Understanding Human Computer Interfaces for Games Assignment 1 Dermot Strain Contents
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Understanding Human Computer Interfaces for Games Assignment 1 Dermot Strain Contents Section 1
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4
Image reference: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/LG_L194WT-SF_LCD_monitor.jpg Screen What is it? A screen is how you see what is displayed on your computer, TV, tablet and mobile phone. Originally, computer monitors were used for data processing while television receivers were used for entertainment. From the 1980s onwards, computers (and their monitors) have been used for both data processing and entertainment, while televisions have implemented some computer functionality. Some televisions in more recent years have High Definition for better display qualities and show a far clearer image compared to TVs without HD, certain televisions also have 3D features which (with the use of 3D glasses) project out the images on the TV. How is it important? A screen is very important because it lets you see everything that you are doing or watching. Screens are essential for use for any game, without a screen it would be very hard, if not impossible to play a game, any game from the likes of Pac-Man to Grand Theft Auto V require a screen of some kind to play their game on. HD screens have made the quality of games look amazing compared to regular screens. Keyboard What is it? A keyboard is how you input information or play a game on your computer. In normal usage, the keyboard is used to type text and numbers into a word processor, text editor or other programs. Some keyboards and keypads can light up from the inside, especially on equipment for mobile use. Certain buttons on the keyboard that light up are best used on the keyboard in dark environments or as notifications to tell the user that these features are turned on, for example when certain buttons such as Num Lock, Caps Lock and Scroll Lock are pressed they light up to show the user that they are turned on, some computers have these features but more recent keyboards are more likely to have these features.
How is it important? It is important because you wouldn’t be able to type anything or play games without it, especially if whatever you were using didn’t have a touch screen. Keyboards and keypads that light up are important because you can see the different letters, numbers, etc. in the dark Flash games and many PC games are good examples of games that require the keyboard to control the game, by using certain letters or the arrow keys to move and possibly using the spacebar to make the character jump. Games like ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ made use of the arrow keys to move Sonic left and right, as well as using the spacebar to make him jump. ‘World of Warcraft’ is popular PC franchise that is a notable example of use of the keyboard to control the game.
What is it? A joystick is a type of controller that is used to control your game; it is controlled by moving the stick forwards, backwards, left and right or by rotating it. The buttons on the joystick are used to perform certain actions in games, such as shooting or punching. How is it important? Joysticks are important because without it you would not be able to start your game or play it in older consoles like the Atari. The Atari made the joystick essential because you could not play their games without one. Although in newer consoles like the PlayStation and the Xbox, the joysticks have been decreased in size and it is possible to play certain games without using the joysticks
What is it? Pads are used in current game console controllers, laptops and in some mobile phones; key pads are also used for ATMs and security devices, as well as public telephones. In the games industry nowadays consoles such as the PlayStation and Xbox use these controllers to navigate menus, to play games and to interact with friends online by sending them invites with assistance from the controller. These controllers perform different actions and gives players the ability to do certain things in video games under the control of the different buttons, these include moving a character, driving cars, aiming down the sights and shooting (in games like Call of Duty), opening doors, jumping and so on. Controllers have become essential for console gamers and they have proved to be very useful for them as well. How is it important? D-pads are important in console controllers because it gives the player an alternate way to move their character, although certain games do not have this feature, there are a considerable amount that do
What is it? Touch screens are used on some devices in which it allows the user to touch anything that they want to on the screen. Special technology have been added to these systems which allows anyone to control the screen using the touch of their fingers How is it important? Touch screens are an important feature because it means that keypads and buttons are not needed, it can give the user an easier time to access what they need to access because it literally happens at the touch of the screen. Apple Inc. have used touch screen technology in their products called the iPhone and the iPad, having touch screen capabilities makes the experience of using these products very easy and convenient because they are so easy to navigate because all you have to do is touch whatever you want to view and it will show up. Image reference: http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/47937000/jpg/_47937573_009195167-2.jpg Image reference: http://racingseatsimulators.com/images/2009/11/LogitechG27-300x254.jpg Steering Wheels What is it? Steering wheels are used only for racing games, it is plugged into the console, and the design and feel of the steering wheels are meant to represent a real car steering wheel. How is it important? Steering wheels give the player a more realistic feel of the racing game that they are playing as it mimics how you would steer a real car and is a far more interesting feature than just using the joysticks to steer. Games like Forza or Gran Turismo could use the feature of the steering wheel because they are racing games
What is it? A pointing device is a computer mouse that allows the user to control and provide data to their computers by pointing, clicking and dragging. Pointing devices can be used on pretty much every PC out there, Windows PCs and Apple Macs are two notable examples of computer technology that use these pointing devices. How is it important? Pointing devices provide an easier way to navigate everything on a computer, it is also very user friendly and is very easy to operate.
