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The medium through which the script shows its face: the speech box, or text box, or speech bubble (and likely many other names, besides). Herein you'll find a dumping ground of prime examples of speech boxes in video games.

In No More Heroes

A case in which breaking the mold turned out to be a very cool thing to do, indeed. The ugly, boxy, dumped-at-the-bottom-of-the-screen standard is tossed in favour of something completely different: hazard tape-like bands haphazardly thrown across the screen speak to the trendy, grungy style of the game, and despite the disbanding from tradition are completely recognisable as speech boxes. Even the not-quite horizontal placement of the bands fail to irk and are actually pleasing to the aesthetic sensibilities.

References:

Screen shot from No More Heroes by IGN.

A common way to attribute value to characters is health. A popular way to present this information to the player is through a HUD interface. Representing data as an icon-based widget speeds up the player's consumption of this information (Wickens et al., 2004). Instant gratification is favoured here; the quicker the player can determine his or her character's health, the better he or she can respond, especially important in case where attention is divided (an immortal error this gamer has encountered is not being able to divert her attention—or not being alerted—to the fact that her character is in need of a medical break during the final boss battle, and thus she is instead notified through unsavory means, e.g. death).

Preece (2002) and Wickens et al. (2004) provide guidelines for creating icons:

• Be aware of standards, and don't contradict them.
• Icons must be unique from one another to avoid confusion.
• What icons represent must be obvious.
• Icons must be legible.
• Icons must be well-placed.

Breaking the mold can be disadvantageous. Here I will compare two examples of icon-based health: one good, one not-so-good.

In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Time-tested and true, the icon-based health in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Z:OoT) is one of the best examples.

It in no way contradicts the guidelines above. The icons are hearts, a common symbol of health and livelihood, and this heart symbol is not elsewhere used in the game out of this chosen context. The icon is graphically simple and thus legible. As per convention in the series, it can be found at the top left of the HUD.

The two images represent two states: a "full health" state and a "wounded" state. Clearly, a heart has been "lost", as if having fallen from its box and leaving an imprint of where it once was. This metaphor extends to the reacquisition of health in the game: Link, the main character, collects heart items in the environment, which seemingly "replace" those lost.

In No More Heroes

In contrast, the icon-based health from No More Heroes is a bit of a mess.

In its favour, the icon follows the heart symbol standard, is reasonably placed on the screen, and is unique against the other widgets. Four states of the icon are shown above: the first and far right states are clearly No More Heroes' representation of full health and wounded states; the middle two are somewhat baffling. Here, colour has been used to maximize the value of health; unfortunately, colour is arbitrary and must be associated with meaning before ever hoping to become intuitive.* To save space, it seems, colour was used in an attempt to create value depth; in effect, this widget suffers from visual disorder.

The icon is made further unintelligible by its particular colour palette. In the second state, two different hues of yellow are used—can you tell? Imagine you're readying yourself for a boss and a quick glance at your health tells you it's "full", even when it's not, because you can't distinguish between such close tones. Now, imagine you're some shade of colourblind. Even if you were to inspect the health icon closely, you may not be able to determine its value.

Although it could be considered as having broken the standard, I like the grid-based heart icon. A solution to the above issues, while keeping the base icon, is jettisoning the layered colour and either restricting the maximum health value to the number of squares in the grid, or using multiple, perhaps smaller heart-grids.

* This is not necessarily so, of course. Rather, what I mean here is that while a designer may be able to make good guesses about what a particular colour will mean to every member of his or her target audience, he or she will be, in most cases, taking a risk. Colours can be interpretted differently depending on knowledge and culture (Shapre, 1982). For example, the colour white symbolises mourning in Japan, while in the Western world we would be more likely to associate the colour black with mourning. Given that video games tend to find their way out of the country they were developed in, colour should not be used in unfamiliar ways.

References:

Preece, J. (2002). Interaction design: Beyond human-computer interaction. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Sharpe, D. (1982). The psychology of color and design. Chicago: Nelson-Hall.

Wickens, C.D., Lee, J.D., Liu, Y., Gordon Becker, S.E. (2004). An introduction to human factors engineering (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

Screen shots from No More Heroes by GameSpot.

Screen transitions are in-between-frames screens or effects. What transpires between screens—if anything—is up to system and/or the art director. At first non-existent moments in time between screens, transitions gradually showed more of their flesh as video games became more trying on their respective systems. The just-about-not-there transitions were almost usurped by loading screens with the advent of CD-based gaming systems. As the graphic capabilities of these systems improved and their processors became faster, transitions took on a more movie-like appearance, sporting interactive features and fancy effects with artful flair.

