Bad Usability
June 8, 2008 at 9:22
In the paper I wrote last year for the CHI workshop on user experience in games, I argued that bad usability can be a good thing if it is bad for the right reasons. An example could be the horse in Sony’s renowned Shadow of The Colossus; when the player is riding the horse, the controls are unresponsive and certainly not effective in the traditional usability sense. The designers’ reason to do this could be two-fold: First, it makes the horse feel alive and real - not even a dressage horse responds mechanically to its rider’s commands. Second, it frustrates the player into being annoyed with the horse, and perhaps even into whipping it repeatedly - imagine the guilt or remorse felt, when late in the game, your only companion, the horse, sacrifices itself to save you. That is a strong experience for a game to create, and it does so through bad usability (and nice directing). I do not know if this was Fumito Ueda’s intention, but for me it was the result.
My own current design approach is to create a list of intended emotional effects and try to build my design around that. More on this later.
peter Says...
I agree, nothing in the real world works perfectly every time, I will take realistic over usability any day. I felt sad when Agro (the horse) died. First time a game made me feel that way. Also the challenge in games is not always the tasks, rather, its the ability to complete the tasks with the tools you are given.