What makes good UI in Turn Based Strategy Games - Good UI Analysis 01

Turn Based Strategy - Good UI Analysis 01

Hi All,
Today we are talking about Turn Based Strategy (Empire Building) Games and what makes good UI. This is the first article in the TBS Games UI Analysis series.

The difference between UI and UX

Firstly to be sure that we understand the difference between UI(GUI) and UX.
UI is a User Interface (GUI - Graphical UI). As its name says it is Interface for the user identified by its looks (design), and what action it does (Interface to do some Interaction). While UX is short of User Experience, which is also self-explanatory.  That's an experience that a user has while he uses UI while playing TBS game in our case.

Self Explanatory Design + Call for Action

UI is there so you can do something with it, even if it is something passive as to just get Information from it. 

A good example of a call for action in TBS Games is NEXT TURN button. 

It needs to be well designed, that it's obvious it is a button that should be clicked if it is a desktop channel, or to be dragged if its mobile or tablet of course if that is appropriate for that channel. It should be obvious what it is and how to interact with it on a channel that player use. 

One UI for all channels is rarely an optimal experience. It is optimal from a production costs point of view, but that not our topic here.

NEXT TURN button has to be clearly visible and to attract your attention but only when it makes sense to click it. If it blinks, for example, all the time it is same as it not blink at all, except it is maybe more noticeable. You know the saying if everything is a priority then nothing is a priority. That's true with UI design also, for all types of games, not just TBS Games.

Good UI shouldn't call you for action until it is a reasonable time for it. If you have more units to move or things to handle in the city, good UI should not call you for NEXT TURN, it should call you to finish those other things first. 

Good UI should guide you through the game flow to makes things easier for you with enough information to help you, but also not limiting you and annoying you by not letting you to do something you want on your own order or way. Of course, this applies only if it doesn't conflict with game rules and mechanics. Good UI Always show only possible actions. If something is not possible at the moment or with current selection it should be clearly disabled, preferably with info on mouse over why, or it should be hidden in whole.

To summarize: Good UI is there to help you out with what you should do and how to do it, and then get out of your way, and don't unnecessarily distract you. 

CIV 5 - Good UI - Call for Action examples

On this Civ 5 example, you can clearly see what you should do next, what are notifications to deal with. You see text ADOPT POLICY calling you for most important next action from others possible. All notifications look like rounded buttons calling you for click action to get more info.

The self-explanatory design here is obvious for +1 icon informing you that one of your Cities Grown +1 population, or even more obvious  Hammer Icon calling you to select what to build next. While clicking on them will often locate and zoom you on the map or open dialogue with possible actions to additionally help you out with your task.

Tooltips are good!

Even if the UI (like obvious button with clear Icon) is pretty much self-explanatory I think it is always good practice to introduce tooltip when you hold a mouse over it. That way user can be sure what will happen when he clicks it, and if he got something wrong you will spare him of unnecessarry clicking. Especially as those notifications will often disappear after they are clicked.

Therefore tooltips are good, especially as you can put shortcut Keys there that helps player remembers them as an additional benefit. If there is an option to disable it later then it is even better. 

But Long text should be avoided even in tooltips. If you cant explain in a sentence or two then something is probably wrong with the gameplay and UI. You can put an additional link to help page about concrete action (like civilopedia) if you want to provide all details, but try to keep tooltip explanations short. They are there so people don't need to go through boring tutorials and remembers what means what, and what it does.


That was brief brainstorming on the importance of Self Explanatory Design and especially  Call for Action in good UI in Turn Based Strategy Games, that of course, can be applied on games in general.

If you like this article, stay tuned, as more topics on Good UI will come explaining some other important things like Classification of Info in UI, Responsiveness, Intuition, Management screens...and othe aspects of good UI.


What is your opinion, which TBS Games you find to have good UI and why, let me know in comments, I would like to hear an opinion of real TBS Games fans? Especially if you put a lot of hours in those games, either playing or creating them?


Please subscribe/follow if you like this article and you are interested to read more on TBS Games.

Thank You

BadHabit.

Turn Based Strategy - Empire Building Games - Why some players don't like them

5 Reasons Why Some Players don't like TBS Empire building games.

Hi All,
Today we are talking about Turn Based Strategy (Empire Building) Games and why some players don't like them. What are those main reasons that people don't like or I can even say hate about them, what makes them unattractive and why they avoid them?