Keep in mind that the discussions on transitions herein do no refer to video game cinematics or cutscenes.

Origins in Cinema

In their presentation (if nothing else) video games follow from the century-old art of cinematography. While games have used transition devices for different reasons than those found in films, the devices themselves are the same. With respect to the medium, Zettl (2005) has outlined the following major transition devices:

• The cut "...is an instantaneous change from one image to another... [that] occupies neither screen time nor space, it is invisible" (p. 275). The cut is a non-existent moment in time that we nevertheless are aware of. It is the most basic transition. *
• The dissolve is a transition in which one image gradually fades into the next. A notable example of this
• The wipe appears to unravel across the current screen, replacing it with a new screen.
• The fade gradually transitions to or from black.
• Special transition effects comprise a varied multitude of transitions that are generally aesthetic in purpose.

* Camera changes within a screen that cinematographically are cuts are excluded here.

** Zettl (2005) also refers to the jump cut, but as I have yet to see this in practice in a video game, I decided not to include it in the list.

In the video game medium, loading screens can act as either a separate screen or a transition device. Arguably, loading screens are always separate screens, preceded and proceeded by cuts.

In No More Heroes

No More Heroes sports two major types of transitions: loading screens and special transition effects. Its loading screen is covered in this article. Of particular note is the latter transition, of which there are two examples in the game.

The first (comprising the majority of transitions) involves real-time rendered freeze frames of the current and next screens decked out with contrast and colour filters on the fly (see the image above). The second is a cinematic of "cards" being slapped down on the screen, each featuring a wildly coloured version of the same image: the respective boss the player is about to confront (featured to the left). This unique transition for boss battles is itself a point of "specialness" that both entices the player and punctuates the importance of the area of gameplay following it (plot-wise, these transitions indicate a crisis and eventually the climax).

References:

Zettl, H. (2005). Sight, sound and motion: Applied media aesthetics. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.

As noted in this article, personalization has failed to make an impression on the video game medium. Herein I will propose possibilities for personalization systems in video games based on existing examples in other mediums. Ideas will be added as they come.

Friend Finding

Websites have already implemented systems that assess compatibility between members. Last.fm, a music community website, observes the listening habits of its members and creates for each user a list of "neighbour" users based on similar music choices. Such a "friend-finding" system could be compatible with MMOs (massively multiplayer online games).

Primitive systems already exist; Blizzard's Battle.net chat attempts to portion incoming users into channels based on physical location. More incidentally, MMOs like World of Warcraft plunk the player's character into his or her race's hometown, where other characters of that race are likely to reside in large numbers.

More complex systems would observe a player's tendencies on a variety of subjects, including battle style, most visited locales, ability/level, and other aspects contributable to building alliances and communities.

Often (mis)used interchangeably, these terms in fact refer to two different types of experience tailoring.

Customization allows the user to select preset options or record parameters which are remembered and applied by the system. An example of customization on websites is a user profile.

Personalization is autonomous and attempts to learn about the user and create and provide content based on actions and choices. Recommendation systems, such as those available on Amazon, are perhaps the most well-known type. A specific example of personalization is location-based services (e.g. providing coupon, advertising events) in mobile technologies.

In short, customization questions and personalization observes.

In Video Games

Customization has become a staple of the video game experience. Since the very early days of the NES, games have allowed the player to customize his or her experience even simply by allowing him or her to input his or her name in place of a character's default name. Many games offer up an "options" menu, in which the player can customize a variety of aspects by choosing from preset values (e.g. music volume). Recordable parameters can be as complex as user-drawn images (such as the imp mask in Okami).

Personalization has been struggling to catch up with customization. A hot topic in personal computing and community websites, personalization has yet to breach digital video games. The complexity of the programming required and the restrictions gaming platforms have in observing the player's actions may account for its absence so far. It may be that the video game is not the most suitable medium for personalization technology, which has primarily concerned itself with multi-user systems, such as online stores and news providers (Linden, 2008). Perhaps, being a relatively new topic, personalization has not had a chance to make its mark in the gaming world yet.

In this article I discuss possibilities for personalization in video games.

References:

Linden, G. (2008, March). People who read this article also read... IEEE Spectrum, 45(3), 46-50.