What Not To Do (Vol 1)
by Porter on Jul.03, 2009, under Flash Industry, Help
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.
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Being Compared To A Console Game - Porter's World
April 19th, 2010 on 5:45 pm[...] psychology that’s out of our control. The best thing we can do is make sure that every little aggravating wrinkle in our game is removed before launch, because it’s those tiny things that will somehow change [...]
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What Not To Do (Vol 2) - Porter's World
April 19th, 2010 on 6:33 pm[...] Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3 Find this useful? Share it with others: [...]
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What Not To Do (Vol 3) - Porter's World
April 19th, 2010 on 6:42 pm[...] Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3 Find this useful? Share it with others: [...]
July 3rd, 2009 on 11:30 am
Nice post Porter. I remember you doing this with your Tower of Greed game. I’m more of a mouse fan myself for navigation. Since so many games have them, I’ll usually just end up using the mouse. But, it is really useful to have keyboard support as well. I remember in your game, there was a couple times where I was glad to not have to use the mouse.
Keep up the good posts.
July 3rd, 2009 on 3:35 pm
This is one of my pet peeves – it drives me crazy when games require me to move from keyboard to mouse in order to continue.
I was playing ‘learn to fly’ today for the first time, which is a very popular game, and it exhibits this behaviour. Inexcusable.
July 3rd, 2009 on 5:34 pm
Agreed, that’s a perfect example of a very successful game, with a very novice mistake. I find it amazing that the sponsor fronted so much money for that, and not once thought to have that fixed to avoid annoying players.
July 5th, 2009 on 2:16 pm
Well again, since it’s somewhat odd to have keyboard controlled menus, isn’t it making even clearer us to produce only mouse-controlled games
?
July 6th, 2009 on 6:17 pm
While I agree entirely that the flash industry is far more accepting of mouse controlled games than keyboard games, there’s still a certain kind of game you just can’t make with mouse controls. Even though such games may not be as welcome in the industry, there are still fans of classic platformers and other games, that can only be done with keyboard (to simulate a controller). When it comes to making cash or being successful, you’re far better off making mouse controlled games, if I go to the keyboard it’s simply because I have a passion for my idea and can’t do it any other way.
July 22nd, 2009 on 2:29 pm
Would you please consider changing the text color on your blog to something less annoying? I wish I could read this post, but my eyes just can’t take it.
July 24th, 2009 on 12:56 am
I’ve changed the font size from 9pt to 11pt, I believe this makes it much easier to read. I personally don’t think color was/is the issue, but if it’s still an issue please let me know. If anyone has firebug installed to their firefox set up and can suggest a color that is pink or orange that is easier on the eyes, let me know.