No 5: Specific Niche - Players either Love them or Hate them

TBS Games are Specific time and planing demanding

This is not like one reason but more a combination of reasons, which is related to benefits and specific type of players that like Turn Based Strategy Games. From Game Pace to Slow Progress, A lot of thinking, planning and managing...

Check my post explaining those good sides: Turn Based Strategy Games - Good Sides

If you not finding yourself on any of those explained in the "Good Sides" post above, or at least on half of them, you are probably on the other side that hates those type of games.

I think that a lot of it has to do with fact that most of the players like fast, fun, adventurous, exploring and entertaining game, with an adrenalin rush and similar. It's not that TBS Games doesn't have at least some of those characteristics but on the other side, they often demand careful thinking, planning, management and decision making, step by step planning and patience. Again some of those characteristics are also in other games, but not in that scale as in TBS, Tycoon or Management Games. That's why you often find players that like TBS games also like all those Management like genres.

Why is that? TBS is a very specific Niche that's not meant to be for a very wide audience. Although there are very popular titles like Sid Myers Civilizations series, still it's not comparable to some popular FPS, or RPG Game in a number of players playing them.

Therefore like in real life when something is too specific or custom, and it's not that much commercial most of the people will not like it. You can find this often with music or movies. While a smaller part of the population still will love it, adore it,  and create almost a cult around it, most of the people will find it not that special, or even boring.

No 4: Long Lasting Slow Progress and Time investment

After 4700 hours, i decided i dont like it that much :)

Turn-based strategy games often have slow progress, patience and effort are needed. You are not getting instant results of your play. It is happening in small steps, every action, every decision that you made gradually ads up. 

Although you play in turns and it doesn't demand your full focus and quick reaction and you control the speed of playing, still it demands long hours of a play session in order to accomplish something and have some fun in return. It will not happen like that You built your first city and the first unit, and you are cool, and you stop playing. You will want to invest more and be part of that slow process of building Empire by yourself.

Unfortunately Most of the people especially these days like instant fun without too much effort, like with most things in life these days, instant food, instant coffee, instant dating, instant everything.

Angry birds, Just play it and have fun immediately 

They will prefer Angry Birds that they can play immediately, without too much thinking, and not spend hours or days on some Empire Building Turn-based strategy. 
Don't get me wrong I love Angry Birds its a great game, I just want to make a point here....why people often avoid TBS Strategy games. And that's for sure is slow gradual progress that demands time investment.

No 3: Complexity - Often Unnecessary Micromanagement

I must admit that those games are sometimes unnecessary complex. Often there are too many things to handle that playing those games becomes really a burden. That's one of the first things that differentiate a good game from a bad one. 

Civ 5 Screen. Too many things to deal with!

Creators of those games often mean that more is always better. And forgot an important thing that those games are firstly strategies and then management and progress games, if not then that game is probably in some other category, like simulation or tycoon management.

Nobody thinks it is fun to micromanage a pile of options or settings that have no or have minimal impact on their gameplay. Therefore it is important that a player has to manage only systems that actually adds a meaningful deep to the game and can have significant effects on strategy and impact on how games playouts at the end. 

Unfortunately, some devs add things just to full fill game with features or because of reality and comparability to real life. All that often complicate things and makes games even look more complex then they are maybe, especially to newbies in a genre. This in combination with bad UI, that complicates gameplay instead to ease it, is a usual suspect for reason why people abandoning those games.

Civ 5 Screen. Too many things on the map.

For Example why in Civilization Games I have to see every fuc.. shi.. I built in the city. My brain is screaming of all that detail when I look at the map, and I cant easily locate and identified my units, or roads or terrain, because of really nice life-realistic trading centar spawned around.... And you will agree that it is more important to have a brief and easy overview of your units/terrain so you can plan out moves (without going to different types of maps/overviews and similar please). 

No 2: Simple AI - AI / Diplomacy is rarely good enough

CIV 5, Weak diplomacy and AI

I am not an expert for AI, but competing with AI that only trying to do things ideally without creativity makes it predictable opponent and not challenging and fun to play against.

Most of the time that is because AI development is the last thing to deal with in-game productions and there is never enough time for such a demanding task.

Second is that with complex system and to many things effecting gameplay like in those type of games it is very hard to program good AI, which brings us to the previous point that Games shouldn't be unnecessary complex and not only because that will ruin our gameplay experience but also will make programming an adequate AI if not impossible then at least very close to it or very challenging.

Most of the players that actually like playing turn-based strategies often complaining about AI. Developers then try to fix that Artificial Intelligence logic inferiority by giving AI ability to produce more and faster which makes the game more challenging and less boring, but on the other side create unfairness effect which sometimes ruins the game, even more, create a revolt within players.

