What NOT to do

One of the most important things developers need to keep in mind when creating a game, is that you need to avoid annoying the player at all costs. Whether this be avoiding tedious level design, making sure your player doesn’t have to grind in your latest RPG, or simply making menu items contrast well so they don’t have to squint for navigation, you really need to make sure they don’t get bothered by anything. A very popular mistake many developers make is to combine mouse support with keyboard support, but make both mandatory on the same screen.

Out of all things a quality game can do wrong, this is probably the biggest. There’s nothing more annoying then dying in a keyboard controlled game, and having a menu pop up in which you must grab the mouse and press retry, rather than pressing enter or space to continue. There’s really no excuse for this, it’s simply poor design. It may sound minor, but small aggravations such as this really drive players away. Not only will players stop playing your game, they may even be so angered at the moment of quitting, that they’ll drop you a zero vote as they mutter how much the game sucks before leaving the page. This is clearly something you really don’t want happening with games under your name, it lowers it’s success and builds you a bad reputation.

We’ve now gone over what not to do, so how do we stay away from an issue as gargantuan as forcing the player to use both the mouse and keyboard in places where it’s entirely unnecessary? I have a few ideas, but I’ll share just one of them, don’t. When you design a game that uses either mouse or keyboard (but not both) for gameplay, stick to that throughout the whole game. If you play the game with the keyboard and you die, make it so you can retry with the keyboard, there’s no reason to have your user reach for the mouse only to press a button so they can start over. It’s highly recommended that you always add mouse support to increase sponsor click-throughs, but don’t force it, always permit the player to use what the gameplay uses, as well as the mouse.

It really isn’t hard to avoid, but far too many developers forget how annoying this can be to the player, which is a big mistake. I’ve seen some popular artists do this in some rather large titles, and although these games did great, I find it perplexing that such a great artist made such a novice mistake. That’s about all there is to know regarding this matter, pick a control scheme and stick to it, and always allow the mouse in addition to keep your sponsors happy.

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3