One of the most important parts of a game is the way a player will interact with whatever is on the screen. This specific aspect of a videogame is what lets a game be more enjoyable to the player or what drives the player completely away from that game. User interface includes everything the player can interact with either with the character or without. A user interface can be input in a game to be immediately used by the character of the game that the player is controlling or simply be used by the player of the game, without taking the character into account. This allows a greater or lesser sense of immersion depending on what method the programmers of the game decide to use and how to put it into action. There are four specific types of methods to display the user interface to the player which are diegetic, Meta, spatial and non-diegetic. A diegetic user interface is an interface the character in the 3D world can interact, as opposed to a non-diegetic user interface where the character in use does not directly interact with the interface and gives all the power and authority to the player who is controlling the character, therefore breaking the immersion of the story’s narrative or the fictional gameplay, but allowing better control and manipulation of the user interface. A Meta user interface however, is anything that occurs on the interface that does not happen in the 3D world but incorporates itself on the 2D scale of the video game, for example in racing games the speed of the vehicle is often displayed on the interface whenever the vehicle is in third person view. One example could be in Need for Speed Carbon, where on the bottom right hand corner of the heads on display, the speed of the car is displayed and measured which isn’t actually inside the car.

(Php Nuke, n.d)

The last type of user interface is the spatial user interface which means that the player can immediately interact with the environment, but the character cannot. The difference between non-diegetic and Meta user interfaces is that a Meta user interface is implanted within the games fictional environment and is seamlessly integrated as opposed to a non-diegetic user interface where the information needs to be accessed by breaking the immersion of the game, by pulling up a menu screen, an inventory screen or a map. The consumer of the product is often very critical of what the user interface does for them and what it does to them as a player. For example, if a user interface is too complicated for a player to understand what is ever happening on the screen, then it means that the programmers of that certain game are held responsible for not creating an interface that can be swiftly and easily used to the benefit of the player. Another critic could be if a game’s user interface is lacking and the player has a hard time figuring out how exactly to interact with the environment. A game’s total worth to the market is not decided by whether the game studio decides to primarily focus on the story’s narrative or decides to divert its resources to the story’s user interface, but in order to have a successful product, a videogame needs a proper balance of both of these factors and not lean towards achieving one goal and disregarding the other.

References

Php Nuke.n.d. Retrieved from https://media.phpnuke.org/000/976/373/6b4_2cd_580_580-need-for-speed-carbon-1.jpg.