What is it? Motion detectors are one of the most advanced pieces of technology in the world today; they track body movements and facial expressions. Motion detectors can also be used as a form of security in places that need them, such as banks, shops and other high security buildings to stop theft and other bad activities. Video game developers have also taken advantage of the technology that motion detectors have to offer, games like The Last of Us have used motion scanning to depict the actors’ movements which are then transferred over to the game to provide more realistic movements for the in-game characters. LA Noire used motion scanning on actors’ faces to add realism but also to show their facial emotions so that the detective and main character Cole Phelps (controlled by the player) would be able to tell if that person was lying or not. Xbox’s Kinect also uses motion scanning to scan the movement of the user in Kinect specific games and throughout the Xbox Dashboard How is it important? Motion detectors provide the most stunningly accurate depiction of the actor who is motion captured for their body movements or have their face scanned to show off their mouth movements and facial expressions, video games have used motion detection more and more in recent years and the results are amazing and add so much realism to the games. Outside the world of gaming motion detectors provide a great security to certain places that require them.
What is it? A headset is a combination of is a headphone and a microphone, so it allows the user to speak and hear other people, its most essential use is in online gaming, you would not need one if you preferred playing alone. Headsets are used in certain jobs as well, like call centres How is it important? Headsets are important mostly for online use while playing video games on consoles or on a PC, it is very useful to communicate with friends and to communicate with your teammates if the user is playing team-based game modes on games such as Call of Duty, Battlefield, Halo, etc.
What is it? A command line interface is all about the interaction with a computer program where the user issues commands to the program in the form of successive lines of text (command lines). The CLI was the primary means of interaction with most computer systems until the introduction of the video display terminal in the mid-1960s, command-line interfaces are often preferred by more advanced computer users, as they often provide a more concise and powerful means to control a program or operating system. In terms of games, command line interfaces were mostly used before 2D and 3D gaming even properly existed. The game Zork (seen in picture) used this method to play through the game, the player had to type in certain instructions when faced with scenarios that needed to be passed to progress through the game. Command line input eventually became very time consuming for players to have to type specific instructions to load up a game, this is one of the reasons that this does not be used much anymore but a big reason is because the technology in the gaming industry has moved on and has become better over time. How is it important? The command line interface would have been more important back in the 1950s and early 1960s before the introduction of the video display terminal, it would not be very important today because most casual computer users would use graphical user interfaces (GUI), although command line interfaces are often preferred by more advanced computer users.
What is it? In computer science and electrical engineering, speech recognition is the translation of spoken words into text. The term voice recognition or speaker identification refers to finding the identity of "who" is speaking, rather than what they are saying. Speech recognition works by listening to a person’s voice, like a recording, the words are then processed to see if they match the original owner’s voice. Xbox’s Kinect also use speech recognition to learn the owner’s voice, this makes it easier for Kinect to understand the owner, the owner can then command Kinect to do certain things, such as open the Xbox game tray, search for a specific thing on Bing and so on. How is it important? Speech recognition can be important for security purposes, to recognise the individual’s voice so nobody else will be able to access whatever it is that the user has locked up, (this could vary between console systems like the Xbox One to computer software to security possibly at an Army base so only some select few people in the base would be allowed access and see inside certain places) so when that user returns and uses his or her voice, the system can then authentic or verify their voice and can then allow him or her access, also, recognizing the speaker can simplify the task of translating speech in systems that have been trained on a specific person's voice What is it? In computing and telecommunications, a menu or menu bar is a list of options or commands presented to an operator by a computer or communications system. Menus are also seen in other types of electronics, starting with TV sets and VCRs that gained on-screen displays in the early 1990s and now branching off to the likes of video games and DVD players. Other electronics with text-only displays can also have menus, anything from business telephone systems with digital telephones, to weather radios that can be set to respond only to specific weather warnings in a specific area. Other more recent electronics in the 2000s also have menus, such as digital media players. Video game menus are made very easy to navigate; a casual gamer or even a first time gamer can navigate them with ease. Fallout 3’s menu is very easy to navigate because it is well laid out and only has a few options to choose from. How is it important? Menus are important because it gives the user a clear view as to what their options are on their DVDs, video games, computers, etc. it makes everything a lot easier to navigate and provides enough information for the user to browse and explore each menu. Games like Pokémon on the game boy were mostly interacted with by the use of pop-up menus that showed what options were available for the player to choose from, and then choosing one of these options would trigger a specific action to happen. Older menu styles were more linear than the menus of today because they had less options to choose from, making