I'm anticipating the standard response of "jews, trannies, and niggers" but if I were to actually guess it's because megacorps started hiring UI designers instead of just letting artists work. Modern day UI guys worship Apple's flat design like a god, and apply that philosophy to video games.

>>1366069 A bunch of things >Allegedly asier to update >Apple influence >Most UI designers are taught in school to design for mobileshit >Push for Microtransaction stores >A way to engulf you into it's corpo hell ecosystem to waste more time and money in >Indians

Also all Borderlands UIs look like shit Borderlands is shit for skinnerbox addicts in it's entirety

I miss Warcraft 3 UI. The animations of signs being pulled up by their chains and replaced with other hanging signs in the main menu, the way the HUD is styled for the faction you play. This kind of stuff has a charm flat UIs simply can't achieve.

This is a strange phenomenon I've noticed mostly among AAA games. Very utilitarian "boxy" UIs that look like Windows *. I imagine this is a visual design devs are actually thought, like yellow paint. That Halo example isn't good I'm sorry A modern UI I really like is Kingdom Come Deliverance, it kind of reminds me of Oblivion. >>1366111 Disagree, I like the older UIs .Very comic book-y. The little Vault Boy esque Claptraps are also very cute

>>1366514 >Windows * Windows 8.

>>1366043 >>1366087 Why do EVERY SINGLE FUCKING ONE of the modern UIs have to show the in-game model of the character front and center? I can understand it for games with customizable clothing, but why for absolutely everything? <Even the ones for games like TP, RE4, Halo, even Stalker as you can see here, that do display the in-game model, they just take up a small segment of the screen instead of a third to half of it.

>>1366534 Probably in some managers checklist

>>1366534 > show the in-game model of the character front and center? Because very few games still even have the model rendered in-game, so you can't even see yourself otherwise. "We had these people spend hours in the character creator and they never see their character afterward; give them at least SOME incentive to stick with the game long enough to get past the 2 hour refund window!"

I miss soulful legible UIs. We strayed too far from God. >>1366087

It's crazy to think, but most people who work in the games industry now don't even like videogames, and I can guarantee most UI designers don't even bother to playtest the very game they made the UI for. Older games were designed by nerds, people who grew up reading comic books and watching classic action and sci-fi/fantasy films, full of passion and an appreciation for artistic vision and design. Modern games are designed by a committee of diversity hires and poorly-trained casuals, people who grew up watching sitcoms and browsing social media, absent of the curiosity and creativity older media breeds, and who ironically derided videogames as only for nerds. >>1366069 I think it's definitely that but also importantly it's the result of technical advances allowing for people to simply not optimize things anymore, i.e. people are lazy. NES games and early PC games needed to design UI systems that both looked nice and conveyed necessary information, "cutting the fat" so to speak because there simply wasn't room to include all possible information like modern games have. Earlier games also required people to know what they were doing since most of them were designed in-house, so someone working on Fallout for example needed to design a specific UI that fit the aesthetic and provided information that they knew would be useful to someone playing the game. Modern games are all built by massive teams off of pre-existing technology. The UI designers just use presets and plugins, providing any and all information they think a player might need. Compare the images in >>1366087 for instance. <Older UI >Non-intrusive >Mostly diagetic >Only provide necessary information to the player (health, items, spells, armor, stats) >Easy to digest (character equipment and skills are clearly equipped, items and text are clear and easily identified) <Newer UI >Very intrusive ((every single one takes place on its own screen) >Non-diagetic (menus are all just floating icons or featureless boxes) >Most provide a glut of useless information (online info, menu tabs, game settings, skin settings...) >Visually cluttered and hard to digest (little/no organization to items and equipped gear, small text, homogenized design) >>1366534 More women and casuals play videogames now compared to the past. Women and casuals enjoy playing dress-up and seeing how cool their character looks (especially in multiplayer games) so that feature has slowly grown more and more important in the eyes of game designers (and execs who force top-down changes based on market trends).

