Whenever we purchase a product, such as a video game, a phone, or anything else, we always go for that product that will give us the best user experience, such as branding and functionality. All the process of making a product better in terms of user experience is done through UX design.
User experience (UX) design is the process by which design teams create products that give meaningful and relevant experiences to users. It involves integrating the product’s aspects of branding design, usability and function. UX designs can be done on video games which is often referred to as UX game design.
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What is UX game design?
The increase of games in the game industry has propelled game designers to come up with better gaming designs that will offer a better experience to the user and make the game design worth the stipulated design.
(UX) user experience game design is mainly focused on the psychology of the end users. It mainly ensures that the vision that the game designers created reaches the minds of the final users unchanged.
Creating a game design as a designer is not easy because you have to come up with a design that users will want to use often and even share with friends. For the designer to come up with a good UX game design, they have to do extensive research and collect as much data as possible from the internet, individual players, and many other sources to understand what the users want, their behavior, and their previous experience from other gaming activities.
UX game design focuses on the impact that the game will give the players. It looks at answering questions like;
- Will players understand the rules?
- Will the players want more features in the game?
- Will players want to continue playing, or will they get tired quickly?
Those are the type of questions that UX game design tends to answer.
What is UI game design?
UI (user interface) design refers to all the features the game has, the technical or the physical features that make the game appealing to the player. There are two main classes of UI game designs that are diegetic and meta.
It mainly consists of a navigation menu that helps you in playing the game. In every game you have encountered, there are instructions on how to play the game, music in the background, and pop-up sounds when you hit some keys. All these features are the bases of UI game design.
The UI game design should be able to tell a story that the players can be able to follow as they continue playing.
The menu system also plays an essential aspect in the UI game design. The menu system should be easy to understand so that the users can navigate the control buttons as they play the game.
Most people, when they hear about UX design and UI game design, they think that it means the same. Although these two are found in the gaming design, they play different experiences in terms of functionality.
UX is (user experience), which aims at giving the best user experience in terms of design and functionality. It is primarily psychological since it aims at giving the final user the same psychological design or motive that the game designers had. In contrast, UI game design is (user interface) mainly involves all the components that are found in the game, such as the levels of the game, the pages of the game, the control buttons of the game, the sounds that the players hear when they are playing the game, by touching specific buttons, etc.
UX game design improved the UI game design because the UI game design mainly focused on the function of the game rather than the players’ experience throughout their gaming process. Whether the players understand the rules the way it was designed or not.
So the UI game design just brings more functions to the game, but the UX game design is the more significant design in gaming due to its interaction with the player.
Why is UX game design important?
Getting into the psychology of the users through UX game design is essential because it provides a meaningful experience to the users. UX game design is essential because of the following reasons.
- Players’ emotions, a good UX game design makes the player’s emotions to be swayed by the game. For example, when the background music design is slow or fast, with some dark lighting, it will make the player feel sad or express whichever emotions he might be feeling from playing the game. This will help the user to concentrate on the game.
- Connection with the character, a good UX game design is one that connects the player with the character in the video game. The UX designer can put dialogues among the characters, he can also add UI game designs such as camera shakes to make the scene more exciting, and he can also add animals to create more space for empathy between the character and player in order to build more mental connection between the player and character.
- Enjoyable experience, UX game design is essential since it creates a unique and more enjoyable experience for the user. With better UI game designs, such as the background sound and the screen movement, the video game becomes more enjoyable to play and remains deeply rooted in it.
- UX game designs are essential since they bring the user back to the game. The game designer must add better UI game designs in order to drive in users that had previously stopped playing the game. This can only be done through word of mouth, where users share their experiences.
Conclusion
In conclusion, a good UX game design should be able to make the player psychologically attached to the game to improve the user experience in gaming. This can only be done through suitable UI game designs, such as the right menu system that is easy to use and understand and the right background music to bring more emotions to the game.