menu navigation very easy in the process. Image reference: http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--E3epFdED--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/lhx0f00mrk6s1wpifdgw.jpg Sense Oriented (Graphics, Speech and Touch) What is it? Speech and movement oriented features are probably described and used best by technologies such as Xbox’s Kinect which is a camera that scans the user’s body movement and listens to their voice so the user can issue commands to Kinect to perform certain tasks. The user can ask to search for a specific game as well as many other features, some video games have also been made specifically for Kinect where the user has to perform certain body movements, such as jumping and moving their arms and legs to control their game and the character. Touch oriented devices can normally be found in special types of screens that allow the user to use their fingers to interact with them, these provide an easier experience than having to type in everything manually or having to push several buttons. Touch screens can be found in Apple devices, such as the iPhone and iPad, touch screens can also be found in certain stores, such as Asda. Mobile games and app games can be controlled using touch, for example the app game Flappy Bird was controlled by the player tapping the screen to navigate the bird through the different columns to increase the player’s score.
The avatar is the character that the player controls; this gives the player the freedom to do whatever they want with their character, within reason and within the rules of the game. In some games the player’s character can be edited in multiple ways, meaning that the player can change how the character looks and can change what clothes they were, for example, Carl Johnson (the only playable avatar) in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas can be given multiple different haircuts, can go and get tattoos on his whole torso area, can purchase a variety of different clothing in multiple different shops in the game world and can even change his body shape by becoming very muscular if the player goes to the gym, or can become obese by eating an excessive amount of food, or can become skinny by doing a lot of cardio exercise, such as running, cycling or swimming. However in other games, the player can only change the character’s outfit, for example in the video game series Assassin’s Creed, you can purchase different outfits for your character from multiple tailors that are located in different towns and cities, however you cannot change your character’s hairstyle/ hair colour, body shape or get any tattoos. Image reference: http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100224171542/gtawiki/images/9/9a/Barber-GTASA-usage.jpg Section 3 Human Factors User Experience, e.g. Expert, Regular, Occasional, Novice User experience can definitely effect how a person plays their game; the experts usually tend to be the people who play games all the time, which gives them a lot of time to improve their skills and understanding with video games in general. Regular gamers would play it quite regularly but still do other activities in their spare time as well. Occasional gamers tend to play video games whenever they have free time or whenever they are bored and have nothing else to do, these gamers would not take their games as seriously as experts and regulars would, especially in online gaming. Novices are the newcomers with no experience of video games, they would take a long time to play and operate different games with complete ease. Novices can sometimes be introduced to video games by their friends or family members, who normally would teach the novice how to play the game but others simply learn by themselves through self-practice. Video games with different difficulty settings that can range from easy to hard can be very suitable for all these types of gamers because the novice can choose the easiest difficulty, the regular and occasional gamers could possibly choose the medium or in-between difficulties of easy and hard and then the experts and most experience gamers can choose the harder or hardest difficulty setting to challenge their skills and knowledge of the video game. Making tutorials available at the start of the game can be very useful for beginners, tutorials help them to get used to the controls and the actions of the game. The expert gamers can sometimes have the option to skip the tutorial if they want to; a good example of this is at the start of Gears of War 2. This makes sure that every gamer (especially beginners) gets a fair chance to expand their knowledge of a game so they can enjoy their experience. User requirements E.g. Vision Impaired, Physically impaired, Learning difficulties Although most games are tailored for the user with full function of their body and sense, there are certain games out there that are more tailored towards people with certain disabilities, such as people who are blind or deaf or people who are in wheelchairs and are not able to move their body for certain systems, (such as Xbox’s Kinect) or simply for children or (in some cases) adults who have learning difficulties. People who are blind can still speak to features like Xbox’s Kinect and also can get familiar with the game controller over time so they will be able to use it but will not be able to see the screen. People in wheelchairs who cannot walk can still use a game controller for their video game, although they may not be able to fully use Kinect’s movement feature, people who cannot walk can still use their arms and use their voice to navigate their console. Typically people with learning difficulties can get help from fun and educational games, games such as these are made easy to understand for the person so they do not get confused, they can also be very helpful to the person over time as they will continue to improve their skill and knowledge and this will help to fight their learning disability Image reference: http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20131028192233/callofduty/images/thumb/7/7b/Female_soldier_holding_Honey_Badger_CoDG.png/800px-Female_soldier_holding_Honey_Badger_CoDG.png Demographics (e.g. Age, Gender) Demographics are important in video games because everyone is different, some games may suit people but other games may suit other people, for example, video games such as Call of Duty are