Noth ing is more frus trat ing than, as a player, know ing exactly what you want your game-world char ac ter to do but being unable to actu ally get him to do that because the con trols will not let you. Good gameplay is never about try ing to fig ure out the con trols them selves; keep the puz zles in the game-world, not in the con trol scheme.
The con trols are the player’s inter face between the real-world and game-world. In order for the player to expe ri ence true immer sion in the game-world the player must be able to manip u late the game-world exactly as intu itively as he manip u lates the real-world. Every time the player has to think “Now, what but ton do I have to press to do that?” that immer sion is destroyed.
Though the con trols for many com puter games seem to be get ting more and more com plex, par tic u larly those for 3D action games, there is a lot to be said for keep ing your con trols sim ple. Indeed, a lot of the suc cess of games like Diablo, Com mand & Con quer, and The Sims can be attrib uted to the fact that the player can play these games one-handed, con trol ling every thing with only the mouse. The mouse is an extremely pow er ful input device when used cor rectly. Its great strength
is that it is a con trol device with which most non-gamer com puter users are already famil iar. This makes mouseonly games very easy to jump into, since they min i -mize the time the user must spend learn ing con trols.
A big part of design ing a good mouse-based inter face is mak ing a sys tem that does not look as ster ile and busi ness-like as the Win dows file man ager yet retains its ease of use. Making the inter face look attrac tive is mostly a mat ter of conceived art, but mak ing it attrac tive with out los ing any of its intu itive ness and func tion al ity can be quite chal leng ing. When ever an art ist sug gests mak ing a but ton look a cer tain way, the designer must con sider if the new design takes away from the player’s abil ity to under stand what that but ton does. Often, you can bor row clearly under stood icons from other inter faces, either from other games or from real-world devices such as VCRs or CD play ers. For exam ple, every one knows what a “fast for ward” sym bol on an audio device looks like, and using this appro -pri ately in your game will mean that play ers instantly know what a given but ton does. Making but tons in your game that play ers can intu itively under stand and that also look attrac tive is equal parts cre ativ ity and playtesting. If the peo ple
playtesting your game tell you your but tons are unobvious and con fus ing, they prob a bly are, and you need to return to the draw ing board.
A com mon game design mis take is to try to include too much. This applies to all aspects of gameplay, but par tic u larly to con trols, where some times the cliché
“Less is more” really holds true. Every time you add a new but ton or key to your game, you must ask your self if the com plex ity you have just added to the game’s con trols is worth the func tion al ity it enables. When design ing a PC game the temp -ta tion is par tic u larly great, since the key board pro vides more keys than any game
The Diablo series’ extremely sim ple con trols make it one of the most easy-to-learn games avail able.
Pic tured here:
Diablo II.
would ever need to use. Unfor tu nately, some games have tried to use nearly all of them, bind ing some unique func tion to prac ti cally each and every key. Com plex key board con trols favor the expert player while alien at ing the nov ice, lead ing to a rad i cally decreased num ber of peo ple who might enjoy your game. Due to the lim -ited num ber of but tons they pro vide, con sole con trol pads are much more lim it ing in what they will allow the designer to set up. Unlike many other design ers, par tic u -larly those mak ing the switch from PC to con sole, I often feel that this lim i ta tion is a good one. Con trol pads force the designer to refine his con trols, to cut away all that is extra ne ous, and to com bine all of the gameworld actions the player can per -form into just a few, focused con trols. This leads directly to games that are eas ier to learn how to play. Indeed, many of the most pop u lar con sole games do not even use all of the con trol ler’s but tons. Because of the mas sive key board at their dis posal, design ers of PC games are not forced to focus the con trols of their games in the same way, and I think their games may suf fer for it. As I men tioned above, some of the most pop u lar PC games have man aged to squeeze all of their con trols into the mouse.
Much of the increas ing com plex ity of game con trols can be attrib uted to the increas ing dom i nance of RT3D games. These games, by try ing to include the abil -ity for the player’s game-world sur ro gate to move for ward and back ward, up and down, side ways left and right, turn left and right, and pitch up and down, have already used a mas sive num ber of con trols while only allow ing the player to move in the game-world and do noth ing else. In many ways, the per fect way to sim ply and intu itively con trol a char ac ter with total free dom in 3D space is still being explored. This is why very few of the suc cess ful 3D games released thus far have allowed the player total free dom to con trol his char ac ter. Indeed, the most suc cess -ful 3D games, such as Super Mario 64, Quake, or Tomb Raider, have restricted move ment to a ground plane.
