Recently I read in an article that UX is not compatible with videogames because it removes friction which provides difficulty which is vital in videogames, because without it you will not have any kind of entertainment… well, this is a huge misconception.

As Celia Hodent (director of UX at EpicGames) repeats in her conferences and writings:

“The main purpose of UX practices is to offer the experience intended to the targeted audience. Therefore, if your audience is hardcore gamers and the experience you want for them is suffering, then UX guidelines will absolutely help you accomplish your sadistic goal. Hurray! More seriously, one of the UX pillar — usability — is about removing friction and unwanted frustration. It’s not about distorting the intended experience, because this would affect the second UX pillar — gameflow — which is in a nutshell about how enjoyable and “fun” the game is.”

I have nothing to add at this statement, it is simply the core idea of the UX in videogames, but I can illustrate it with providing a successful example of a good UX implemented in a sadistic game, Darkest Dungeon (Red Hook Studios, 2016).

Darkest dungeon is a rpg / rogue-like in an dark horror style. You explore diverse dungeons with a team of four characters, you have two resources to manage (health & stress) and a lot of mechanics, the fighting system is turn-based. Your characters are very susceptible to die when the difficulty is uprising, but fortunately you can recruit other ones (who will also surely die).

The game is really difficult, can witness these plenty of Steam comments complaining about it (take a look at them you will not regret it). There is a lot of RNG (random number generator) in daily events, in fights, perks and traps spawn… You have to be rigorous to take the best of the worst situation, but even if you are, the game have an endless cruelty, so be warned.

Let’s come to the core subject, the UX. From my opinion it is even more important in video games than any other domain to have an effective UX, simply because game-developers are building a whole gameflow in order to satisfy and to challenge players, so if the UX do not follow their ambition and provide an inappropriate experience it will unbalance this gameflow, players will have a bad gaming experience even if the game himself is great.

Videogames are products that need a successful interaction to be appreciated, playing at a great game with a bad UX is like drinking a great champagne in a plastic champagne flute.

It is even more vital to have a good UX /UI in that kind of hardcore games, because they are already frustrating by their difficulty so if your UX/UI are unpleasant most of the players will rage and never touch the game ever.

I selected three UX notions in which Darkest Dungeon reigns like a king.

Feedback

This game is full of feedbacks and they are greatly set-up, their size is proportional of your action, it does mean that if you are just moving or using a usual object, it will produce a small sound, if a biggest action is performed such as the stress state is triggered or a character die an animation & music is played, indeed this is have been done already plenty of times in the past. But it is done at another level that I have ever seen before, every act you perform have a natural sound following him, it is hard to put words on this but these sounds and visual effects fit perfectly your actions.

Smart layout

The UI point is totally nailed, in an RPG there is a lot of information to display, depending on the situation, for example, usually in fight we can find resources bar, effect, spells and actions are shown in most of games.

In Darkest Dungeon there is even more information displayed, you can add character stats, % for hit, dmg modification, crit, real time character stats, light level, items, map… and despite all of those information the UI stays clean, how can they achieve that ?

Simply with a smart layout, let’s take a look.