The Death of Character in Game Console Interfaces | Hacker News Reader

The Death of Character in Game Console Interfaces

vale.rocks

47 pointsPaulHoule67 comments

It's also the games. Let's count them:

1. A collection of logos of the 30 studios that contributed to the title somehow, skippable or not.

2. A bunch of EULAs that you have to click through at least on the first run.

3. An epilepsy warning that you always have to click through. I'm looking at you, Paradox and Vampire: Bloodlines 2. (For the record, I bought it extremely cheap, not at the launch price.)

4. On Playstation at least, the silly "press any button" screen. Why can't you give me the menu directly?

5. Another silly warning "this game has an autosave function". You may have to click through it or not.

6. If Rockstar, try to trick the user into launching the online component every time.

The Press Any Button screen is there so the game knows which input device is being used, and therefore (one way or another) which user, so it can apply any parental control/accessibility/etc. options required.

I've seen computer games where any input device is accepted, and on-screen instructions refer to the last type of device used. Seemed like a good idea. And how does input-based parental control work? Do you hide the adult's controller?

On first use of the controller after a reboot, you're prompted to select which user is playing. Saved games and achievements and whatnot are per-user.

If you've got a child in the household, you're expected to tag their user as such, which imposes some restrictions on their account. Then set up an access code on your user, so the child can't log in as you.

> Do you hide the adult's controller?

the case for physical games: put the cartridge on the high shelf

Which input device out of my total of one controller that is on?

On a console that has already asked me who's playing when I turned it on?

The console knows all that, but does the game know all of that too? I'm not a console developer but perhaps the game doesn't have permissions to know which devices are on, only which devices are sending key presses right now.

Feedback regarding the ins and outs of the UX would be better directed at Sony rather than me. But it accommodates the case where you haven't connected the controller yet.

I can't remember if it's Playstation or Xbox that does this, but the game can start out in a sandboxed state, and explicit user input is required for the system to grant it access to the gamepad and the associated user.

I would argue it's also just a tradition of the medium at this point. And tbh most games I play would feel weird without it. It's like a spiritual carry-over from the Attract-Mode games used to have in arcades, and without even needing to put in a quarter. (Don't tell the game companies about that)

Many games can just swap devices on the fly (from the top of my mind, Elden Ring, Witcher 3, Lords of the Fallen, Dirt Rally).

This gets a little rickety when you have permissions tied to input devices, which is not uncommon in households with young children.

Also for some games it’s just generally buggy.

Which consoles/ systems use the controller to determine which account is active?

At least on the switch you just have accounts in the upper left and switch between them regardless of controller. Is it a Sony implementation?

I’m not trying to be difficult but this is very easy to search and the combative tone is unnecessary. I can tell you firsthand my Xbox does it, but that doesn’t really do anything for you because you already doubt me for some reason. You should still look it up to confirm it for yourself. You can tie users to controllers and set that for login. It’s a documented, widely used feature. I get that may sound ridiculous to you but it’s been standard for years.

I don't mean to be combative, I've just genuinely never used a console with that. The perils of mostly using PCs and Nintendo ones, I guess? If it's standard with both Xbox and Sony that does cleanly explain the press any button screen, although I wonder why they leave it in for the PC ports.

I don’t think it’s standard on Sony. But then I just play games on a few PlayStations , never used the actual parental controls.

But I guess they’d have told me that I could attach a user to a certain controller.

Hah, I looked it up. Even on Xbox it’s just some kind of auto login but the kid could switch profiles after.

It’s mostly about simplicity less for security. You have to use a password if you want to guard against a curious kid lol

I wouldn’t consider it a “peril.” You have to turn it on, it’s not a default setting. It’s a useful feature for some.

I don’t use it personally but tbf my Xbox has also been pretty much collecting dust for probably 2 years now.

It's not the game. You just press the PS button and then you can turn off the controller that is running out of battery from a system menu, turn on another and go back to the game. At least on the PS4 and 5.

Maybe on PS; on PC all the games I mentioned just switch on the fly depending on the last device you touched.

Games having a title screen where you “Press Start Button” is a slightly odd convention going back to the arcades, even on games where there’s only one set of controls.

With arcades it at least makes sense because it puts the game out of demo/attract mode.

There's no need to force a special interaction. They usually have to interact with a menu regardless. You can know the controller then.

I had the impression this was on Sony's technical requirements list, so people have no choice.

I assume the thinking is that there's a non-zero chance that the first input event will pop up some kind of user selection thingy. And that it's mildly cleaner to have this happen in response to a prompt such as PRESS <NAME OF BUTTON> TO START, where the user is clearly being directed to press a button to start, than it would be to be have it happen in response to them pressing (say) the down button when hoping to get to the second option of the apparently useable menu they'd just been presented with.

