Mobile Devices in Gaming

Given that this week’s lecture is on interaction devices (lecture found here), the topic for this week’s blog post is…………. You guessed it, interaction devices. As my interest lies in mobile games I will talk about the interaction on mobile devices.

For those of us that used to and/or continue to play console games, one important aspect is the button mapping. The ability to change the button mappings in game is an important feature for more advanced players who play video games a lot and have developed a button mapping that they are comfortable with.

Let’s take Call of Duty for example. The franchise has well over 40 million players across its franchise (Jaradat, 2012). For a majority of these players, they are long-time fans of the series and veterans of first person shooters. Although there is a default controller mapping, it is likely that over time, these players have created their own button mapping for such games that allows them to perform better when in-game. As a result, they will always change the settings to their liking.

In 2009, Activision had released a version of Call of Duty for mobile devices. If we look at devices such as Apple’s iPhone, the touch screen means that there are no buttons. Essentially, we have gone from this:

Source: http://avgjoegeek.net/5-tips-on-how-to-play-call-of-duty-mw3-like-a-boss/

To this:

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_3G

So how exactly does a game that requires a fairly complex button mapping go from having many buttons and analog sticks to a device with no buttons, gyroscopes, and an accelerometer?

Looking at the above sample gameplay video / review, it is easy to immediately see one of the issues with the layout: it is rather intrusive for the player. Although the lack of buttons means that virtual buttons can be placed anywhere on the screen, at the core, the game still requires two analog sticks in order to move and look around. As we can see, although the person reviewing the app was able to move around without much problem, looking around however, was a big issue. The right hand will constantly be in the way as players are trying to look around and thus ruins the experience for the player. 

Don’t expect the hardware to change anytime soon though. The iPhone’s perceived affordance is for touching. When one looks at the iPhone, the touch screen suggests one interacts with it through touching its screen. This of course has spurred a new generation of games, simple games with intuitive controls that take advantage of such a screen. When we look at games such as Angry Birds, the game was designed for a touch screen. The simple control (use your finger to slingshot the bird) makes it easy for players to quickly pick up the game and play it. On the other hand, a game such as Call of Duty was not designed for touch devices. It was originally a PC / console game and as a result its controls work well when playing on PCs and gaming consoles.

Mobile devices are an interesting domain for video games. If we think back, controllers have always been used to play video games. Arcades cabinets had joysticks and buttons, home gaming consoles had controllers with analog sticks, d-pads and buttons, and, more recently, we have seen additional sensors being incorporated into controllers such as acceleration in the Wii and motion tracking in the Kinect. If we shift our focus back to mobile devices, they never really had all of these bells and whistles. Phones back then had a keypad for dialing and texting, and games were often limited to really simple games such as snake, matching cards, or ricochet. These games did not require complex interactions and oftentimes the player’s choice in terms of movement was limited. In snake, for example, the player needs only to be able to move up, down, left, or right in order to eat the segment and get longer. 

Of course, with the shift to touch screen devices as well as devices that feature accelerometers, gyroscopes, and many other sensors, they have opened up a world of new possibilities for game developers. These sensors are allowing us to overcome the problem of not having analog sticks and buttons and encourages us to find creative ways to turn the devices into controllers.  This of course leads back to the importance of button mapping, a topic that was important back when arcades were popular.

For mobile games, there is no standard for button mapping. Some games are meant to be played with the screen vertical while some are horizontal, and, different games will require different control schemes that make sense for that specific game. There is a direct mapping between the input design and the gameplay here. We could take an accelerometer based control system from a racing game and stick it into Angry Birds, but, since the game does not require us to drive birds around and try to hit targets, the controls will make no sense at all.

To conclude, I think mobile devices are a rather interesting domain to study as the lack of buttons gives developers greater creativity in terms of how they wish to do things. On top of that, the lack of buttons means we will likely see more creative interfaces and input designs that will allow us to enjoy our games even more. Mobile games are taking it to the next level; by taking away the controller, the standard mappings, and allowing the user to customize button mappings, game developers are encouraged to explore the area of input design more in order to come up with something that works well for their game.

References

Jaradat, F. (2012, February 12). Over 40 million monthly players across call of duty franchise, breakdown by title. Retrieved from http://mp1st.com/2012/02/12/over-40-million-monthly-players-across-call-of-duty-franchise-breakdown-by-title/