- When the UX of a game is done right, it just feels natural. It feels good to play. You don't even notice it. 

I'm Celia Hodent. I was Director of UX at Epic Games. And here are 10 things that you might not have noticed in Fortnite. 

[high intensity chase music] The HUD 

So when you create a game you wanna make sure that players don't have to remember too much stuff. Because our memory is quite limited and we forget things all the time. Which is normal. So what we do is we put information in HUD or in the UI pop-ups so that we reduce what we call the "memory load." If you look at the HUD on Fortnite there's a lot of little things that have been worked on again and again and again. To make sure that players will naturally understand what's going on. 

One of the examples, if you look at the icon for the weapons. There's always the little, smaller icon in the icon, showing you what type of ammunition the weapon is taking so that players won't have to remember what type of ammunition they need to craft and they craft the right ammunition. We try to always show the control that you need to use to do the action that you wanna do as a player in a game. For example, if you want to swap from the building mode to the shooting mode, we show you the keys that you need to press to be able to swap from one mode to the other. This is allowing players, to not have to remember these controls and doing the things naturally. Another important information in HUD is information about your health. We really need players to have a clear understanding on their level of health and one of the important things to do is to try to have a green health bar. Because if you have a green health bar, then you save the red color and red is a very good color to contrast with what's happening in the background. To really save for when you're getting damaged or when you're bout to die. 

Another element in the HUD that's quite important is showing the material that you have. You know, Fortnite is about building. This is a very important pillar in the game. In the HUD you always see the three types of material that you have. You know, like: wood, metal, or bricks. This is also very important for players to not have to remember how much they have. This is what we call an "affordance," a "cognitive affordance." You see on the HUD what material have and is allowing you to build accordingly. Harvesting. Harvesting is also a very important pillar in Fortnite and it was very important to convey what players are harvesting and how efficient they are in harvesting. There's also a feature that's really interesting in Fortnite. It's called a "weak point" feature. When you harvest, you're gonna have a little pop-up on the screen, showing you that, "hey, there's a weak point in that element and if you aim at that weak point you're gonna harvest faster." This is a really important feature because we don't want players to feel bored when they harvest. That was a very good addition to Fornite by designers to make the harvesting pillar more exciting and also faster. Whenever you hit the weak point it makes the little tone that's really soothing and if you hit several weak points in a row, you hear different music tones. [escalating tones] This is also feedback to tell players: "Hey, this is a cool thing you need to do." Polishing the signs, so the sign is how the weak point's gonna look like to draw player's attention and to invite them to use it. The feedback, once players are using it, what do they hear? What is the animation? All that has to be very polished for the features that are really core to the experience of the game to make sure that it's gonna be intuitive and offers good UX. 

Signs and feedback. 

Signs and feedback, again, are really important to polish so that players can understand, just through their experimentation of the game: what's going on. If you look at the signs and feedback when players are building is really important. If you try to place a wall in an area that you can't, you have that red feedback. If you're trying to construct a world that, you don't have enough material for that, you have a feedback. You try to show players that if they can change material, which is not necessarily easy for players to understand. But, if you look at the UI in building, there's signs telling you: you can swap building material by pressing that key. Also, when you place the building, there's a clear feedback that the building is getting built. Also, try to signal to the player how they can edit doors or windows. This is really crucial in Fortnite because building is a very important pillar in the game. Polishing all this information so that players, without having to read a ton of tutorial text, can try to figure out how this works just through the signs of feedback available in the UI; that's really important. 

Game feel. 

When talking about user experience in a game we look at usability of the game to be used. But, we also look at engageability: the ability of the game to be engaging. The element that we really care about in games is called "game feel." We wanna make sure that interacting with the game is gonna be exciting. It's gonna be fun. It's just pleasurable. We like to just look at the world evolving in front of us. But, also, we love to interact with it. When you buy a loot box. It's not just: you click, you open, and you get all the stuff in there; all the cards that you wanted. For example, like in a card pack. In Fortnite, the game feel is very polished in there. For example, the card pack looks like a pinata. Which is a metaphor that's fit well the world of Fortnite. It's cute, it's fun. If you're playing on PC, if you move the mouse around you're gonna see the eye of the llama actually following your mouse. This is making the interaction more fun. Also, when you're about to hit the pinata, you're gonna see the eye of the llama squinting. It's reacting to what you're doing. Of course, it's talking to you. Once you open the pinata, there's a celebration and the pinata's still talking to you. All of that is about game feel. Making it fun to interact with a specific system or feature. 

Onboarding. 

