作者：Lewis Pulsipher

最近，租赁汽车的经历让我意识到游戏界面熟悉感的重要性。

“直观”一词常与界面紧密联系。我个人理解，此背景下的直观意味着“熟悉”。总有些东西更适用于一部分人而不适用于其他群体，或者至少是更符合该群体的使用习惯。比如，如果将按钮设置在游戏屏幕的边缘，就更加便于玩家用鼠标点击。熟悉感就是最重要的元素。

Game UI(from blog.natebeck.net)

我习惯驾驶福特和普利茅斯这类车子，但是我租了一辆Nissan Altima。而且，这辆车内设高科技的启动系统。车子的钥匙以插在适当端口内的美国足球造型的小型钥匙链替代；钥匙链上设置一个启动按钮。这些都是我不熟悉的装置。无论是插钥匙链的端口还是启动按钮都没有处在我所见过的位置上（游戏邦注：即在驾驶杆上，或是在前排座位之间位置）。端口设置在驾驶座的左边，接近仪表盘的底部，低于驾驶杆。启动按钮设置在仪表盘上，位于驾驶杆右上方位置。

当我第一次试图启动这辆车时，我插入钥匙链，按下启动按钮，但是什么也没发生。后来我才明白需要踩刹车档才能启动车子。我习惯通过刹车停车，并未发现可以通过刹车来启动的车子。仪表盘会显示诸如踩下刹车档之类的电子提示，后来我阅读了快速入门手册，才发现正确的使用方法（为什么是刹车呢？启动按钮也控制辅助电源，所以需要区分辅助电源和启动键）。

这款车的另一个问题在于雨刷间隔控制方面。我的车子有一设置间隔时间的可旋转控制器，其中内置一系列长短不一的直线。然而，长线代表每分钟更多的擦拭次数，而Nissan的这种装置完全相反，长线代表更长的间隔时间，结果每分钟内的擦拭次数更少。这可能更有意义，但对我来说却是如此的不熟悉。

这与游戏有何关系，尤其是电子游戏？至少首先，同已经过验证的方法相比，操作游戏的反常方式会让你觉得不熟悉。人们极少对游戏界面进行创新，因为用户会对此感到极其不适应。

直到我之后详细阅读了《Quick Reference Manual》，我才明白此界面比我想象中的“更加不同”。这个钥匙链提供了无线电信号。你无需把它插在任何地方，只要把它放置在车子附近。如果你将钥匙链放入口袋，只需按下门把手上的按钮，你就可以从外面打开或关上所有车门。按下车盖边缘的隐形按钮，你就可以打开后备箱，如果钥匙链不在附近，你就无法做到这些事情。同样，你也可以启动车子（这也意味着，你不能把“钥匙”忘在车里，因为只要钥匙链在车内，车子便能随时打开）。

然而不利的是，如果没有阅读简明手册，我就需要一些时间才能理解它的工作原理。在游戏领域，有多少玩家会阅读10页的手册？有多少玩家甚至还未浏览过游戏内的文本？即使崭新的电子游戏界面同Altima的无线钥匙链一样灵活，如果人们不了解它的工作原理，它仍无法起作用。

因此你该怎样做呢？在电子游戏中，你需制作第一关卡的教程视频，让人们清楚新界面的使用方法。而在桌面游戏中，你必须确保玩家阅读新界面的使用方法。但我们必须指明，比起电子游戏，桌面游戏极少出现不寻常且不熟悉的界面功能。

我猜，如果钥匙链耗尽电量的话，会怎样……门上有一常见的锁眼，但不是启动锁眼。我也不清楚，车辆所有者是否比出租人多了一把钥匙。

在旅馆房内，我必须保持警惕，尽量把钥匙链搁在远离车子的位置，让它处于感应范围之外。我们一般会把车停在门外。我不希望有人半夜过来，按下门把手的按键，然后打开车门，因为我的后备箱内落下了一些东西……

另一方面，Nissan设置的CVT（无极变速传动器）是我真心喜爱的一项功能。它能精确控制GenCon行程中的上下山方式，甚至只需4缸引擎便可前行。我基本使用老式车辆（1995-98年生产），所以，无须惊讶我会上网搜索大家对Altima的看法，以备我可能决定购买一台。车辆所有者的评论表明同样事物会引发如此不同的见解，这也让我想到游戏中没有“理想状态”（同样也没有理想车辆），对车的喜爱程度同人们的习惯有关。比如，有人觉得变速器噪音太大。而我习惯老式卡车和厢式货车，所以对我来说它一点也不吵。但是同一辆高级轿车相比，这个变速器的声音确实很吵。

我们再次发现，可接受与习惯是完全不同的概念。这也是未采用外部测试方法的电子游戏公司会犯下大错的原因。这些公司内部的员工早已习惯游戏中的怪异现象，他们并未对此反感。而第一次体验游戏的用户却会对这些奇怪现象表示异议，我想这类事情在界面问题上尤为常见。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Interface (and other) game design lessons from a rental car

by Lewis Pulsipher

Recent experiences with a rental car brought home to me the importance of familiarity in the game interface.

