i hate modern game user interfaces 

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When any JRPG menu is less complicated than your multiplayer fps your doing something very wrong

The reason we have lobby screens that show the people playing instead of just a universal image representing the multiplayer network: they want you to buy cosmetic items, and lobby screens are one of the few ways to force you stare at other player’s characters, since otherwise you’d barely look because you’ve to focus on shooting them.

You're missing the most important reason for failing UI design in modern games: the live service model. The moneymongers standing over the shoulders of devs are demanding that they push people's eyeballs on to the stuff they're trying to sell in game. A clear UI that neatly labels store items versus actual content would make it easier for players to ignore those battlepasses and bundles they want to sell and you can't have that.

I’ve been playing COD for 10+ years and it took me 15-20 minutes to figure out how to create a class and then join the game mode I wanted to. Insanity

As a veteran casual gamer... new interfaces make me feel like my grandma trying to figure out her smartphone

"The user NEEDS to know this exists" applied to literally every single UI element

Navigating through modern COD's UI is so challenging it should become a game mode

"There'll be no CoD for 2023" oof, that does not age well.

Something else you didn’t mention, is verticality. Many older menus use vertical lists far more than horizontal rows and boxes. And the vertical list format is so much easier to read through.

Something this video reminds me is how Dead Space organized their UI! For example, the heath indicator being ON the character, made it simple and clean, while being very in theme!

I can’t believe how bad things have really gotten. I used to be so excited for the future of games. Thanks for the video, it made me feel a little less crazy in my pedantry and cynicism towards all modern UI

I don’t understand how ONE person can perfectly relay the UI that everyone wants, but the hundreds of people working in these companies somehow don’t get that right, at all. It’s almost like they live on an entirely different planet and they just came here trying to develop games. Don’t they have feedback? Statistics? They have so much information but somehow still screw everything up. It really makes 0 sense to me.

Fun fact: They hired people who worked on Hulu's UI to work on MWII's, so the Netflix reference makes even more sense now. Edit: It’s been 8 months I come back why are there 107 replies??? What are y’all doing???

I really hate when they think: -Yes, make the microtransaction shop cover 80% of the menu.

I think that another great example of proper UI is Ghost of Tsushima, since the game wants you to be immersed in the environment first, so at most your screen will only display basic information (health & resolve) and will only display things like amount of items you have if you’re holding the certain button that lets you select said items. Hitting the pause menu takes you to a seamless menu that you can quickly breeze through for what you’re looking for, with a sleek, yet fitting look that fits with the feudal Japan style and the sound design that pairs with it. When in-game, the hud gives you lots of room to breathe to take in the environment, not to mention within theme the guiding wind mechanic that nicely works to usher you in the direction you want to go. All of this and more is what makes Ghost of Tsushima’s interface work so well with the game as a whole

Valve actually continues to be the best at this - Half-Life Alyx, despite being a VR game, keeps the simplicity of the old menus and uses the extra depth to show the previous menu, and a preview of the next menu. The in-game UI is also entirely in-universe and hence kept out of the way until you need it. Also Russel's voice lines about things like almost falling to your death or being eaten by a headcrab are set to only happen the first time so they don't get repetitive or irritating.

One thing you haven't mentioned in this that might be one of the biggest problems is the animation in the menus. Moving from one section of the menu to another can actually take time to load and it slows everything down so much!

One of my favorite UI's was Black Ops 1. It was so dang creative. Selecting the zombies mode just feels scary man!

Props to Naughty Dog for being one of the few AAA developers that still makes incredibly intuitive and simple UIs.

Halo 1 had such a futuristic charm. And totally loved how each difficulty had a badge under each mission, so you had to play the mission 3 times to get all the badges. Collectors dream.

all modern ui designers are just that guy from tiktok who fits all the shapes in the square hole

i absolutley love CoD: Black Ops's main menu, it isnt comlicated and it feels well with the theme of the game, god damn it that game's main menu litterally has gameplay if you do the easter egg

Looking at old vs new UI setups across all electronics I now know why my dad who was an IT expert takes ten minutes to navigate menus nowadays. It's like driving on the freeway vs going into foreign subway systems.

