
What UX designers can learn from 1990s Japanese video games - autoreleasepool
http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/28/what-ux-designers-can-learn-from-1990s-japanese-video-games/
======
feral
Couple of nit-pics:

> you come across a small, glowing light — something that’ll entice any gamer
> in search of loot

That small glowing light is not a UI element to highlight the tutorial –
instead, it's what a 'save point' always looks like in that game. It just so
happens that the first time you interact with a save point, you get a tutorial
(the same as the first time you interact with several other game mechanics,
which don't look like glowing lights.)

So that goes against the author's thesis a little bit - arguably they are
misinterpreting the SNES UI in the context of their modern experience.

>Chrono Trigger is one of the few SNES RPGs I’ve played where poking around
mundane rooms pays off.

Poking around mundane rooms in order to get rewards is almost a trope in SNES
RPGs - Final Fantasy in particular was full of "secrets" you could find.

In fact, this reminds me of a criticism of game UI (Ernest Adams, maybe?)
which is that its not obvious that you have to shoot crates in order to get
health, or try to interact with not obviously interactive elements of the game
world for hidden rewards. Experienced players quickly find these things by
shooting everything and trying to interact with everything, because they are
familiar with the trope from other games, but it makes the game less
accessible to newcomers - arguably bad UX.

~~~
golergka
In a game, finding out how mechanics work and what you can do is exploration.
Figuring out that you can combine a certain action with a certain object to
get a new result is exciting and interesting. When you got the whole game
figured out, know how everything works and what to expect — isn't that the
point where you abandon it?

~~~
feral
I think it's a bit more complicated than that.

Consider the game of 'Go' \- there's a very small amount of rules, and once
you know those, you know all the rules, but there is still a lot of higher-
level strategy to learn. It seems bad to not know all the rules, but good to
have more strategy to discover...

It would obviously be disappointing to then be playing an opponent, and
discover they are about to beat you with a rule that's new to you; or to have
played the game for a long time and then realise there was a move you never
knew you could make. Watch someone learn about capturing _en passant_ in chess
for the first time from their opponent, during a game they are invested in...

At the same time, learning a new 'strategy' is quite enjoyable and delightful
- maybe even if you learn it as an opponent beats you with it – as long as it
is something you _could have reasonably discovered yourself, even if you didn
't._ (?)

A disappointed sensation like "oh, I never knew you could do that" is bad; but
"oh wow, I never realised you could do _that_ " is good.

What's the difference between these 'rules' you should know, and 'strategies'
to discover? Is there a real difference? You are ultimately just choosing an
action from a constrained set of candidate actions in both cases; in one case
not knowing the full action set is bad, and another it's good.

Clearly, you can think of a game at multiple different valid levels of
abstraction - 'you can push these controller buttons'; 'you can move up, down,
left or right'; 'you can sneak up behind the enemy'; 'stealth is the best
strategy' etc. Clearly, at some levels, not knowing all the actions is
frustrating; whereas at other levels, discovering new higher-level actions is
delightful.

So, which is shooting the crate to find a medkit?

It's not completely clear, but I can see how people would think it is a hidden
rule, something they could not have been expected to realise themselves, but
which was obvious to players of other games - a missing word, rather than a
delightful high-level behaviour that falls out of the interaction language the
game has taught them.

~~~
eru
I think there's a difference between single player games, and competitive
multiplayer here.

(Even further: in single player games, people often even intentionally
handicap themselves. Either directly for the challenge, or because they are
role-playing.)

------
CM30
How about another one?

Simple design that teaches people how to use it through doing stuff rather
than forced tutorials. Old school Mario games were great here, the level
design basically taught you how to play the game without as much as a message
box in sight.

Unfortunately, a lot of modern apps seem to be some overly confusing mess that
try to rectify UX design issues by use of tutorials and pop ups and arrows and
what not, rather than simplifying things so people can figure them out on
their own.

~~~
agumonkey
new school mario is even better. I bet you saw this
[http://www.dorkly.com/post/73379/this-guy-makes-a-good-
case-...](http://www.dorkly.com/post/73379/this-guy-makes-a-good-case-for-the-
impressive-level-design-of-super-mario-3d-world)

in case you haven't enjoy the ride.

~~~
CM30
Yep, saw that video. It's a good overview of how the level design in Super
Mario 3D World works, and well worth watching for anyone interested in
designing good games.

I mostly only mentioned old school because of my disappointment with Mario
Galaxy 2 and the 'tutorial disc', which was one of the most pointless
additions ever:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbDLuDRgnkM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbDLuDRgnkM)

Still, least it made for a funny parody:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rD5AskvHWc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rD5AskvHWc)

------
degenerate
I absolutely loathe 'modern' UX design, not only because it seems to get _too_
out of the way most of the time, to the point where I am struggling to find
out how to _locate_ the damn interface to begin using it in the first place. I
am the go-to tech guy in most friend/family circles as many of you are, and
the 'hidden' modern UI interfaces become a compounded problem when I am trying
to help people over the phone. Back in the day, when helping my family first
use Chrome, I'd say "click the gear icon, in the top right" \- and they would
find it with near 100% accuracy. Now it doesn't matter what I say...
"hamburger icon" (give me a break), "three stacked bars", "triple bars" \- the
settings menu is no longer iconic, and modern UX has become a verbal wasteland
when trying to explain anything over the phone. "Hover over the little down
triangle thing to the right, then the menu pops up" ... "swipe near the edge
of your screen, not too far to the right though, just tap the very edge and
the menu comes up" ... these kind of explanations should not need to exist if
the UX was good. At least the old games you could walk your buddy through the
selections over the phone.

