Good Design, Bad Design Vol. 4 - The Best and Worst of Video Game Graphic Design ~ Design Doc 

"Can you spot the UI problems in Gungnir?" I feel like I have to be able to parse any amount of information before I can identify individual problems so, technically, no.

I dozed off a bit and woke up at 14:30 genuinely looking for the "Skip Ad" button

Hmm, yes, I noticed some subtle differences in Journey's and Gungnir's UI design.

Gungnir has more arrows than most clickbait thumbnails.

good graphic design means no one has to get used to it

Gungnir is just Menu: The Game. ...on hard mode.

No joke, my eyes were watering by the end of your presentation of Gungnir. Or bleeding, one of the two.

If all games had a UI like gungnir, I wouldn't be wasting nearly as much time as I do on games.

Gungnir hurts to look at. The artwork is fine, if middling, but those boxes and arrows and fonts and God I can't tell what anything even is for.

I can't stand the trend of minuscule fonts. It's not just games, but on TV once HD gained prominence. HD was supposed to make everything clearer, but the designers use that opportunity to make the text smaller so it's just as illegible as it was before. The small text on Switch isn't limited to Hover. Dead Cells has the PC-style presentation that never looks good on a console, and Rocket League's menus and chats are way too small in console mode (though works pretty well in portable mode).

Bad Design: *shows footage from Nier Automata* I almost had a heart attack lol

I remember trying to play an RPG Maker game and I had to stop an hour in because the person who made it had absolutely no idea how to pace written dialogue, so conversations were delivered in gigantic walls of text that were an absolute slog to read through.

As a graphic designer myself I’am really glad this series exists, I love it. Rare to find so well produced content on these issues, let alone done so entertaining. Good work! Now go and make more! :-)

showing the bad design title card and Nier right after threw me for such a loop like "BOY YOU DON'T WANNA GO THERE" lmao

I clicked on this video 12 seconds after it got uploaded, haha. These six design lessons were really varied and interesting! Also, your “Good/Bad Design” title designs are hilarious and you even individually design them for each video, respect for that level of dedication. I LOVE your videos so much! I always feel like I learned something and I’m always looking forward to the next video!

Tbh seeing you talk about Gungnir UI made me think about why Fire Emblem games on GBA have very simple and effective UI. I honestly like how they don't make things cluttered and used colors well enough to show who's the players, the enemies, and the NPC's. Plus, when you view the characters' stats when preparing to attack, they give you things like attack, crit, type of weapon, how many times the weapons can be used, etc. It all felt so clean and concise that it made me really get into it. I normally don't get into tactical RPG's because others feel too cluttered and slow but Fire Emblem GBA really nailed it for fast-paced gameplay.

Holy crap, the graphic design of that last game on the list. I had no idea it was even possible for a game to look so convoluted. It almost looks like it's supposed to be a parody xD

Okay now thats just clickbaiting. How am I supposed to NOT click when Samus is on the thumbnail

I love how last of us handled it's version of "detective version". Your forced to crouch and only shows outlines of enemies.

Hover was the last game I crowdfunded and the UI was so bad it was the reason I dropped the game after an hour. Would need a hell of an overhaul to get me to go back to it.

I hated Hover for the first hour or two, but once I got the hang of it I loved the gameplay. The UI however.... is horrendous just like you said, it got to the point where I completely ignored it. The arrow at the bottom of the screen and the energy bar were really all that was needed during play, everything else could have been tucked in the pause menu, honestly. If they fixed some of the problems like that and got rid of the whole "EPIC GAMERZ" schtick then it would have been something really special.

On Pyre, just from the clip you showed - The moving of the name prompt based on who's talking when two characters are on screen at once. That's a really neat technique to quickly show the player who's talking right now, and connect a name to a face, I don't recall seeing before. (Though, to be fair, visual novels aren't something I play a lot of outside of the huge crossover ones - mainly the first couple of Ace Attorneys, the three numbered Danganronpas, and the first six Professor Laytons there, so that might have become a genre standard that I just missed) On Gungear... Did... Did they use white on a light coloured background for some of the text? Wait, no, it's transparent on semi-transparent white on a general lightened patch of the screen. Which is somehow worse. And displaying important numeric battle info while showing a character portrait and quote more prominently. (Was expecting you to wait at least 8 days for putting out a new Good Design, Bad Design, though, what with you covering both Brawl (under good design) and 4 (under bad design) prior)

"What if Samus had a bug's head?" Either Miyamoto has ADHD/ADD, or was tripping balls that day. Either way, I hope his quirks never change

You know what would be good design? If the Design Doc playlist was in order of release, instead of most recent at the top.

I LOVE Metroid Prime's UI. It's so good!