more aimed at males with their age ranging from about 18 to 25 years old, even though this is the majority of the audience who plays this game, there are female gamers who play it too and speaking of this, ‘Call of Duty Ghosts’ (which was released in 2013) featured, for the first time ever in the series, playable women soldiers in the multiplayer mode (seen in picture). Over the years women gamers have broken the stereotype that they only play bright coloured games and simply “girly” style games, as I stated above, women now play the games that were tailored towards men, such as ‘Call of Duty’ and ‘Battlefield’ and I believe that this rise of female gamers is why ‘Call of Duty’ newly added in playable female characters into their traditionally male dominated game. However some male gamers have spoken out about their displeasure at the rise of female gamers but I personally think that is a good thing to branch out to different audiences, no matter what their gender is. Games made for children are normally a lot easier, more colourful than and not as realistic as the games that are made for a teenage and adult audience. Games for kids can range to fun style games to educational games. A lot of younger people play Minecraft which is quite a simple but fun game where you can build whatever you want; this game has gained a lot of mainstream attention from people at various different age ranges Section 4 Structured 
A good example of a game that is well structured is Skyrim as the commands and menus have the same format, the design of the landscapes and buildings are consistent. The game has gained a lot of popularity and was worked hard on by the developers In terms of games that are not well structured, you would have to look at the video games that did not have much work put into them by their developers or the if the video game developers did not have enough money to structure their game to a good extent. Therefore, video games that are not well structured tend to sell quite poorly compared to a game like Skyrim that had a lot of work put into it and was structured well enough to be easily understood by gamers.
A good example of a game that is simple and easy to use is Minecraft as the controls can be learned easily and style of writing is very easy to read and understand. Minecraft itself is now commonly played by younger children at 10 years old or even younger; I believe this is because the game is simple and not too complex or difficult. It is also important to note that the text is simple and easy to read, the language used is easy to remember. Image reference: http://metalarcade.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/minecraft_xbox_review.jpg An example of a game which is not simple and easy to understand is the type of games that flood the player with all the information at one time, instead of taking the time to fully explain and go through each control and how to do certain actions in the game or simply give it to the player to find out for themselves what the controls are and have no tutorials or anything like that, an example of this would be in the ‘Silent Hill’ series because the player is given no instruction or tutorial on the controls or any other aspects really but I think this suits the game because it is a horror game where the player is mostly alone and has to figure everything out for themselves, so even the controls should be no exception. Image reference: http://images.wikia.com/silent/images/7/7c/Silent-hill-3.jpg Visible An example of a game that would keep the player’s attention so they would not get bored and look for something better would be the types of game with elements that can provide a sort of addictiveness that would make the player not want to stop playing. Games like this would be video games with an interesting, rich and emotional storyline, where the player can form a bond with their game character and wants to see what will happen next. An example of addictive games would be ‘World of Warcraft’ and ‘Call of Duty’ because of their almost endless levelling system and the range of different weapons and abilities to choose from. An example of a game with a rich storyline would be The Last of Us because the story never got boring, it kept getting more interesting. Image reference: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GTZ5YQ808-A/TkUcYPr_WRI/AAAAAAAAA2w/7O3t8-tpQ4M/s1600/World-of-Warcraft-wallpaper.jpg An example of a game that you can get bored of easily is possibly sports games because they can get very repetitive after a while, there is no real excitement with games such as FIFA and Madden, people tend to get annoyed or angry if they lose online matches in these games also, unless players find a way to make these games fun or interesting, you usually will get bored or frustrated at these games. Image reference: http://www.gamelee.fr/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/fifa13.jpg Feedback Call of Duty’s multiplayer mode is a good example of feedback. When the player kills an enemy there is a clear message that pops up on the screen to confirm this, also when the player attains killstreaks the game does a good job of letting the player know that their specific killstreak is ready to be used, along with a man’s voice which also lets the play know that their killstreak can now be used. The feedback is very relevant to what is available to be used, so the player will be fully notified that they killed an enemy or attained a killstreak reward and it will stay on the screen until the player uses it, so it would be hard for the player to forget that their reward is ready to use. Image reference: http://static4.gamespot.com/uploads/screen_kubrick/mig/4/2/9/2/2114292-169_call_of_duty_mw3_kill_confirmed_hardhat_ps3_020112.jpg A poor example of feedback would be on the same multiplayer mode but a different game type in the Call of Duty series called ‘Hardcore’, in this mode feedback is barely used except for a small notification in the bottom left corner of the player’s screen. The player gets no big notification as they would in the ‘core’ modes of Call of Duty’s multiplayer (as seen in the picture above) but this is because the Hardcore mode is designed to look more realistic to real life warfare, as there is no notification that pops up in a real life soldier’s face to let them know that they killed their enemy, therefore in Hardcore mode the feedback system mimics that. 
