Visual Communication = Good Choice

This reading was all about visual communication, and I highly enjoyed it not just because of the well written articles but also because I could think of many different examples in games that I highly enjoy. After reading these articles these examples and other techniques I see in games make a lot more sense.

In "Visually Directing the Player" the writer Joshua talked about the idea of visual direction. Visual direction is a good idea because players don't want to be directly told what to do like they are an idiot. They want to be given a chance to figure it out for themselves. This makes a lot of sense. People don't play games to be dragged around from point a, point b, point c, etc. Joshua gives four ways to give visual clues: lighting, hotspots, animation, and contextual trails. Each one was kind of obvious when pointed out but I had never sat down and thought about why designers use these techniques. Especially the hotspots. I thought back to games like Mass Effect and Fallout(I swear I'll stop talking about this game...someday), which are full of hotspots, and tried to imagine trying to navigate those spaces without them. Even in my imagination it felt impossible.

The second reading was a bit more of a broader topic: "Learn Faster to Play Better: Hot to Shorten the Learning Style". While the article was focused on how the player learns in the videogame and how the designer can make this learning proccess easier, it did focus heavy on the idea of the visual clues and visual communication. The writer talks about the idea of symbols and how they are much easier to use to convey information. He also talked about consistency of the information you are trying to convey, and how the use of  visual patterns can help this.