I love this series soo much. Such good information and analysis

i've played journey about 5 times now at it makes me cry every time. it's beautiful

On that last sentence (on how good graphic design can be subtle), bad graphic design instead stands out like a sore thumb

I'm learning so much through these videos. ive never really thought too hard about how just important graphic design is in presenting a game before, it's really fascinating

Man, these video series really is an eye opener for me! I suddenly want to dive into a bunch of old games and look at their graphic design! :o

As a Design student, I really love this series

Your vids are always both entertaining and informative to watch. Such a pleasure!

When he did the gungnir pop quiz my first thought was "Okay there is way to much on screen right now", I was so overwhelmed by how much bullshit they crammed into the UI i literally couldn't see the other problems, I got a headache trying to parse what i was looking like

Definitely still my favorite videos you create. You can learn so much from whats done wrong in a UI and UX design. I learning to be a game dev and I would love if I could share some of my own Menus and interfaces with you one day to get some feedback. But regardless, I look forward to your next video!

I think Hover is a fun game but it's UI does annoy me greatly. And that map... Jet Set Radio Future had pretty bad map, but at least I knew where I was. Hover's map only tells me where I am from a bird's eye view, it doesn't tell me anything else.

Your videos strike the perfect balance of entertaining and informative keep it up and I will keep watching and liking every one. Nice work

As always, amazing content! I hope your videos dont slow down too much but i understand the obstacles of a content creator juggling other responsibilities and whatnot. Hope you keep the channel alive. Cant wait for the next video!

On a side note some of the best solutions I've seen to the detective mode problem can be found in Arkham Knight and The Last of Us Part 2. In Arkham Knight at some point in the game enemies start to be able to track you while you are in your detective mode. The seems to appear randomly with little explanation but provides a good balancing act of gathering information and staying hidden. The longer your in detective mode the more information you can get but the more likely you'll be found. In The Last of Us Part 2 you detective mode is instead called the listen mode. In it you can see enemies through walls just like any other detective mode. But it has some nice trade offs. First your movement speed is heavily reduced well in this mode, you can get upgrades later to remove this but it is still a trade off. Second, unlike The Last of Us Part 1 where enemies where clearly outlined in listen mode, in part 2 they are instead just loose blobs meaning it can be hard to tell what type of enemies it is. Third is that how clearly you can see the enemies in listen mode is directly tied to how much noise they make. A cautious enemy will be harder to spot than a regular enemy, and a hiding enemy is almost invisible to your listen mode. Finally in the game you can usally hear more from the games own audio than the info you usually get from your listen mode.

So glad RU-vid recommended me to your latest Good Design, Bad Design video! Video games were also a major influence in my decision to become a graphic designer (particularly thatgameco's games which became one of my final year uni projects) and a desire for good UI has influenced my preference for Nintendo-style games imo (though many multi-platform games do a great job too of course). You've got yourself a new subscriber, look forward to your future uploads :)

personally, the story mode’s level map of just shapes and beats (2018) is a nice one since unlike most game’s maps, the story happens in the map and not just the levels inside. maybe cover it?

I'm making my own game and I find your videos quite helpful!

Hey, awesome video as always! As a suggestion to next videos, I'd love to see you talking about Disgaea 5. I think the game's design is a good example of "I have a lot of informations to tell but they are organized"

Every time i see a new video i just know I'm gonna learn something neat. Thanks for this series. Keep up the amazing work.

Just stumbled upon your channel and watched all four videos from this series. I'm looking forward to exploring the rest of your channel. Earned yourself a sub! Keep up the good work!

You should look at devil may cry 3, as a good and bad design. The style meter is good as is most of the ui. but the title screen is horrendous, and tuhe save select is set up so that if you play Vergil after beating the game the first time, you will probably delete the freshly beaten save, and all of it's extra difficulty's and modes and costumes.

Just found your channel, great content :) really been enjoying watching your videos today. Hope you make more.

Yoooo, I just found your channel and your contents are top notch!

I love this video series so much. Thank you for your work!

Great and useful video as always. All these tips to me basically serve as a great way to question if I'm doing my design good, and I love that.

I understood just how bad the UI was for Gungnir when I realized that I couldn't find on the screen some of the things you were talking about.

*sees Gungir's UI* *proceeds to bash head in wall*

Gungnir just makes me think of the Dating HUD gag in Undertale, where a bunch of completely unrelated UI elements are added: weather, crime rates, Sega Bass Fishing...

Love this series, hope there will be other "Good Design, Bad Design", thanks

I think Mirror‘s Edge‘s „runner vision“ is one of the best executions of detective vision.

