Do Players Prefer Integrated User Interfaces? A Qualitative Study of Game UI Design Issues

With basis in a qualitative player study, this paper presents different player attitudes concerning user interface elements. The paper focuses on how the game user interface influences the players’ involvement in the game, and how the players navigate between different sources of involvement. We argue that there is no necessary connection between a transparent interface and involvement, and that in many cases, overlay interfaces are preferred due to the clear information they present. With point of departure in Ermi & Mäyra’s (2005) view of player involvement as a complex phenomenon, and Jørgensen’s (2010; forthcoming) research into the relationship between game user interfaces and the gameworld, we discuss how players in our qualitative study see involvement with respect to how the game UI is presented. This framework also enables us to discuss user interface design as a balancing act between aesthetics and mechanics, as the choice between transparent or superimposed interface features is a way to represent system information within the game context.