The word “intuitive” is often used in connection with interfaces.  As far as I can make out, intuitive in this context just means “familiar”.  There are certainly some things that are more natural to people than others, or at least that can take advantage of how people behave.  For example, if you put a button at the very edge of a video game screen it’s a lot easier to point at with a mouse or similar pointing device than if the button is not at the edge. [You really should read http://www.asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html ]  But familiarity is what matters most.

I’m accustomed to driving Fords and Plymouths, but my rental was a Nissan Altima.  Moreover, it had a high-tech starting system.  Instead of a key it had a small American-football-shaped key fob that I first found inserted into a suitable port; and it had a start button.  And here is where lack of familiarity set in.  Neither the port for the fob nor the start button were in either of the two places I’ve seen ignition keyholes (either on the steering column or in the area between the two front seats).  The fob port is placed to the left of the driver and near the bottom of the dashboard, lower than the steering column.  The start button is on the dashboard to the right of and a little above the level of the steering column.

When I first tried to start the vehicle I pressed the start button after inserting the fob and nothing happened.  It turned out that I needed to have my foot on the brake to start the car.  I was accustomed to vehicles where you could not shift out of park without a foot on the brake, but not vehicles that required the brake to start.  There was an electronic note on the dashboard display that said something like press brake down, but by the time I noticed that I had already checked the quick start manual and discovered the right way to do it.  (Why the brake?  The start button also controlled auxiliary power, so something needed to differentiate Auxiliary Power from Start.)

Another interface problem was the wipers interval control.  In my vehicles there is a turnable control to set the length of the interval, with a series of lines from short to long.  But where the long line meant more wipes per minute, in the Nissan it was exactly reversed, with a long line meaning a longer interval between wipes which results in fewer wipes per minute.  This may make more sense, but was unfamiliar.

How does this relate to games, especially video games?  When the method of manipulating a game is unusual, it will get in the way, at least initially, compared with tried-and-true methods.  Interface is one of the few areas of games where innovation may be a bad idea, because the user will struggle with the unfamiliar.

Still, I’d only scratched the surface of the new car interface.  It wasn’t until I read the entire Quick Reference Manual – which I did after most of the above – that I found out the interface is “a lot more different” than I thought.  The key fob provides a radio signal.  You don’t have to insert it anywhere, you just need to have it close to the car.  While the key fob is in your pocket, you can lock or unlock all the doors from the outside by pressing a button on the door handle.  You can open the trunk by pressing a concealed button under the edge of the lid, which won’t do a thing if the key fob is not nearby.  You can start the car with the key fob in your pocket.  (Which also means, you can’t lock your “keys” in the car, because you can unlock using the handle button as long as the fob is within the car.)

The drawback of all this is that without reading the brief manual it would have taken me some time, if ever, to learn how it all worked.  And when we translate this back to game terms, how many video gamers read even a 10 page manual for a game?  How many don’t even read the text within the game?  Even if your new video game interface is as slick as the Altima’s radio key fob, if people don’t know how it works, it won’t help them.

So what do you do?  For a video game, you make the first “level” (if it’s a game with that kind of structure) the tutorial that makes people notice the new interface methods.  For a tabletop game, someone has to read the rules, and you try to make sure that person reads about the new interface.  But we have to say, unusual and unfamiliar interface capabilities are much less likely to be in a tabletop game than in a video game.

I do wonder what happens when the batteries in the key fob run out of power . . .  There is a conventional keyhole in the door, but not an ignition keyhole.  Nor do I know whether owners, as opposed to renters, get a key.

And another thing I had to be careful of, in my motel room, was to put the key fob as far from the car as possible, out of range.  It was parked just outside the room door.  Unlikely as it may be, I didn’t want someone to walk up in the middle of the night and press the door handle button to unlock the car, as I’d left things in the trunk . . .

Another lesson.  The Nissan has a CVT (Continuously Variable Transmission) that I really liked.  It had no problem in cruise control going up or down mountains on my way to GenCon, even with a mere 4 cylinder engine.  All of my vehicles are old (1995-98), so not surprisingly I looked up the Altima online to see what people thought of it, in case I decided I might buy one.  The owner comments revealed how different opinions and likes can be about exactly the same thing, another reminder of how there is no “ideal” in games (as well as in cars), and of how much depends on what you’re used to.  For example, some people felt the transmission (and the car in general) was much too loud.  To me, used to my old trucks and van, it wasn’t loud at all.  But compared with an expensive luxury car, it probably was quite loud.

Once again we see that what you’re used to makes a big difference to what’s acceptable to you.  This is why videogame companies that don’t do outside testing are making a big mistake.  The people inside the company become accustomed to the quirks and oddities of the game they’re working on, and they’re not much bothered by them.  People playing the game for the first time may find those quirks and oddities quite objectionable, and I think this especially applies to the interface.(source:gamasutra)