Never have I clicked so fast on a video. Really great analysis, keep up the good work. P.S. Have you had a look at the UI of the Valkyria Chronicles series? I think there are some really nice elements to it that could do with a video on it

Hey, first time watching this video. Good stuff. I agree with the points you made, though I think some topics deserve having their own video. I'd love to see you do a video on typesetting. You seem like you'd be a perfect person to discuss the subject.

Another nice detail in Journey is that the energized and non-energized sections of the scarf contrast with each other, making it easy to tell how much flight energy you have left

I love your videos! I am an artist and I can tell that these have been pretty useful in my understanding of balance in general. Thanks Design Doc!

14:20 "It doesn't look that bad, just not the most pleasent thing to look at" 14:22 " *_AH FUCK, MY EYES_* "

Been a while. Always like me some UI. Okay, interesting. The UI for Metroid and Pyre in particular were very nicely dissected.

Amazing! Love the series...

Once you started taking about Detective Vision, I almost expected you to talk about or show a clip of P5, even though you’ve already made a huge segment on P5 previously XD

Video game design is the type of series I was looking for. Keep up the good work

So happy to see Pyre here, very nice video.

The transition at 8:48 got me really confused for a second until he started explaining things lmao

"beautiful games can have bad graphic design" [shot of Xenoblade X] XCX may be one of my top 3 favorite games, but by god its UI is such a chore to grapple with that I hope you cover it in this series someday.

This highlight words were used in Golden Sun Dark Dawn too

Excellent channel, learning a lot with it! Can you highlight Hyper Light Drifter game in this series? Want to know your opinion about it!

"There's no reason to turn detective mode off" your bleeding eyes are reason enough

The UI in Metroid Prime reminds me how amazing the cockpit in X2: The Threat was

I have to admit i became overly reliant on the eyes thing in dishonored that when i have no magic im almost literally blind

there is one "detective vision" I real enjoy in Mark of the Ninja, where you can see enemies and interactive objects through walls, but you can't move while using it

I've never heard of Gungnir before and Now I gotta find it.

3:40 us gamers need to rise up

I love your work man!

The music in this vid is like those really cheap work training videos from the 90s

I'm probably going to steal some of the techniques on display in Pyre if I can pimp-slap RPG Maker into supporting them - having the additional info display on mouse-over is a _lot_ more elegant than just displaying it in an extra menu item squirreled away in the menu.

I felt the same way about dark vision in Dishonored as you did about Detective vision

Glad to see more people looking critically at game UI/UX design. In the vein of changes from Arkham Asylum to its sequel, a particular... "fascinating case study" if you will, that I've been following for a long time is Capcom's Monster Hunter series, which tends to bring major improvements with release, but sometimes introduces weird papercut regressions for seemingly no reason. A good example is the chat. Monster Hunter shines best as a multiplayer game where groups of four players don't traditionally NEED to communicate complex thoughts while out on a hunt. But MH3 had the option available for an on-screen (or USB) keyboard, and it was very useful at times. MH4, despite being on a system with a touchscreen instead of a Wii, removed that, only giving the full keyboard between hunts and restricting you to 18 canned phrases otherwise. To be fair, you shouldn't be typing much while hunting, but it's a removal that tends to chafe more than you'd expect when you can't take a down moment to tell the newbie "roll to get rid of slime" without having anticipated someone whose never seen a Brachydios and spent a precious canned message on telling them how to avoid blowing up. I'll bet it'd be interesting to look at more game series and how they improve (or don't) throughout their run.

I hope that one day cover a game called Hellsinker on this series though I wouldn't count on it given that it is a very obscure and hard to find title but that has a small but dedicated fanbase. I bring that game up since one of the first things people tend to notice regarding that game is its graphic design. It is a very love it or hate it kinda thing. It is both difficult to grasp and can be quite busy, but it also gives a player all the info they could need and it has become synonymous and a core part of the games style. And that mixed in with the games numerous mechanics and brisk pace it is perhaps one of the reasons why the game has remained so niche. But I do hope it get's covered at one point at least since, again, it has become such a part of it's style.

You could give detective vision or omniscient mode a cool down or meter that regenerates that usually solves everything by just making it not spammable. Use it when you get stuck but never leave it on forever. And for stealth games I think this a great benefit if you could only use it once in a room. The problem is that it removes the tension for stealth. You know every position of the enemy so you don't feel like you're hiding but more like you're just finding the route to kill everyone. Early Metal Gear games had the same problem on normal and it wouldn't be until the re-release of MGS3 where we truly felt like avoiding guards instead of avoiding the dots on the radar. Other games like MGSV strikes an interesting implementation of this. You have to spot enemies and items first before getting detective vision. But I still think spotting it much easier than the reward for doing so. I would ditch detective mode and just let you track enemies through your map which you have to stop and open up in real time. Detective mode in stealth games should be kept to a minimum because an overuse of it leads to the game playing itself. Wasn't it cool in dishonored how you can look through a keyhole or lean from a corner without being seen? So why do we have an easy brain dead solution that's completely unnecessary?