As a bonus, this does also simplify handling any user-specific options that may affect the display of the initial menu.

You're right about the reqs. A lot of the menu screen behaviors were traditions borrowed from arcade games and big box demo kiosks. The idea is that your game must do "something" if idle for a long period of time without someone officially "starting" it.

> An epilepsy warning that you always have to click through.

That sounds amazing. Yeah, it's annoying, but I'd imagine it's much safer for epileptics.

Yes, BUT: Ubisoft's is not actually a click through and the amount of text on it means they show it for quite a long time, with no way to click past, and THAT is fucking obnoxious.

I'm quite glad those warnings exist, don't get me wrong. I am not en epileptic, please do not try and force me to read your 3 paragraphs about epilepsy kthnx.

Blame the lawyers then. I imagine very few games do it out of genuine concern for those with epilepsy. Accessibility is an after thought as well for many devs.

I personally applaud any company that is attempting to increase accessibility and chooses to put up warning signs. I can press an extra button or two. It’s not the end of the world.

Oh absolutely agreed. I'm bitching about the inability to push those extra buttons.

If I were an epileptic, I would appreciate seeing the warning before I buy the game, not once I've launched it. Which, by the way, invalidates Sony's return policy.

I'm not a console player (or an epileptic), does Sony's storefront really not tell you about health warnings?

Do you think epileptics really need to be told every single time they start the game? I’d bet they’re as annoyed as non epileptics.

I drop and pick games back up after a long time very frequently, I'd certainly appreciate it if I were affected. Plus, what about borrowed/Steam family shared/whatever games?

I wish this had shown the modern interface for contrast with the others.

I have no idea what the current Xbox UI looks like, so while I appreciate the legacy console examples I would have liked the reference point.

https://www.xbox.com/en-US/consoles/experience

The other day I mused, "software used to look like an alien space ship. Now it looks like paperwork."

I wasn't even thinking of the Xbox when I wrote that, just software in general in those days. Feels like everything had depth, character, texture...

But reading this article, man the Xbox sounds amazing! I need to buy one now.

For a brief, a very brief moment, between beige Windows 98 and glass-like Windows Vista, we had a "fun" Windows XP. Thinking back it's a bit ironic. For most of history the OS'es didn't look fun, but it was that colorful one I'm most fond of.

XP was dope. Long-as-hell start menu with 80 folders.

And yet XP was widely mocked and hated at the time. Usually as the "Fisher-Price" OS. Personally I never cared too much, it might have been garish in places but the interface under the skin was solid enough: it got out of the way and let me do what I needed to. Likewise for the successor Aero Glass: blingy maybe, but ultimately pretty darn functional (at least by Win7, I somehow managed to skip Vista nearly entirely).

Where I drew the line was Win8: it started to get really hard to actually accomplish tasks in the OS. Win10 walked that back a bit, enough to be tolerable, then Win11 went the other way. I set up a Win11 desktop last week for the first time: what an exercise in unnecessary pain. (And Windows Spotlight backgrounds, one of the few recent MS shove-down-your-throat features that I actually like, doesn't even work reliably and there's no way to find out why. Absolutely no way. Despite an OS with a comprehensive logging system!)

So it's really not correlated with the skin: it's about the functional bones of the UI. A gaming machine needs a functional UI. (Just like everything else!) But the skin on top of that can, and probably should, have some visual distinctiveness and flair. A spinning cube, though... perhaps that is just a little bit too twee?

Humans get used to everything, and surprisingly quickly. It'll only take a few months for even Chthulhu to become mundane

"When I powered on my Xbox Series S for the first time... It felt no different from Windows 11."

(1) No accident (2) Ever see a Windows phone? That was the whole idea.

But the Windows Phone UI had sooo much personality - every phone looked different, showed different information etc.

My own phone changed every couple of months and it feld sooo good to have the changing tiles with information, pictures etc. I was a huge fan of the concept.

Windows Phone had a damn lot more personality than android or iphone back then, let alone now.

The settings are a lot more intricate than they used to be, especially video settings. So I'm guessing a lot of the intent is to present the information as clearly as possible and call it a day. Direct users towards big pictures for the games and for the store and hopefully have a wizard for the user to get on the internet.

They also turned into ad billboards and digital storefronts.

TBH they have accessibility to keep in mind - visual contrast, screen reader support, etc.

I don't think the two are mutually exclusive, but I've yet to find a great example of something that is both accessible and full of character.

I mean they don't HAVE to, unless there's some law I'm not aware of can't they just say "sorry not sorry colorblind people" or something. The MBAs will say HAVE to because maximizing shareholder value.

