Thursday, May 25, 2023

UX Writing For Games

One of the last acquisitions to my gaming collection was the card game "The Dancer", one of the titles from Echoes' series. Basically, the game is an audio-based experience that uses cards and a smartphone app to scan the images in the deck, showing dialogues, sounds, and music to the players.



"The Dancer" narrates a mysterious case that mixes supernatural forces and a murder?. It is a co-op game where all the players must listen to the sounding hints to put the cards in order to solve the case. The app system is very clever and interesting; it requires extreme attention to details and all the solutions are easily shown using the smartphone.

A very interesting feature of "The Dancer" is the UX writing strategy behind the narrative. UX writing, like designing and coding for UX, is a design and engineering process; it is an iterative process of creation and evaluation that uses texts to improve an experience (PODMAJERSKY, p.30, 2019).

In the case of a card game with a sound app, the game designing team must search for a strategic connection between the images scattered in the table and the text players will listen to during the experience. It is a fundamental thing to build the storyline using the best words to create a sense in the game.

Other point to highlight in the case of a complementary app: the UX text patterns in digital platforms like titles, buttons, descriptions, labels, controls, text input fields, transition texts, confirmation/error messages, and notifications must be planned to create an easy access to the narrative (PODMAJERSKY, p.67, 2019).

In a synthetic way: the cards are physical items that allow players to interact collaboratively in a physical space, but the true immersive experience comes from the materialized text in audio format (where the UX writing strategy is built).

I want to try the other games from the Echoes' series.



Reference:

PODMAJERSKY, Torrey. Strategic writing for UX: drive engagement, conversion, and retention with every word. Sebastopol: O'Reilly Media, 2019.

No comments:

Post a Comment