Gaming and game development are two important factors of the gaming industry. With the growing demands for games, the game development companies strive hard to attract users and gamers. A rigorous concept planning and sculptured characters are not the only factors that lead to success, instead there is one other lesser known fact that makes a game hit –  UI/UX.

The term UI refers to the User Interface, which means the mode of interaction between the user and the game. You might be using the best gaming mouse, but until the game UI is done well, you can’t enjoy using your mice. Meanwhile, a UX is purely the user’s experience of the game – good or bad. In a nutshell, a UI can be practically seen, whereas a UX can only be felt. For example, consider a remote control toy car, where UI is the car and the remote buttons and the UX is how responsive or quick these buttons are.

Importance of a good UI/UX that makes a game shine

A clear and well organised gaming scene makes gaming more interesting. From a new gamer to expert pro gamers, all need a game that is highly interactive and guides through all the difficult twists.

1. Great visual experience – The collaboration of good UI/UX gives pleasurable video gaming experience.
2. Usability – This is an important aspect. A user friendly game will attract and retain more gamers.
3. Adaptability to hardware devices – Well designed UI/UX can make the use of hardware gaming devices more reliable and used, especially to the beginners.
4. Adaptability to new technology and components – Visually appealing games and user friendly experience makes it easy for gamers to adapt easily to new components and technologies.
5. Soothing to the users –  A highly responsive UI/UX keeps the gamers to enjoy the game throughout, instead of the annoying irresponsive games. A soothing gaming experience is what actually fulfills the gaming aim.

A good and highly interactive user experience is a must to attract more audiences. The user interface and the user experience are the terms that contribute in making a game user friendly. The most important factor is the addiction of a level of comfort that UI/UX give to make gaming a valuable experience

Who does the Gaming UI/UX?

The answer is the game designers. Designing a game is a digital art that requires strong creative and analytical skills. A good digital art company has adept UX designers, who can easily identify the frustrating points in a game and work on making them easy and comfortable. The user experience designers focus on providing the gamers with all the required information(such as tooltips, notifications and help documents etc) while maintaining the ease of usability. Mysteries, speed, puzzles, asymmetric functions are all part of a game, but maintaining a level of usability is utmost important.

Important aspects to be taken care by a UX designer:

1. Introduce tooltips, notifications and cue cards at difficult levels of a game.
2. Easy and quick access to gaming instructions
3. Keep the interfaces in a way that they don’t disrupt the gaming flow of players
4. Consider the input devices, a player could use and design accordingly.

A game UI is very important to keep the game lively and liked. A good UI/UX makes a game more narrative and easy for player to come back and play again. Well planned game development process that includes UI/UX creates its own glory. Besides being a required concept in game design, there are many misconceptions associated with it.

A few Misconceptions that are commonly misunderstood

1. It’s a hurdle – It is largely believed that UX will disrupt the creativity and designs. However, the UX actually makes it more easy and user friendly
2. Mere common sense – Many consider UX to just be a common sense. Its  not at all common sense to judge the simplest issues or trouble areas in a game. Different people have different levels of analytical skills, so it’s wiser to put appropriate notifications in such areas or game points.
3. Nothing more than an opinion – For most of the people it’s just a judgement. It’s in fact not a judgement, instead its an analysis study to determine the areas that could have better usability features. Such a study requires lots of expertise and gaming experience.
4. Wastes time and money –   This is a very common and prevalent  saying in the gaming industry that putting time and resources to UX is just a wastage of resources and money. Well, it’s high time to understand that delivering a game without UX is equivalent to delivering a game without performing testing.
5. UX is not the designing aspect of a game – UX is in fact an integral part of designing phase. It is in the designing phase only, where the UX can be sorted out for easy and smooth gameplay.

Hence, it is important to understand the value of UI/UX that actually is the core element in making a game famous and liked. Every game development company must integrate UI/UX as a part and parcel of game development process to ensure a quality product. If this is done, we shall have the most mesmerizing games, always.