Comments on: Mass Effect: Massive Interface Fail Part I

By: Jake

Jake — Sun, 13 May 2012 02:36:51 +0000

You mispelled “failure” in the article title. To fail is a verb, not a noun.

By: Krystian Majewski

Krystian Majewski — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 14:06:24 +0000

Here is the thing. I’m not sure if this is something that boils down to a matter of opinion. Games are a bit weird. On the one hand they are interfaces so you can apply more objective principles of usability and interface design on them. There is less wiggle room for opinion in there. An interface either works well for it’s task or not.

On the other hand, there are examples where the way you interact with an interface is the point of a game – Experience Design. Which I presume this is something you are talking about. Games like “Uplink” or “Street Rod” come to mind. I have written about this phenomenon here.
http://gamedesignreviews.com/reviews/street-rod-game-design-and-usability/

But in the case of Mass Effect it’s clear that what we have is not deliberate Experience Design. It’s the result of neglect, and perhaps lack of time.

The elements they used aren’t even unique or original. They are the same buttons, sliders, lists and text boxes you have in any other game. They just often inadequate for what you are supposed to do with them.

As a graphic designer, what you perhaps may have enjoyed about the Mass Effect is it’s visual complexity and futuristic look and feel. That’s a completely valid point. But you could have that AND make it work well too. That’s what a GOOD interface is. The interface of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker comes to mind as a recent example.

By: Krystian Majewski

Krystian Majewski — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 13:38:33 +0000

Opps, good catch!

By: Marco

Marco — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 08:29:33 +0000

“Let us focus on the health bars in the lower right corner.”

Lower left actually

By: Krystian Majewski

Krystian Majewski — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 01:40:46 +0000

You are absolutely right! I completely disregarded this fact just to make that PA joke. I was actually waiting for somebody to point this out. Thank you.

By: Failmaster

Failmaster — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 00:40:05 +0000

Rhombuses are equal length on all sides. The word you’re looking for is parallelogram.

By: The First Mass Effect’s UI Sure Was Terrible | Kotaku Australia

The First Mass Effect’s UI Sure Was Terrible | Kotaku Australia — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 21:55:20 +0000

[...] the game, the more I realised how lacklustre it was. And then, I read Krystian Majewski’s Massive Interface Fail series, and I finally understood: The first Mass Effect‘s user interface was an unmitigated [...]

By: Danke

Danke — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 14:42:22 +0000

While I agree with the author’s examples of Mass Effect’s UI oddities, I do not think that those oddities were detrimental to the experience of the game. I personally feel that those unique UI elements and some of the head scratching that initially accompanied them were part of the hook of the series. “Generizing” everything into cookie cutter molds of “UI Standards” would create a boring gaming world indeed. Too many games already suffer from using the same or similar UI elements. When I think of modern games, one of the few UIs that stand out as characteristic AND fitting the game was Mass Effect’s. I didn’t decide to leave these comments to spite you, but I am also a graphic designer and I felt like I understood the spirit of your complaints but that perhaps you had not “seen into the future” to the place you were wishing we all could live. Distinctiveness sometimes comes at the cost of ubiquitous information access. For instance, some of the ambiguities of the Mass Effect UI just inspired me to relax a little and stop trying to micro-manage all aspects of my gameplay performance and just focus on what I was clearly being given. That said, I love in depth analyses of games, so keep up the good work on that front. I just happen to disagree with your conclusion of the ME UI being a failure. I do agree it was odd and I love it for that reason.

By: Ovada Bey

Ovada Bey — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 13:45:46 +0000

I’m glad there’s people researching this, great article!

By: Caleb Moore

Caleb Moore — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 08:34:39 +0000

Well, testing and analysing what is wrong with a current game’s UI and fixing it is sadly the current state of game UI design. It is easy to see what is wrong with a UI after it’s in front of you, harder to plan ahead. Designers who think they have a great UI in their heads before they start usually don’t, fast and frank iteration is the key to coming to a good interface, anyone who says differently is either arrogant or naive.

Having developed a few large MMO projects myself, I identify two main problems, both organisational.
- Project managers too eager to make the UI look complete in early versions, not giving developers enough time to experiment with quick draft UIs before the time and emotional investment of doing art assets and programming has already taken place.
- Dicotomy between programmers with strong abstract reasoning and technical skils who simply don’t care about user experience and designers with poor abstract reasoning and technical skills who care deeply about user experience but cannot solve the user’s problems. Cooperation is poor, lots of inter-diciplinary arguing, blaming and huge iteration times as requirement documents are drafted and sent around.