Usability of Games

Usability is an important aspect of game quality, but designing usable games is difficult and designers need usable and effective design tools based upon proven knowledge of design. Capturing the art of good game interaction design can help less experienced designers. Traditionally such design knowledge is described as guidelines or heuristics but these have several problems with regard to selection, validity and applicability. Patterns have emerged as a technique which can overcome these limitations as they specifically focus on the context and tell the designer when, how and why the solution can be applied. We developed a collection of usability patterns which describe solutions to typical usability problems found in games.