Therefore the perception of bad AI and lack of good Diplomacy is often recognized as one of the important downsides of those games.

No 1: Multiplayer Struggle - Speed or Conflict Limits 

CIV 5, Multiplayer. Waiting for the player...

Turn-based strategy games are traditionally bad at Multiplayer Mode. That is because they are slow-progressing and turn-based. Which mean that playing session will be very long in most cases, and on top of that half of that time you are waiting for other payers to play and that only in best case scenario when you play against one player. If there are more players then than the situation is even worse actually Num of Players times worse. That's a big problem. 

The solution that helps to make a multiplayer game at least bearable is simultaneous multiplayer. Which means that all players play they turn in the same time, and when everyone is pressed next turn, that turn is played. 

Which is fine in a way when you build things and similar, but is really problematic on units movement and war actions. 

Because those conflict actions are then resolved by one of the algorithms depending on the game. But in any case, you can end up with some of your moves not possible because other player did something else, and because it is simultaneous you couldn't see it. 

That makes things sometimes very unpredictable and some of your best planned strategic moves ridiculous, which can turn lost battle to lost war and defeat in the end.

It looks there is still not a proper solution for multiplayer, sometimes there are time limits or there are different variations on how those simultaneous moves are solved but they are often either unfair or hard for a player to understand, or still take to long and cause other players to wait. 

Anyway, bad multiplayer is a big loss for Turn Based Strategy games and that is the reason why it is on No 1 of their downsides. Having in mind that almost all games today have multiplayer versions and that it is often the most popular and strongest play of today games its a real pity that it is not like that in this genre. 

Although I used Civilisation 5 game for some examples of bad sides in TBS Games, many other titles suffering from it also, and Civ 5 is in my opinion still the best game in this genre.

That were the main downsides of Turn Based Strategy - Empire Building Games.

What is your opinion, which TBS Empire Building Games you find troublesome and why, let me know in comments, I would like to hear an opinion of real TBS Games fans or haters :) ? Especially if you put a lot of hours in those games, either playing or creating them?


Please subscribe/follow if you like this article and you are interested to read more on TBS Games.

Thank You 
BadHabit.

Turn Based Strategy - Empire Building Games - Why we Like them so much!

5 Reasons Why we Like and Play them so much!

Hi All,
Today we are talking about Turn Based Strategy Empire Building Games and why You Like them. What is great about them and what are the main drive for playing them, making them so enjoyable but also addictive.

Let's start. 5 things you like:

No 5.  GAME PACE 

IN TBS GAMES THERE ARE NO TIME STRESS PRESSURE

That's right! You choose your playing speed. The game is progressing in Turns. Until you press NEXT TURN game is in kind of PAUSED state.

If you are a thinker, want to check everything twice, you need more time to make a decision, nothing stopping you to do so. When you are ready, you go for next turn. That is benefit and commodity that most other genres don't have. If we mix in that its also a strategy that demands thinking and planning that most of Strategy Players enjoy, then that is Win/Win combination. 

Playing Strategy while you are in control of game speed, no stress, no hurrying, no instinct and intuition moves, just plain good old strategy thinking, how to outsmart opponents or to manage your progress at you own pace is what players really enjoy. 

Did you know that Sid Meier's CIVILIZATION originally was built to be REAL TIME STRATEGY game, but later on they realized that it will be too overwhelming to a player to tackle with all manageable system in the game in real time, which will ruin the essence of the game.

No 4. FOCUS 
NO ACTIVE FOCUS DEMANDED IN TBS GAMES

Related to the previous point, you are not pressured to be fully focused on whats happening in the game. Your forces will not be defeated because something very interesting just appeared on TV or you got a new message on Facebook or a phone call.

Even if you can ignore some of those interruptions there are a certain number of interruptions that is best to not be ignored, like If you kid or Wife demanding Attention. You definitely don't want to ignore your wife even if you are able to :).

I am sure many of you remember situations when they were really enjoying their favourite game and then Parents come into the room and starts complaining about whatever is on their mind. After that Gaming moment and pleasure is completely destroyed. Good thing in Turn Based Strategies is that you can just wait, and continue later on when you get your focus and thinking back without losing your playing session, in which you invested hours if not days.

In today's world, we have more interruptions all the time,  more than ever before. Having that in mind I think TBS games have a bright future as more and more player will realize that they can benefit of playing this type of game, comparing to ones where you need to lock yourself in a room and play whole day long without disruptions, sacrificing other aspects of life. There is already a certain number of games where you play one turn a day or similar.

