Griping Undone by Interaction (G.U.I)

One of the good (and intimidating) things about working for any small company is the diverse number of tasks you will be required to work on. For example, when I was employed by Ahasai Designs, I was primarily hired as a writer for their upcoming title. However, that role has expanded into being a Game Designer, Administration Officer, Finance Officer and Marketing Officer. 

I should complain, except most of it's pretty enjoyable. Eventually, however, you run into a wall. My wall was G.U.Is. Simply put, I've never had to give them much though before. Sure, Mass Effect 1's G.U.I was a little clunky and I struggled with The Witcher and Deus Ex's as well but on the whole they looked professional and I could eventually figure them out. 

For mobile apps it's a little different, they are insanely user friendly.  You can almost instantly make the connection between the icon and its function. You don't even notice that they exist because you've got so used to them being there. 

Due to this naivete; when my boss, Keidrych, phoned up and said "Trahern, can you create a rough sketch of the GUI?", I was mostly confident that I could. "Sure." I replied. "I'll get to that."

Firstly, I sat down and decided on my priorities. I wanted it to be different. I wanted to 'stand out' from the crowd and avoid the 'three box' approach which occurs in more games than I could count. I also wanted it to blend into the story, to make people feel connected with their objectives and have a sense of what the game was about. 

Plus, just in case all of the above was far too easy, it had to be intuitive. It should utilize the touch screen capacity of the ipod / iphone as much as possible. Users really enjoyed 'flicking' between screens (not just point and clicking) so it had to have that kind of functionality as well. 

In my mind, that's what a good user interface did, which meant that I had to create that for our game. Now that I knew what I wanted in style / design, I needed to know what functionality I had to build in. I started by writing a list of all the things the users should be able to do now and in the future, level select, type of gameplay select, turning sound on and off, sound controls etc. After all this work, I had two lists and less hours in the day but was still no closer to having a draft GUI. 

I changed tract, I created a series of rectangles on a piece of A4 paper which resembled the size of the screen the game would be playable on. This would give a good sense of what would 'fit' on the screen and be easily usable / view-able. After all that planning and preparation, I was certain that I was ready. I found a pencil (under three unread books) and started drawing on the rectangle. Or more precisely, I held my pencil in my hand and thought really hard about how to create a visually entertaining GUI. 

10 minutes passed and all I had to show for it were horrible squiggles and a growing sense of frustration. So, I did what all good creative types do, I turned on my ipod and started up a competitor's product. I guess I was suppossed to analyse the product but instead I ended up playing a few levels, exiting out and then started to stare at my one squiggle filled rectangle again. Erasing everything, I re-commenced and ended up with even more squiggles which led me to declare "It's Cola time." and dashed out for a can. 

Although I tried to stretch this break into as long as possible by having a 'creativity team building session' with my wife, I eventually had to come back to my mostly white piece of paper. This time, however, I tried something different. I took three deep breaths and opened up my ipod but this in this cycle: really analysed a few competitors' products and contemplated what was good about them. I also looked at the way apple (which is really good at this stuff) had created their GUI. 

On my piece of paper, I started to break down what should appear on each screen under the bottom of their respective rectangles and finally focused on what functionality should be there. Basically, I had to get back to basics. What needed to be on the screen, what needed to be located somewhere else, what would feel natural. I think competitors' products are really great for this because they highlight the industry standard and also what users are used to. If it's too innovative, users are going to find it difficult to use because they have to re-learn everything which may be better in the long term but is sure going to frustrate them today. 

Anyways, completing this task, I was able to get creative. The icons and text in the GUI needed to relate to the game world. Now that I knew what was going to be in the menus, I could focus on how to make them different. I was able to create icons from important in-game objects. It also created a more holistic world experience and kept the player in the Universe we had designed. 

Another thing that was important was playing with the ipod itself. Originally, I was going to add a volume control to the options menu but I quickly realised that I was out of space for that sort of idea because the screen was so small. However, when I played with the ipod / iphone, I found out that there was already a volume control on the side which I had not noticed before. (I had noticed it for playing music but never made the connection of using it with games.) In addition, I took the power of the apple square button more seriously. I had included an 'exit game' option in the main menu but that was really redundant, the square button always exited. To not keep this standard would have been a huge problem for iphone / ipod gamers. 

