User Interface Disasters in modern computer gaming

Introduction

Ahh, thats better.

Well, actually, it's not so much the games that are crap, it's the user interfaces that developers are torturing us with. The rest of this document will be spent in trying to convince you, dear reader, that what I say is true (at least for the games I choose to mention).

It may be slightly fairer to rephrase the above assertion as:

User Interfaces to many modern computer games are badly designed.

or

Most game developers (appear to) have no idea how to create a good Interface for their product.

or

Most game developers have No Freakin Idea what user interfaces are all about.

To demonstrate the truth of these statements will require some analysis of User Interfaces and their use in computer gaming, but please try to stay awake and read it through. Go get that cup of coffee now before you start...

caveats:

• There are some games with good interfaces out there, including games that I have not played and so can't comment about.
• There are some computer gaming genres that I have not played at all - e.g. "mech" style fighting / duelling games. For all I know they may have wonderful interfaces :-)
• Everything you read here is the opinon of the author. Feel free to disagree with any or all parts as you wish.
• This document will contain mistakes. You can feel certain that I put them in there on purpose just to see who was paying attention :-)