Finally someone mentioned it! Main menus in old games used to be laconic, precise, but most importantly comprehensive. Nowadays my eyes and brain start to hurt when I try to find something I need. In old games everything was intuitively understandable, in new games it looks like everything was randomly placed. Similar situation with the modern websites. It seems like they follow the orders of some guy in a suit, some manager or “jacket” in other words, who never played games but wants it all to look cool so bad.

what i noticed is that game interfaces are not only going boxy, but horizontal what made Reach's UI work so well with all of its options was that it was based on simple, vertical lists so that you can use the other side or 2/3s of the screen for important things like seeing your spartan. all these horizontal UI's remind me of one thing when I look at them. Mobile games. Giant boxy buttons for your thumbs to hit on a small screen. I have a giant monitor in front of me, i dont need my game's buttons taking up literal inches of space.

Back in the day the main thing was the game itself and its menu was just a means to get there. Now it's reversed, the game itself is an addition to the shop, and needed mostly to let you try out your newly bought stuff.

Excellent video, dude. Its insane how tedious UI navigation and screen clutter has gotten.

Ghost of Tsushima's minimal HUD and wind waypoint system is honestly what made me appreciate the game more.

Literally every interface is the same now, it's honestly sad

The problem is the modern art style that’s crept in and dominated the world. There’s a RU-vid short guy who does UI design and all his UIs end up looking the same - oversimplified to look “clean”. It feels they never consider just the usability of the UI anymore

If I have to watch one more loading screen fade away and show me the main character standing in the middle of the screen surrounded by clolorful boxes Im going to burn my whole setup

12:52 that aged like milk

I miss when most games would have thematic and aesthetic UI :(

It's not just the UI, it's everything about AAA games that is being over complicated, and I bet it's to hide the fact that the games aren't any fun on their own so the devs have to find a million ways to stimulate your brain so you don't immediately get bored.

Old UI made the most of the space while being simple. These days they make it all over complicated to try and make it all seem advanced and modern. Never once in an old cod game did I feel lost and didn't know where something was. These days everything has to have a huge picture but all that does it take up space that you could use for something useful.

8:39 might be the greatest instance of the word "fuck" ever spoken. I don't know why exactly, but it was truly beautiful.

In art there are Rules of Thirds, whether you deal with it vertically or horizontally, the rule of thirds still crease a beautiful and clean aesthetic. Something old games used to incorporate very nicely, which you will never see in a modern game these days.

I remember when I could identify a cod game just by the menu. It could be a game I'd never seen footage of and I could still recognize it because of the cod style of ui.

COD Black Ops Cold War's main menu was absurd in how bad it was. Right off the bat, the first 2 options you see are: To the right, a link to buy another COD, which was MW at first, then Vanguard, now it's MWII In the middle, a link to launch Warzone, an entirely separate game. And on PC, this option didn't even work properly for me and would always crash either BOCW or MW. And tucked away to the right are the actual options to launch BOCW's own campaign, multiplayer and zombies modes. At least the actual menus there are a bit better with good theming.

I liked the menus of bo1 the most it was so simple and I could find what I needed and the zombies menu was extremely simple and seeing the zombies in the background hitting the window was just perfect

Halo Reach's interface was so damn good. The art in the back that changes with each menu section, hovering over someone's name would display their full profile and Spartan or even elite.

I think a lot of the time, someone is given the job to create a UI and feels the need to justify their job by making it flashy and overcomplicated out of fear that they'd be fired or replaced if they just turned in a simple UI design

Little did we know we did not escape the annual cod cycle 😢

The fucking tiles, man. They cropped up everywhere since Win8 thought, they were some UI-master piece. Now everyone has them and I'm filled with cold, helpless anger whenever I see them.

The whole bloated UI menu feels like a remnant from the era of tablet UIs, where everything needed to be a big fat box so you wouldn't struggle to tap it. Fortnite BR had an update to its game mode menus a while back that turned it into a streaming service setup, which for the longest time made it a pain in the ass to play core gamemodes. Great for browsing creative maps, not if I just wanna quickly boot it up and hop in.

a really great feature of Elden Ring is the option to have the hud hide everything besides the compass when not in-use. it gives the game a super cinematic and clean feel, with no more information than is necessary i also really love it's use of very simple gray gradients for menus- far more readable than the more saturated colours of pretty much every other game

"now that there isn't a COD game for 2023 - god, I wish you were right

I’m so glad I saw this video. I’ve been studying UX/ UI to work in the field as a UI researcher/ designer and like many of you, I have a passion for gaming. I never really thought about working on games until now. I hope I can have some impact in improving these UI nightmares

A common theme I’ve noticed between most older UIs with great “usability and accessibility”: they are mostly comprised of a basic list/table view with a single level of navigation. You move up and down through rows of text, and use A/X to drill inward. Sometimes it means going one too many layers deep, but it’s a simple mental modal that everyone can wrap their head around with ease.