One tech nique that can be used to make your con trols intu itive to a vari ety of play ers is to include mul ti ple ways to achieve the same effect. For instance, if one looks at the inter face used by the RTS game StarCraft, play ers are able to con trol their units by left-clicking to select the unit, then click ing on the but ton of the action they want the unit to per form, and then left-clicking on a loca tion in the world where they want the unit to per form that action. Players can also left-click on the unit to select it and then imme di ately right-click in the game-world, caus ing the unit to do the most log i cal action for the loca tion the player clicked, whether it means mov ing to that point or attack ing the unit there. Fur ther more, StarCraft also allows the player to access a unit’s dif fer ent actions through a hot key instead of click ing on the but ton. This has the pleas ant side effect of keep ing the inter face sim ple enough for the nov ice player to mas ter, since it is all point-and-click, while the expert player can spend his time mem o riz ing hot keys in order to improve his game. In many con sole action games, dif fer ent but tons on the con trol ler will
per form the same action. A com mon choice to make, par tic u larly on PlayStation games, is to allow the player to con trol char ac ter move ment through either the left direc tional pad or through the left ana log con trol stick. Crash Ban di coot, for instance, allows the player to move with either the direc tional pad or the ana log stick, and also allows the player to access Crash’s abil ity to slide by either press ing a trig ger but ton or one of the but tons on top of the con trol ler. Pro viding mul ti ple ways for a player to achieve a sin gle game-world action helps to ensure that a given player will enjoy using one of the ways you have pro vided.
There is a lot of room for cre ativ ity in game design, but con trols are not one of the best places to exer cise your cre ative urges. Your game should be cre ative in its gameplay, story line, and other con tent, but not nec es sar ily in its con trols. Some of the most suc cess ful games have taken con trol schemes which play ers were already famil iar with from other games and applied them to new and com pel ling con tent.
Some times the estab lished con trol scheme may be weak, but often it is not weak enough to jus tify strik ing out in an entirely new direc tion with your own con trol sys tem. As a designer you must weigh what is gained through a mar gin ally supe rior con trol scheme with what is lost because of player con fu sion. For exam ple, Sid Meier’s RTS game Get tys burg! included as its default method for order ing troops around a “clickanddrag” sys tem instead of the estab lished “clickandclick” sys -tem found in other games. His sys -tem was quite cre ative and actu ally may have been a better way of con trol ling the game than the estab lished par a digms. How ever, it was not so much better that it out weighed the con fu sion play ers expe ri enced when first attempt ing to play the game, a fact he admits in the inter view included in Chap ter 2 of this book. Con sole games are par tic u larly good at pro vid ing uni form
StarCraft pro vides the player with a very ele gant inter face which allows her to issue orders to her units using a vari ety of tech niques.
con trol schemes, with fans of games in a par tic u lar genre able to pick up and imme -di ately start play ing almost any game avail able in the genre, even if they have never seen it before.
Dur ing the course of the devel op ment of a game, as you are play ing the game over and over and over again, it is very easy to get accus tomed to bad con trols.
Though the con trols may be poorly laid out or counterintuitive, as the game’s designer you may have used them so much that they have become sec ond nature.
How ever, as soon as some one plays the game for the first time, she will quickly be frus trated by these con trols and is likely to stop play ing as a result. A proper playtesting phase will include many play ers play ing the game for the first time, and wit ness ing their ini tial reac tion to the con trols is cru cial to under stand ing how intu -itive your con trols really are. Do not think, “Oh, she’ll get used to it,” or “What an idiot! These con trols are obvi ous; why can’t he see that!” Instead think, “Why are my con trols bad and what can I do to fix them?”
Designing con trols that play ers will find intu itive can be quite chal leng ing, espe cially with such a vari ety of con trol set ups for dif fer ent games, par tic u larly in the PC mar ket. For exam ple, it can be hard to deter mine what the “stan dard” con -trols for an FPS are when the last three suc cess ful FPS games each had a unique con trol scheme. Almost every PC action game released in the last decade allows play ers to con fig ure the con trols how ever they desire, and this is an abso lute must for any PC game that demands the player manip u late a large num ber of but tons.
That said, many play ers will never find or use the con trol con fig u ra tion screens, either because of a desire to start play ing the game imme di ately or a gen eral lack of savvy with the com puter. Many, many play ers will be left play ing with what ever the default keys are, and this is why it is the designer’s job to make sure these default set tings are as play able as pos si ble. You should never use a strange or con -fus ing set of default con trols for your game merely because the pro gram mer in charge likes it that way or the team has grown accus tomed to them. Always make sure the default con trols are as intu itive as pos si ble.
Par tic u larly in action games, when your con trols are per fect, the wall sep a rat ing the player from the game-world will dis ap pear, and the player will start to feel like he truly is the game-world char ac ter. This is the ulti mate sign of an immersive game, and achiev ing this effect is impos si ble with out strong con trols. In a game where that level of immer sion is pos si ble, the con trols must be com pletely invis i ble to the player. This can be frus trat ing to a designer. Why work so hard on some thing that, if imple mented per fectly, will be com pletely invis i ble? In order to feel sat is -fied with a job well done, the designer must real ize that it is the trans par ency of con trols that allows the player to enjoy the rest of what the game has to offer.