The Daily Victim Oh man. A video game's interface can make or break its success. GameSpy looks at the many issues surrounding their construction. Designing a good interface is a challenge for any programmer.
Computer games represent more than just a design challenge in terms of their interface, of course.
A successful game will be visually appealing and artistically inspired. A game with a well-constructed interface will be easy to learn, fun to play and stand up well to experimentation and increasing expertise. A poorly designed interface will be an exercise in frustration that will likely put off gamers from playing a game, and may well discourage them from purchasing other products by the same developer. Clearly the principles of Human-Computer Interaction should be applied most of all to games, which demand the highest level of performance in every aspect of production. There are many genres of computer games, but for the purposes of this report, I will concentrate on the largest sub-division, the strategy game.