Image reference: http://orcz.com/images/thumb/f/ff/Gtavthebikerescapedmissionfailed.jpg/400px-Gtavthebikerescapedmissionfailed.jpg Tolerance Fallout 3 has a system which is sort of similar to this because the player can save the game before they do something risky or something they would not be able to undo without saving beforehand because in Fallout 3, if you kill a character then they will be dead forever and there will be no ‘Game Over’ or ‘mission failed’ or ‘retry’ screen. So saving the game beforehand is good because if you mess up you can always load up the game to that previous save. However in Grand Theft Auto if the player messes up they will fail the mission but will be able to try again as if nothing happen beforehand. A poor example of this would be in an Xbox Live arcade game called State of Decay, which is a game about zombies with human survivors. If a character dies there is no getting them back, this is because this game is based on if a real zombie apocalypse happened in real life and obviously if someone died in real life there would be no respawning for them. State of Decay is very realistic so if a player dies then they will be permanently dead, meaning the player will have to be extra careful. A good game example of this is Grand theft Auto because the commands are simple and easy to understand, each button on the game controller can be learned to perform whichever action very easily, the layout of the Grand Theft Auto style of controls is quite similar to other video games as well, so a player could play a different game but still use their knowledge from previous games like GTA to control their character. Once a player gets used to Grand Theft Auto games (which honestly would not take that long as the control scheme is very easy to get used to) they will be able to play the game as if it was second nature to them, the player could play through the game without thinking about which button they would have to press to perform a certain action because they would already know thanks to the tutorials at the start of the game and the fact that the control scheme makes sense and is easy to remember. Image reference: http://pop-break.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Grand-Theft-Auto-San-Andreas-PC-Game-21.jpg A poor game example of this is games like Silent Hill 2 because the controls were awkward and hard to understand and learn for a while, until I got used to them. In my experience with the game, I had to change the control scheme to the set type of controls that I had been used to, like using the A button (on an Xbox 360 controller) to interact with items and so on. I was not able to play the game with ease at the start, since Silent Hill 2 is an older game its controls were different to what I was used to playing, it was quite a frustrating game to get used to and it took a while to get used to everything, unlike a game like Grand Theft Auto San Andreas which had tutorials to show you what to do and was easy to learn. Silent Hill 2 leaves players to fend for themselves with no help and no tutorials; however that could be seen as a unique feature because it provides more of a challenge for more experienced gamers but a beginner in the world of gaming playing ‘Silent Hill 2’ would find it very difficult to tolerate. Image reference: http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--tGAFaFY6--/xorvdtwaogugbsasgiha.jpg Sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Warcraft#Reception http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23572742 http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/14/4622852/why-call-of-duty-ghosts-finally-has-female-soldiers-in-multiplayer Dermot Strain Directory: uploads uploads -> 587 Return function, r i(X) r i(0) r i(1) r i(2) r i(3) 1 0 2 4 6 Thermal Station, I 2 0 1 5 6 3 0 3 5 6 10 uploads -> Department of science and humanities department of mathematics part-a questions and answers uploads -> The Case Against the nypd’s Quota-Driven ‘Broken Windows’ Policing What Is It? uploads -> For want of a nail uploads -> Ownership Models There are two different types of ownership models uploads -> Police Militarization uploads -> City of rising star regular meting thursday, july 14, 2016 uploads -> Township of winfield uploads -> Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act of 2014 uploads -> The Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Program What We Want Now! Download 54.53 Kb. Share with your friends:
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