Abstract.

I applied various scientific theories, learning tactics, psychology principles, and accessibility requirements to test and analyze Forza and Ace Combat’s vehicle selection interfaces.

Description.

I chose these games because the final results best showcase the extremes of readability and usability in game design and how that affects the overall player experience in a multitude of ways.

I conducted this readability test by looking at Gestalt Principles, the Aesthetic-Usability Effect, Hick’s Law, Miller’s Law, Von Restorff Effect, the Law of Proximity, Heuristic Principles, Information Architecture, Task Priority, Decision Priority, Linguistic Directionality, Accessibility, and more. What I found was a mixed bag of good, bad, and ugly.

Here are some of the highlights:

• Both projects suffered from color contrast issues that would make the product inaccessible to visually impaired users. They used colors that we too light, and fonts that were too small for the primary interface text.

• Forza had a better vehicle stats interface because of its combined use of bar charts and numeric scales, Ace Combat only used a bar chart leaving comparison to be subjective.

• Forza leans too heavily on the Aesthetic-Usability Effect and Law of Proximity for their vehicle selection experience. Today it’s putting increased effort on the human mind to decipher loose elements around the view as a complete picture.

• Ace Combat makes great use of the Aesthetic-Usability Effect, and Law of Proximity by taking a skeuomorphic approach to organizing information in clearly grouped arrangements.

• Both projects have issues with Hick’s Law; the time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices. The distributed nature of Forza’s information architecture and the non-empirical measurements of Ace Combats vehicle stats pose readability and decision-making challenges to the user. This issue is amplified any time a player is comparing more than 2 vehicles.

• Forza suffers from Miller’s Law; the average person can only keep 7(plus or minus 2) items in their working memory. There are so many vehicles in the roster that a distributed layout works against the user’s memory. Furthermore, Ace Combat used a smaller roster and a more proximal layout of relative attributes for any one plane, removing this issue and making reference and comparison simpler.

• From readability and decision-making perspectives Forza requires the user to make a number of linear decisions in non-linear patterns, while Ace Combat keeps everything stacked vertically with little to no optional deviation from the task at hand. This level of organization lends to a lighter cognitive load and improved overall usability. Reference the diagrams as a visual aid.