Eventually, I was able to plan out a GUI which (hopefully) the community could embrace and accept. There were a few things that I learned from this experience which was significantly important:

1. Create a GUI early in the process. It's the first thing people see and it takes a while to understand what it should and should not have. 
2. Plan your GUI to have all the functions for this game and future expansions. If you are thinking (as we are) of expanding the game to have updates, think about how to put those on your existing GUI. You can always add them later unless you've already used the screen space with your first GUI. 
3. If possible, use the layout, not text, to inform the player what the icons will do. Do words like 'Play' or 'Start' really add value to the experience? Do you think players cannot figure out that the biggest button on the screen does?
4. Create icons from in-game assets. Nothing is more important than having a flowing experience which a gamer can subtly appreciate later. It shows you've thought this through instead of rushing it out the door. 
5. Send it to the programmer and artist early. This is probably the most important thing. Everything in creating a game is a team effort. They need to see what you want to create so that they can plan their time lines and also advise if what you are suggesting is possible. Sometimes an idea can be incredibly amazing but it can also take a lot of work, too much work for a game with a turnaround time of 2 - 3 months. 

The Zero Sum Trap

One of the most challenging difficulties for us to overcome when we started Ahasai Designs was not a technical problem but rather a cultural perception of competitiveness. When we started to conduct research into the app-store; we discovered that there were thousands of independent studios and game developers already in there trying to sell their products. Although the consumer base was large, hundreds of millions units sold, the idea that we had to compete against all of them was intimidating. 

How do you even know if your game or game mechanic is unique and interesting when confronted with a vast ocean of applications? It would have been impossible to try them all and create something from those trials which was completely unique. Yet, my cultural bias kept pushing itself into my brain. "To succeed you must be the best. To succeed you must be a top seller. To be noticed it has to be more amazing than any other products."

This idea of being #1 was / is incredibly stifling. How do you start when someone else has already been there? So, I had to sit down and figure out what I wanted from my product. What outcome was I / we looking for? Well, Ahasai Designs wanted to pay its staff, wanted to generate enough income that we could pay our bills and make more amazing games. Then I calculated that to a set, realistic figure and realised we only need .01% of the user base to purchase just one of our products. One time. 

That's an incredibly small number and even better than that once I got the past the intimidation of the number of developers out there, I saw that there were developers who I had never heard of making good money. Not sensational Angry Birds cash but good enough to grow their portfolio and keep themselves paid. 

Yet major difficulty was accepting that these developers were not competitors. Just because someone purchased their product did not mean that they would not purchase mine. In fact, the price point was so low that it encouraged multiple purchases of a variety of products. The risk for the consumer had almost become negligible. 

Most of my life, I've been taught through advertising and word of mouth that the best rise to the top of mountain. That the only reason these people / companies are such incredible successes is because they are better than their competitors. Therefore to become a success, I have to become the best. Plus, I have to believe that my product is better than others. My product makes your product inferior. 

I haven't agreed with that assessment since I was 18. But it's culturally ingrained. 'I have to be better than my neighbours, own a bigger car, earn more money' etc. Even though I make a conscious decision to believe differently, years of indoctrination pound away when confronted with the reality of owning your business. 

I understand why it's encouraged by the current successful companies of today. To instill the idea into people that success is quality and quality is success is a great way of establishing a psychological barrier to new entrants. It discourages risk taking "I don't know this company, will it be good?" and encourages repeat purchases "I trust this company, I know of them." It builds repeat customers and perceived value of products which allows you to charge more. 

So even though I dislike the 'good, better, best' mantra, I still struggled with it. I had to accept that someone purchasing a RPG from a video game store could still purchase an Ahasai Designs' game. That I was not competing against Blizzard or Chillingo, rather we could work with them to expand their game player's entertainment experience. 

For us it was a revolution because we good focus on creating good games instead of 'the best game' and tailor our entire company philosophy towards that. Instead of trying to think we were better than our 'competitors' we could realise that we were equal with our 'team mates' who are constantly trying to lift your digital experience.