No 3. NEXT TURN  

WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT - DOPAMINE AWARD

If you are a fan of Turn Based Strategy Games you know how it's hard to stop and resist to click NEXT TURN button. Have you ever think why? There is a scientific explanation about that related to chemicals that drive our brain. Yes, you heard me well, it's not your fault, it's your brain and chemicals that are tricking you. Actually, it is Dopamine.

What is Dopamine? Well, Scientists used to think Dopamine was a pleasure chemical in the brain, but now we know that what it actually creates is "WANT" feeling. Dopamine causes us to seek, to search and to desire more. Dopamine is stimulated by unpredictability, by small bits of information, and by reward cues. That's why these days they call it motivation chemical. 


Did you ever think why People are so addicted to Social media these days? We just can't wait for next message, next news, next info that can be something good, and we are constantly checking, as once in a while there is something nice and interesting that awards our brain.

Similarly TBS Games calls you for that NEXT TURN click, as you don't know what will happen, maybe something interesting, new unit is created or, somebody declaring war to you or your opponent, maybe you finally discovered new tech or you are just one turn close to winning a war...or few turns nothing happened and you just seek for something to happen to enhance your game experience and fun.

So, next time your girlfriend start to complain about you playing your TBS game non-stop hit her with scientific facts that she will understand as there is a big chance that she uses Facebook, Twitter, Instagram more then she should :). Actually, The pull of dopamine is so strong that studies have shown tweeting is harder for people to resist than cigarettes and alcohol.

No 2. NEXT TURN

WANT TO FINISH THINGS - Zeigarnik Effect

Did you know that our brains recall things that we haven't completed much more than those we have? It's called Zeigarnik Effect. Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik asked subjects to finish a set of tasks. Then subjects were interrupted before they could finish some of the tasks. Later they recalled the tasks during which they were interrupted at a much higher rate than those they were able to finish. 

How it turns out our brain has a powerful need to finish what it starts. The Zeigarnik Effect may also explain why we regret things we didn't do even more than we regret things we did.

Anyway, lets now draw parallel to our TBS Game. You clicked NEXT TURN because of previous Dopamine thing :). And now you will save and close your game and continue tomorrow. NO F.. WAY. Messages starting to pop up about new units, buildings created, tech discovered, and you will leave that unfinished for later.  I don't think so :)! You will try to react and complete those things. And then when you did everything that you could in that turn, you are back to the previous point, when dopamine calls you for another one.

Those last 2 points explain so known phenomena called
"JUST ONE MORE TURN" 
that is so hard to resist.

No 1. BUILDING YOUR EMPIRE
PLAYING A GOD

And finally our last point. The main reason why we are playing them is not because of next turn button, not because of dopamine or urge to complete things, not because of game pace or focus flexibility. All that are benefits or reasons why they are so addictive, but that's not why we play those games in first place.

We play them because we want to build our own world, our own Empire where we are in charge. Empire building games give as a power of a deity. Playing a GOD kind of game...

At the end big part of playing of any type of Games except it is FUN, of course,  is also to run away from reality to some different world, maybe better, maybe easier or less boring, maybe more challenging, where we can do things on our own, or things that we can't i real life, things where we are in control.

In Empire Building Games you are in charge, you are in control of everything, from progress, expansion, what will be built, what will be discovered, With who you will be in a good or bad relationship. You are playing sort of real-life simulation from a position of God or a Ruler where you are responsible for everything and where from your actions your Empire and the little world depends. Your creation is a projection of what you are and what you want and can accomplish. We hardly can do this in real life, except we are in a very high position in society, like President or Premier.
The great benefit of Empire building games is that ordinary person can learn a lot about systems and dependencies of ruling and leading and life civilization compromises,  and how all those things works and looks from the perspective of one that is in charge and that drives everything.


There you have some of by my opinion crucial reasons for playing TBS Empire building games. I am sure there are a lot more but I think those are main ones behind many successfully Turn Based Strategy Empire building Titles today.

What is your opinion, which TBS Empire Building Games you like to play, let me know in comments, I would like to hear an opinion of real TBS Games fans and serious players of this genre that put a lot of hours in those games.

This is my first article on this topic, I plan to do more, please subscribe if you like it and you are interested to read next one.

Update: Chek post about bad sides of TBS Games:
Turn Based Strategy Games - Bad Sides

Thank You

BadHabit.