In the US, the ADA says you have to make reasonable accomodations, and it allows for private enforcement, so it's generally followed.

Accessibility lawsuits are common and frequent. Everyone gets them. It's sort of an open secret in the software world, not sure why it doesn't get discussed more. I guess the business people just consider it CODB, and developers prefer to believe it isn't real.

https://www.boia.org/blog/developer-of-pok%C3%A9mon-go-sued-...

What truly made Wii/DS and Wii U/3DS era Nintendo OSes great are the built in games and mechanics that extend into other games as well. Loved collecting houses in ACNL and receiving Wii Mails from a Toad.

This loss of easter eggs in software, along with the rise of enshittification, both have the same source:

Software used to be made by Programmers, with taste and opinions, according to their talent and personality, in solo or small groups. Now they are run by Project Managers and Data Scientists chasing KPIs through engagement measurement tools and AB tests.

Fun easter eggs cannot be justified. They are cut. Personality doesn't move the metric as much as the mean / common denominator most basic thing. That's what ships.

All software and web content has gone this way in the last 13 years or so.

For big games, it’s a legal thing. Ever since the Hot Coffee debacle, we are not allowed to hide content, all of which has to be approved by legal.

I miss when you turned on your console and booted directly into the game. Sony's XMB is a terrible UI. Things are unintuitive to find and take forever to get there even when you do know where you're going. Something like the NDS UI is at least fast and easy to use, aided by the touch interface. However, I bought a console to play games, not to click through a bunch of settings (that's what a PC is for!).

When I got my Switch years ago my reaction to the UI was basically "This is it?" It felt like an un-styled working prototype. My thought was "Nintendo rushed this thing out the door to stay in business, surely they'll add some character over time" as they had done with the 3DS (the 3DS started out good but got better).

Nope? I'm still waiting. The only real big change they made was the introduction of their terrible virtual cartridge licensing system.

I genuinely hate the Switch home screen. I would rather be booted into the "More Games" UI instead of this dumb horizontal scroll of a handful of most recent games and then having to scroll over to pick "more games". If you want to be minimal, at least make it easy to pick the game I want. I've got a 65" TV, give me the grid, not 4 titles at a time!

Most of all, BRING BACK THE FUN. Colors, music, silly interactions. Sure, add the option to turn it off, because a vocal minority hate that stuff, but how many of us have the Wii store music burnt into our brains?

I'm so disapointed in the switch, had it day one and i'm still waiting for all the fun features of the 3ds...

Spotpass and the mini games were fun, the stickers and theming were fun It sure was gimmicky and sprinkle with some utx, but we truly lost something with the switch

They even put in an entire themes menu, with space as if you were going to have more themes you could download at some point, similar to the 3DS. 6 years later it's still just "Basic White" or "Basic Black".

Nothing like going from Toonami to the original Xbox while drinking a green monster. Peak childhood right there.

Sure, when these things were novel the friction was delightful. Now that the magic is gone, I want to finish configuring my device ASAP and get back to the games.

Cool interfaces don't make billions of dollars. Match-3 games and microtransactions and season passes and skinner boxes make billions of dollars.

You understand, right?

Yea, we gotta teach kids how to use e-commerce sites, so the games should feel like Amazon.

so why not offer season passes and lootboxes for special UI on interfaces? /j

> Match-3 games and microtransactions and season passes and skinner boxes make billions of dollars.

Only if they have a cool interface.

What make people play a match-3 game over another match-3 game that has the exact same gameplay? It is the way it is presented.

What are the most popular microtransactions? Cosmetics.

Why are people buying season passes instead of just content DLCs? Again, mostly cosmetics.

Cool interfaces make money. I don't know why they stopped doing it for the console itself, they have their reasons, I guess.

I was greatly disappointed to learn back in 2020 that PS5 didn't even support themes. The only customization it offers is disabling / enabling sound and changing a background to a screenshot for one of the menu items which is a dashboard (with customizable widgets at least) with your friends' activities, new store arrivals or whatever you choose.

Changing to an appropriate theme when there were holidays or when I beat a good game that stays in my mind was something that I didn't know I would miss once switching to a new generation.

It does now have a limited set of themes based on previous consoles. Initially a 40th anniversary special feature that ended up sticking. But yeah, it’s a bit odd we’ve gone from Sony providing the tools to make your own theme with the PS3 to basically nothing with the PS5.

oh yeah, it turns out I even had one of these themes enabled (PS3 one). I got so used to it I forgot it's not how the console usually looks. Still a far cry from custom icons and animated backgrounds

"Even today I can burn hours clicking around the Wii"

I mean, the menu's fine but its not that exciting

I can burn hours clicking around the PS5 UI.

No seriously, I’m lost. Send help.

It's our cereal box and shampoo...

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