How designers silently tell you what to do? - Affordances and Signifiers - Game Design Theory

Channel:

Game Design with Michael

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12,400

Published on January 28, 2018 4:03:09 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7_b_uVOkT8

Game:

Tomb Raider (2013)

Category:

Guide

Duration: 10:15

10,696 views

540

Learn how to design game environments so that the environment tells the player what to do. Affordances are a way we can design something in our game so it communicates the way we are supposed to interact with it via it's form. If you take the example of a cup, people intuitively know how to pick it up because the big round handle looks like it can be grasped. We can apply this logic to objects in game design and level design. By constructing their form in a certain way, the player will intuitively know what to do with the object. This is often considered a form of user experience design.

Signifiers are things we add to objects when an affordance is not 100% clear. These signifiers can be words, symbols or other things, but we put them onto objects to hint at an affordance or to flat out tell a user what to do. We can take advantage of these in a similar way we took advantage of affordances by using them to guide the player with more difficult interactions.

There are many situations in games where we leverage affordance when we play. In this video we cover a number of examples and I explain in depth the definition of these terms we have been discussing. We will cover the classic door design example where we design door handles to fit the way a door opens. We also talk about how affordance isn't just for environment design but is applied all over different disciplines of design including combat design.

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