Arcade Berg aka. "Learning Game Design with Arcade Berg"

How to process an intense screen of information?

Once again, thinking out loud.

When playing a hectic game, or a hectic part of a calm game, where things are all around the screen for me to keep track of I stop changing focus.

Take a game like Super Stardust HD, Geometry Wars or hectic moments in Viewtiful Joe. You're forced to look in every corner of the screen while at the same time, most of all, keep track of your avatar and have it avoid and defeat obstacles, bullets and other hazards.

This also applies for when running very fast in a platforming/action game where things are leaving and entering the screen in a radid pace.

What I do, if I'm "in the zone" is to stop moving my eyes and just stare at the center of the screen, using my peripheral vision. Hopefully, I know the game well enough to decode the information with the more abstract information given using this technique.  For example, I think you're color blind in the peripheral vision but increase your ability to distinguish variations in luminosity.

I know I'm not the only one doing this. And probably, there are people doing this without even noticing it.

I'd love to have numbers as to how many of us there are, but I'm afraid I don't.

Something like that.

There are probably way more techniques used to be able to process all the information on screen when a lot of things are going on.

As often, I'm thinking out loud here, but maybe this is something we can consider in game design? How will the player process the amount of information shown? How can we help the players?

In intense action games, make objects in the outskirts big and obvious perhaps?

In what ways can we NOT apprehend games?

I was watching/listening to an interview with Hal Barwood earlier today. Barwood is a movie and game creator. Among the games you'll find Indiana Jones: Fate of Atlantis from LucasArts.

Anyway, he was talking about how we've learned how to understand movies. In the beginning you started the camera, the actors did their thing and when the film ran out, you had your movie. It wasn't until later on people started cutting end editing. At first, the use of zooming in on chest and up seemed like the people on the screen grew! But our minds quickly figured out that that's not the case and made sense of the jump and realized that the camera moved.

Today we use several tricks like that in both movies and games, with cutting, editing, not showing things chronologically, zooming, etc.

What I really started thinking about then was:

What kind of tools of game development can the player not apprehend if we were to use it now, but being able to learn if they were to be exposed to it?

What is the next step of progress? Something to do with switching avatars? Something time related? I'll admit that I have absolutely no idea but I'm very eager to find out!

When changing scenes at the theatre, they shut the drapes without the viewer getting confused. Just like when we cut in movies.