Theory of Game Interface Design

Question

Anyone know of a good book on

Game Interface Design (not game play mechanics; the actual UI).

I'm particular interested in theories of cognition, and how game interfaces are designed to allow the enduser efficient communication with the game (whether it in FPS, RTS, or so on).

In a modern game, the amount of information conveyed to the user, the amount of choices the user can make; and the support for the user to make said decisions is simply astounding (think UIs for Starcraft II / WoW).

Any insights into this would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

More a general interface design book, but great never the less.

http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Interfaces-Patterns-Effective-Interaction/dp/0596008031/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268194286&sr=8-3

Answer 2

Unfortunally, there are not much info on that... What I did myself, was study regular books about interface, or user interaction.

But you need to remember something: Altough the player should not ever be "challenged" by the interface, the interface must NOT make the challenge of of the game easier.

Several Game Design books, has some chapters dedicated to interface (I know that this is too little, but is the best we have for now).

I can recommend those:

Francois Dominic Laramee, Game Design Perspectives. Charles River Media, 2002. ISBN 1584500905.

Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams, Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design. "Creating the User Experience" and each of the genre-specific chapters: New Riders, 2003. ISBN 1592730019.

Editor: Marc Saltzman, Game Design: Secrets of the Sages. "Chapter 12, The All-Important User Interface (UI) and Game Control," and "Chapter 15: Testing." 2 ed. Bradygames, USA, 2000. ISBN 1566869870

Some generic user interface books:

Wilbert O. Galitz, The Essential Guide to User Interface Design. 2 ed. Wiley 2002. ISBN 0471084646.

Doug A. Bowman, Ernst Kruijff, Joseph J. LaViola, Ivan Poupyrev. 3D User Interfaces: Theory and Practice. Addison-Wesley Professional, 2004. ISBN 0201758679.

Game Development Essentials: Game Interface Design: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1418016209/acmorg-20

Cool links:

David Krieger, "Designing a Good Interface." http://www.gamespy.com/articles/491/491801p1.html

Zhan Ye. "Designing User Interfaces for Games" http://www.ye-brothers.com/documents/gameui.pdf

Note: I did not read all those stuff completly, I used parts of them to study at university....

Hum...

I think that this is it.