Wow. I loved Prome and didn't even realize some of those details.

THANK YOU FOR THIS SERIES. Super interested in UI design and this combines with another thing I love: GAMES

Wow Doc, great job! Keep it up, proud ya'

I think the game that is closest to fixing the "detective mode" issue is the Tomb Raider reboot series. Lara's survival instincts (detective mode) does the same thing but you have to stay COMPLETELY STILL or it disappears. This allows you to look for the highlighted items, and know what's interactive without sacrificing the world in an ugly palette. It's one of the reasons why I praise the games for finding that solution since I also found the Arkham games fun yet annoying since you always felt like you had to have detective mode on. Great video!

Don't know if you already have, bit if you plan on doing another game design doc, the Mario RPGS have plenty of examples you could use of intuitive UI's! For example, Superstar Saga's use of red and green, how it associates the a and b button with each. Or how natural the menus feel, the menu containing items, equipment, your map, etc. being presented as a suitcase, or how the save screens are written passports.

The distinction you make between UI/UX design and the rest of the art design in games is a good illustration of the difference between two fundementally different schools of art: the fine and practical arts. I would argue that *all* art is ultimately about communication, but practical arts (or "crafts"), like architecture, cooking, sword-smithing and graphic design, must *also* perform a specific, concrete function--so the form must be judged, at least in part, by how well it achieves that function. Fine arts like painting, literature, and music (and video games, when considering the work as a whole, not the elements that make it up), on the other hand, usually need only consider the (often very abstract) message they want to convey and what stylistic choices can best convey it--and with an abstract message like "this character is awesome" or "something is amiss" or "FEEL ALL THE FEELS!!!" the artist has a lot more freedom with how to convey that message, and often do so most effectively through implication, metaphors, and symbolism. But a house that can't be lived in or a piece of food that doesn't feed you or a sword that's too heavy to wield, or a user interface that is hard to parse are just so much useless *stuff*. ...And then there are the ones that fail as BOTH a work of art and a practical tool!

PLEASE DO MORE OF THESE

Black Light: Retribution had a version of detective vision called Hyper Reality Vision (HRV). It was one of the things that made me love that game, before the PS4 version and the problems that came to PC with it. HRV replaces a minimap. You can't use it all the time, and while using it you can't shoot. With armor and weapon mods you can decrease the time it takes to enter and exit HRV, increase it's capacity, and decrease it's recharge time.

sometimes I get lost on menus, because I leave a good UI game and play a bad UI game, so sometimes I waste 2 minutes trying to find where are all the controls for the game.

Twilight princess had a great version of detecta-vision with the wolf smell thing (can't remember what it's called). The limited distance of vision made it so that you tended to switch between the modes of sight

boy what is that techno trance song in the beginning running in the background at 0:20? It's a bop

I actually loved Super Metroid's detectivision-like search beam which was actually cool.

That last game was doing murder on meesa eyes. I seriously considered clicking over to another tab and just listening.

The popup boxes have returned in _Hades_ and it's honestly one of my favorite things about it. Highlight an ability upgrade on the list of ones to pick from, and boxes appear on the right reminding you what the relevant stats are for. Always. No matter how long you've been playing. Just in case.

I'd love to see what you think of Wayward and Rise To Ruins. 2 in dev indie games that i think could really use some UI guidance.

When I played the early beta of Hover, I was expecting the UI and really cluttered enviroments be something that was going to change. It didn't. I just HATE the menus and the overly eye-poping environments, everything is just hard to see or identify. I stopped playing after 20 minutes, sad, as I really liked JSR and this looked promising.

The closest thing I have found to a "good" detective vision system is in Styx: Shards of Darkness. You do have a similar ability that highlights guards, collectibles, and objects you can interact with. However, it does not penetrate walls, it's kinda hard to see everything else besides what's highlighted, and it automatically shuts off a few seconds after you start moving. This encourages you to turn it on for a second to see important things, then play normally. It even has a really good upgrade to visually represent footstep sounds, giving you some degree of x-ray vision without making it too powerful. Many, many times I have found myself still being surprised by an enemy I missed, it is still a really hard game even with this tool available.

On detective vision. What about the Eagle vision from the newest Assassins Creed? (Also would love a video on the design of Party Games. Like Mario Party, Pummel Party, Sonic Shuffle, etc..)

i like the way they did the vison mode in the last dishonored game