Caring about how you "onboard" your players and how you teach them the mechanics and the systems of your game is really crucial. 'Cause you want them to be competent and be motivated into using specific features without them feeling it boring to go through tutorials. Because, usually, players hate tutorials. But, they hate even more, feeling that the game is unfair or feeling that they don't really know how to get out of a situation. You have to place the players in a situation that is gonna be meaningful for them to learn about specific mechanics. So it doesn't feel that we're trying to teach them about something. It feels more about, they're part of the game already and they're experimenting stuff in the game to overcome obstacles and through that learn about the game. In Fortnite, it was really important to teach players about the core elements of the game: combat, building, scavenging, or harvesting. In that, you have to develop your home base. This is your persona in the game. This is what you progress. This is what you grow. 

Whenever you start playing Fortnite Save the World. The first thing you do when you take over control is, you're in a cave and then you gonna see enemies: the husks. That are about to get at you but, there's a low wall in front of them. So, you see them actually trying to destroy that wall. Immediately, it tells you: well, there's walls in Fortnite and enemies are stopped by these walls. So you learn about, "this is something that I can use to protect myself." This is when we actually ensure that players are able to aim and shoot. You are, kind of, protected because there's a wall but there's still some pressure, some excitement. Because, zombies are here so you want to, of course, kill them. This is allowing us to make sure that the players are comfortable with controls without being completely disengaged with the course of the game. 

In the onboarding, another part that's really interesting is: at some point, you are in a cave and you want to get out of the cave. But, you can't get out of the cave. This is when we tell you: "hey, you can actually build stairs. This is how you can get out of stuff. Get out of pits and explore the world." We put, specifically, the player in a meaningful situation where they would want to learn about a specific feature. In that case: building. This is how we teach them the first steps of building. 

Enemy health bars. 

In the UI, what we're trying to do is to make sure that players understand very quickly what they have to do and what's dangerous to them. That's the reason why we, usually, try to save the red color for something that's really, really dangerous right now. So: when you're getting hurt or when you're about to die. That's the reason why in Fortnite, for example, in "Save the World," the health bar of the enemies are not red, but orange. Orange is still a good color to signify that this is a bad guy. But it's not gonna overload the player with tons of red color. So when the player is getting hurt, the feedback on that is red and this really stands out. By removing the red color everywhere and just saving it. Reserving that color for when something very dangerous is happening to player, it's helping players react faster and understand better what's going on. 

The loading screen. 

Loading screens are important because the game is gonna load and player's gonna have to wait. And, we hate waiting. This, we call the psychology of waiting: we hate waiting. It's painful. On the loading screen, you need to have stuff that's exciting for players to look at or to play if you're able to add some mini-games in the loading screens. But you can also take advantage of the loading screen to tell players about something. For example, if you have games with different modes, like in Fortnite. You can use the loading screen for that specific mode to tell players about the objectives of the mode. This is where you have to keep it sweet and short. If you look at the loading screens in Fornite, there are three main elements and they focus on the main objectives that players have to do. Not necessarily the tiny little details for the players. They're gonna figure the details out. They just need to understand the objectives. 

Accessibility. 

Accessibility is also very important for a game. You want your game to be able to be played by all sorts of players. Including players having some sort of disabilities. We look at stuff like controls. Making sure that players can plug any type of controller on the game. That's the reason why, usually, in games we try to offer a complete remapping of control. That's really important for some players. Another example would be the colorblind mode. About 8% of the male population has some sort of colorblindness so you need to take that into account when you design your game. Be careful with the colors you're using. There's a way to anticipate, depending on which sort of colorblindness we're talking about to make sure that the colors are gonna contrast. But also, usually, we try to never: only use color to tell about a certain feature. We use color and shape. Or, we're gonna use other ways to convey information. Usually, never use color by itself to signify something to players. 

Searchable objects. 

It's all about making sure that players don't have to remember all this information that we don't want them to remember because we want them to focus their attention and to remember other information that's really core for the experience of a game. Whenever you go close to a searchable object, you will have a pop-up telling you what key you need to press to search that object. This is a little thing that have players not to have to remember that specific key. 

Pinning functionality. 

The pinning functionality is also a feature that helps players not having to remember a ton of information that we don't care about. If you want to craft a specific weapon in Fortnite, what you can do is look into your inventory. You're like, "Oh, I want to craft this thing." But you don't have all the ingredients that you need to craft it right away. What you can do is: you click on the pin functionality and then it's gonna be pinned directly on your HUD. Then, on the HUD, players can see all the ingredients they need to gather and they don't have to remember that information. This is also a way to reduce the memory load. This is what we call a "functional affordance." It's a functionality that developers put in there to help players accomplish their goals. 

This is a team effort, the Fortnite team did a great job at polishing a lot of little details so that players will have a great experience playing Fortnite. [intense music]