~~~
tjl
I first saw the term hamburger menu several months back and I thought, "huh?"
as I had no idea what it meant. I had to go search the net to find out that
they meant those three stacked bars. Why not just call it that? It doesn't
really look like a hamburger.

~~~
anexprogrammer
I had to do the same when I first heard it, a sure sign that the metaphor
fails, and most of the search results were pieces explaining what a terrible
idea it is. Just searched again, yep, nearly all the first page is why you
should never implement it, along with BK and a stack exchange "what's the
lined menu icon called".

Better question, why not just stick with a GUI element that can be described
succinctly? A gear perhaps.

~~~
csense
If the top Google results all tell you that you shouldn't do it, then why do
so many people do it?

In fact I'm writing this on Firefox, which has one of those things in the
browser UI...

------
ZenoArrow
I know the article was talking about broad design cues, but there was one
specific menu design from that era that I thought was fairly good, the ring
menu system Secret of Mana.

This clip from Secret of Evermore (same developers, different series) shows
the ring menu system:

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0aYoUGmW_q0](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0aYoUGmW_q0)

Also, slightly off-topic but I'm not sure the article it mentions about
Minesweeper being designed to teach people how to use GUIs is accurate, though
it could have been an unintended consequence. IIRC Minesweeper was written by
a Microsoft intern, I'll try to find the Reddit thread where the author
discussed the story behind its development.

~~~
dota_fanatic
I rather liked the ring menu system; one could go through the various menus
quite quickly, (and with pleasant, contextually matched sound effects!) It's
similar to the speed one can reach using keyboard shortcuts, but it could
never be popular with pc or mobile since mouse / touch cant adopt it well, and
those are the methods of input most catered to.

I like to imagine a world where _Secret of Evermore_ did well, financially. It
doesn't help that it followed in the footsteps of _Chrono Trigger_ earlier in
the year, _Final Fantasy 6_ the year before that, and then one more year for
its spiritual predecessor, _Secret of Mana_. The bar was so high! Part of its
lack of success, though, was a pretty broken combat system (unbalanced), and a
poorly implemented "search here" command, which rendered the player needing to
swing their weapon spastically when trying to find hidden items. A cool
feature with poor UX really hurt that game.

Still, _SoE_ had some really great art, and a decent story. What a great first
entry into his professional career for Jeremy Soule (composer), as a teenager
just out of high school. Who needs college when there's opportunities
available like that? ;)

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "It's similar to the speed one can reach using keyboard shortcuts, but it
> could never be popular with pc or mobile since mouse / touch cant adopt it
> well, and those are the methods of input most catered to."

Design decisions for software should take the interface into consideration.
That said, I do think ring menu systems can work on PC and mobile. Some mobile
apps have a context menu triggered by a long press, I could see a ring-type
menu working there. As for PC, I'm not aware of that many examples, but the
pop up palette in Krita is one example that could be easily adapted to be
closer to a SoM/SoE-style ring menu.

[http://youtu.be/jAJmPwe6IoU](http://youtu.be/jAJmPwe6IoU)

~~~
eru
Lots of menus on PC can be navigated with the arrow keys, and the highlighted
items wraps around when you hit the top of bottom.

------
parski
This is crazy timing. I'm playing Chrono Trigger right now and the thing that
struck me as fantastic UX this playthrough is that Crono shakes his head when
you're trying to go somewhere you can't. I found it particularly useful when
walking on the beams in the Arris Dome. It maps pretty well to the design
pattern of shaking prompts when entering invalid input such as an incorrect
password.

------
dclowd9901
As an example of startlingly good UX in Japanese RPGs, I point to the modern
persona games, which somehow manage the thankless feat of providing copious
amounts of information, but always in a very useful way, as well as helping
clear away the mundanities of the game (remembering enemy weakspots and such)

~~~
eru
We can also learn from boardgames. The technology is mostly cardboard, though.

For example Eclipse manages to make the huge amount of bookkeeping in the game
bearable with some very clever 'UI' on the player mats.

([https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/72125/eclipse](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/72125/eclipse))

Though for the really good designs you don't even notice the UI and
bookkeeping any more.

For example: auctions are a tempting design choice when making a game, since
they automatically balance the price of good and bad options available. But,
they take comparatively long to resolve---so distract from the core of the
game (unless it's specifically an auction game)

Instead some games introduce new options with a heavy mark-up and lower their
price every turn. (See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_auction))

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ajeet_dhaliwal
Contrary to what the article says I think kids/people did read the instruction
manuals back then. Some old games didn't have certain super moves mentioned in
the game at all. That probably allowed UX design to be terrible in places.

------
arcticgeek
All your base are belong to us