I think an interesting case study is the difference between the original Overwatch menus and the new menus introduced in Overwatch 2 regarding the battle pass and shop. I think for the most part OW has had crisp and clean menus, but some of the changes in OW2 take after the “box” style that Stryxo has pointed out in this video

“Just now breaking out of the cycle of yearly COD releases…” Yeah…about that…

I felt stressed whenever you were navigating the new MW2 menu. I haven't played the game and it really felt like you were taking me on a ride through hell.

I honestly thought I was just getting older but I'm glad to find other people think game UI's are confusing 😂😂

BAD UI IS MY MAIN PET PEEVE

Watching this after MW3 came out is crazy

My eyes almost orgasmed when ypu showed the difference between the modern and old school UIs. So simple and elegant, no clutter no nonsense just a list of options for you to click with a nice background

This is so true, something like a simple user interface will make such a difference. I remember back in the day when someone’s rank and prestige was so much more bold and easier to identify than it is now smh

I love the Portal menus I'm ngl. They're so elegant and simple it's like a zen experience; easy to access and calm/ easy to navigate. The modern menu's are obsessed with giving the ILUSION of having ton's of content to explore. Like you have to travel to Antarctica just to see this shotgun model to customize it. It's so cluttered and awful. I'd litterally just rather a blank white portal menu that's boring but easy to navigate.

I like to think you can usually tell how much thought went into a game just with its menu.

Oh boy I sure do love living in 2023 in which a new cod released and people hate it

As a first time player of a Cod game, seeing the UI in COD:MW2 was so confusing and claustrophobic, barely any negative space. I definitely got lost in the ui lol.

When you said that there's no room to breathe i finally understood why i get anxiety just by looking at some of these games menus

Would love a new video discussing MWIII UI since it is leaning towards this older style while still holding onto the frustrating “Hulu” UI. Great video.

Very very good video :)

I think your issue isn't "boxes" it's padding and margins, which are definitely too big on many modern games. Edit: I am a game developer, and I would just like to thank Stryxo for making this video. I was having trouble figuring out what the best way to style my game's UI would be, and I think making options smaller yet clearer is the way to go for my game. I'll definetly take this video into consideration. I'm not gonna list my game here because I don't like using RU-vid comments as ad space.

Thank you for making this. Ever since Halo 5 I've had a great hate toward horizontal menus. I miss Halo Reach's simple vertical menu. I should never have to scroll off screen if everything can be presented if you zoom out.

I was getting ticked off at OW2 recently because when I went into a menu I could not tell what I was actually selecting.

As an OSRS player I am so happy to see an advert for it, even if this video was posted over a year ago.

I remembered my first night playing warzone 2, My friend and I spent like 20 minutes trying to fight the f***ing menu. It was literally a maze where we didn't know where one click will take you. I remembered the "social" button would either take me to my friends list or the playlist selection screen. Once we finally got onto a lobby together, I pressed one button to change my loadout and it booted everyone from the lobby, so we had to do the WHOLE THING AGAIN. I can forgive UIs that look boring or cluttered, but not menus that are literally f***ing broken.

The Gaming industry (as well as the gaming community) never ceases to amaze me. 😂

I remember when I could fully configure a load out before a game started and now I can barely put an attachment on

I think UI is a huge part of a game's identity and presentation, everything from the visual look of menus to the sound effects and music leaves an impression on you. Good UI is more than being easy to read and use, it also needs to have an identity of its own. Most new big games dont seem to care about that part of the UI anymore. What I'm saying is, I am so tired of menus being simple boxes with black or white text. Give me something else....PLEASE

The devolution of the modern UI: It works well! --> It works --> Eh, just ship it

I’ve never understood why I hated so much about modern, post 2012 games and you just put it into words perfectly. There’s so much bullshit ALL over the screen AT ALL TIMES. I guess that’s why I find myself returning to older titles so much

Thank you! It's great to hear someone else talking about the real impact menu design has. It is an accessibility issue. And they are universally getting worse.

Seeing the elden ring main menu just be a simple list of options gave me the biggest chub I've had all year

You basically summarised what ive been noticing over the past 5ish years. My brain simply cant fathom these modern UIs, compared to the days of Halo 3 and Cod 4.

I feel like they purposefully cluster the UI so that a new player is forced to explore and end up in their store which creates an impulse of buying things out.

