got that. And then there was the familiar idea that people can only remember 7 plus or minus 2 things at one time. It holds true for Windows form applications. Microsoft Word, Access and Excel are very intuitive because they rely heavily on this fact. They don't abuse the users' senses with overwhelming amounts of knowledge. Flash applications, such as online pizza ordering services are similar. But games?
I initially thought, sure, Nintendo does this well. Sequential tasks. Jump on turtle. Check. Jump on Goomba. Check. Jump over pipe. Check.
"Oh wait, she's talking about interface..." it dawned on me. Ok, so it isn't about how much the player has to physically manage, it should be that there shouldn't be more than between 5 and 9 items on the HUD. Like a first person shooter. Main screen. Mini-map. Task list. Special commands. Fairly generic, items are easily accessible. Essentially, these games have followed the same framework since 1998's Half-Life.
Once again, I find myself compelled to think about strategy games. They seem to be that one genre that likes to push the envelope. The modern strategy game is a marvel of user interface design. I think Age of Empires II was one of the first games to create the framework that exists today:
The user is given a large bar on the bottom third of the screen, and this is further divided into three boxes. The left-hand box contains commands for the selected unit. Quite useful. The middle bar contains information for the selected unit, building or formation. Once again, quite useful. And the right-hand side contains the ever-relied on minimap. The remnant of the screen is largely taken up by the actual game, with some more system menu buttons on the top.
This is where I found myself returning to the "But games?" thought. Doesn't a minimap have it's own interface? Doesn't the game have it's own interface in addition to this? There is so much happening on screen and on the minimap that it is immediately clear that players are required to constantly remember more than 9 items at a time: the positions of the units in the game alone are enough to blow this limit open. Add to this the hotkeys, the constant activity on the minimap, the constant sounding of alarms in numerous areas when entering combat, and you get a rather frantic experience occurring. Even under this idea, it seems strategy games require super human feits of their players. Despite this, players are well able to perform and micro-manage different events and interface feedback at once. The evidence? People buy these games in droves.
So, what then can be said for user interface? I gather that it may be wiser to say "users should not have to actively use more than 5 to 9 controls at any one time" for strategy games. It would seem that this can be accurately said for most strategy games, further evidenced Empire Earth II which tried to break this limit... and that reflected in sales. Yet, this intuitive interface provides players with enough tools to efficiently go beyond what has been classified as "normal human memorization patterns".
Of course, RTS games have a specific market. Usually those with a more logical and attentive mind are active purchasers of these games, over those who are less inclined. These others who don't purchase strategy games may be those we would ascribe this normality of active memory too. But for this other market, game developers are successfully appealing to and enhancing the skills of the super human.
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