5:28 hearing "Gusty Garden Galaxy" on top of FF7 gameplay is a hard double hit in the feels

Crazy how things have only gotten worse with the MWIII menu and battle pass UI

This is a topic that makes a game feel bland but you can’t exactly put your finger on it. UI effects how a game feels so much more than anyone really thinks.

MW2 is the first game that made me feel old. I genuinely get lost trying to customize things like my calling card and emblem (not that it matters since I don’t think they’re displayed in game anyway)

I love the casual Windmill Isle music in the background

My battle bro sent me this. Been playing multiplayer with him since the mid-2000s. We've been saying this since at least Halo Reach, lol, and it wasn't even that bad back then. Back then everything worked better. Everything from game chat, to matchmaking, to time to get into a match. And the menus were so simple and focused. No digging through 14 layers just to change some controls or an emblem. It's so easy to get lost today. And sometimes you have to use multiple button tiers to navigate. Like in PUBG, you have to navigate different layers of menus top to bottom with RB/LB, RT/LT, and D-PAD. WHY??? What I don't understand is when the UI is so bad that the game audio like cuts out and skips when it chugs while animating. GAME AUDIO. I always have the latest, fastest game console from every major company so this shouldn't be an issue that the menus are chugging, much less something basic like a little audio file playing in the background.

2002: We let the game developers make the UI. 2022: We let a diverse team of art major college graduate interns design a focus group tested in development prototype for our early access games as a service game beta test.

343i's excuse for the UI's design is that it's supposed to be UNSC themed They're so drunk on their human-spartan only story fantasies that they basically just neglected anything that isn't human-centric, from their games stories, to the art style of Infinite's ui I think it's really fucking cool and unique how Halo 2's ui is designed. Forerunner themed which compliments the "ancient" parts of Halo (and its theme, and lore) Loading screens are always in motion with amazing art that serves as eye candy and a status to determine if the game's working or not. And then there's Halo Infinite.. Absolutely devoid of any past UI aesthetics that would've AT LEAST Infinite feel like Halo first-thing when opening up the game. Hilarious how they literally could've just went with Reach's ui design for their intended UNSC-theme ui, considering Reach's militaristic theme.

Just stumbled upon a gold mine. You do good work.

What a spot-on analysis, I’ve felt frustrated but haven’t thought about it this much, this feels like a knot coming loose, awesome video!

My favourite UI will always be the original ps2 ratchet game. Not only is it just incredibly simple but the design is super unique and cool. It looks like a really old school fuzzy tv aestethic that makes channel switching noises when clicking on option, the animation between menus is even that of a tv closing and opening. And it fits perfectly with the entire vibe of the game and its themes/story

Finally someone is talking about this!! I love how old main menus look, they are simpler and in consequence, more efective. Those menus had static or simpler backgrounds, with all the text and important thing using the middle/side of the screen. Now games use to have things like your character there using all the screen and doing boring stuff while all the important things are relegated to just a small portion of the screen. I will never forget how impactful halo menus where and other games like transformers fall of cybertron where you can see cybertron in the background with epic music and the options to play campaign, multiplayer and other things just in front of you.

I went to chili's a few days ago and was blown away with how similar the menu looks compared to the MWII interface

“There won’t be a cod for 2023” ummm about that…

I'm a solo dev still in college and I think your absolutely right. I actually just made a short game that was purely marked on its UI. We had to develop and present UI but I used alot of boxes and stuff you pointed out and now I'm thinking that I should've done something different. Mine wasn't crowed like some of these examples but I'll definitely be taking your points into consideration whenever I'm making a game in the future from now on.

That transition from portal 2 to Halo is just perfect

"With Cod being the main offender for this video and getting more development time now that there isn't one for 2023" guess not lmao

6:09 That was a beautiful transition!

Titanfall 2 came out just 6-7 years ago, and it's UI is pretty great. The main focus, with a lot of open space, is mainly on the Pilot and the Titan with the squares used being limited to the top left edge of the screen, with special cards (abilities) and short and concise details for the playlist selection being the exception. Whenever you picked a weapon, you were shown it in your Pilot's hands with no clunky gun deets. Just you, the gun in-hand, and the others to be selected with your Titan in the background waiting it's turn.

I'd argue that video game UI has always been rough. Now that I'm older and have less free time I get frustrated more quickly cause I just want to play the game instead of learning a new menu system.

I’m so glad ppl are finally talking about this now