>>1369932 You've hit part of the nail on the head, but you've chosen the wrong person to blame. The reason why every UI isn't due to diversity hires or poorly-trained casuals, its Software Engineers, Project Managers, and UI Researchers as opposed to Game Developers. Its the fact that divisions are so large that entire teams are dedicated to small portions of the game, so coherency is standardized to keep everything functional across teams. Likely because certain groups of developers approach games as software rather than art. Software has to have certain goals like communicating to users what you can and cannot toggle or access. They have to think about things like readability and User Experience. They have to contend with design philosophies that dictate certain things like text of certain font and clarity for users. This looks at interface design closer to it being a science rather than an artform. In many ways, there are things you can do that consistenly increase user readibility and developers implement them as a sign of convergence. What we're seeing as a result is a test "local optimum" that has elements to make users able to read the UI, see their inventory, and select options with little ambiguity. I say local because its likely another game that has a watershed of "good UI" design will draw developers towards that direction for their titles as well. Small games imitate what they see/know, while big games listen to user feedback and user testing. Tons and tons of user testing which eventually creates an interface that people don't have impressions of, which to some extent is the goal because it is relatively firctionless. In that time however, it starts to lose vision. Look into some research papers on UI/UX if you want to see where these design trends come from.

>>1369965 Thanks, I think that's sort of what I was getting at but was just using "game designers" as a catch-all term for anyone who works on a project. Like what you're saying though, a lot of modern trends are the result of trying to appeal to a lager audience. By sacrificing uniqueness for general appeal or style for general usability, modern games are sacrificing what would help make them stand out in favor of fitting in with the crowd. Higher-ups like Project Managers or the like are ultimately the ones forcing those changes onto games, but they're forcing those changes because of a shifting audience. It's sort of a chicken or the egg scenario. >certain groups of developers approach games as software rather than art. >interface design closer to it being a science rather than an artform. >In that time however, it starts to lose vision. I bet if someone were to take a modern sample of indie games or at least games made by smaller teams of developers, you'd find generally better UI design than games made by larger teams. Older games were also made by (generally) smaller teams and as such were able to keep a more focused vision that didn't fall prey to the desires of higher-ups or focus testing. Although you could also argue there wasn't as much data to pull from since technology was progressing so quickly during the 90's-00's. Early 3D games all necessarily had to be creative in their execution because there simply weren't as many 3D games to take after. The stagnation of modern UI design could very well also be blamed on the stagnation of modern game design itself - everyone's just copying what's already worked, with little care for standing out or doing something new in favor of playing it safe.

I remember seeing this and similarly comparable UI's and it angered me on a primordial level. Obviously its devoid of creativity, but its such a huge departure from the ones shown in prior games whether they be from this franchise or from other ones. Skyrims another game that just looked corporate driven and that was 2011.

>>1370194 Outside of aesthetics and music Skyrim is by committee garbage. It's so fucking bad I regret ever playing it and I wish I got those hours back. What an awful grind of a game.

Older UIs were looking to further immerse you into a game and the setting. Newer UIs are more about communicating the systems and treadmills the game has. In a game like Runescape, an animal skin is an item your character is carrying in his backpack, while in a modern Far Cry game, said item is just the first step in a treadmill that ends with a larger inventory size. The problem isn't just modern UIs, but the way modern audiences and developers conceptualize what video games are and how they should be. Older games were like an adventure in a digital realm and everything about them reflected that. Newer games are just algorithms with an art direction tacked onto them, as an interchangeable wrapper, which may explain why they're often seen as soulless (which they are).

>>1369965 >Likely because certain groups of developers approach games as software rather than art. They are to an extent. In fact, that's how many of the "Best" early game developers in the West approached game development. As a method to push software (And on occasion hardware) evolution. >>1370183 >The stagnation of modern UI design could very well also be blamed on the stagnation of modern game design itself - everyone's just copying what's already worked, with little care for standing out or doing something new in favor of playing it safe. "Is it" working, though? I'm being dead serious. Is the industry "standard" actually working? Take something like we take for granted or is "standard" in today's industry like the concept of how FPS controls are designed in modern games: left stick for movement and right stick for camera control. Is that actually a good design choice? Because I have played many shooters from the fifth and sixth gen where that isn't the standard control scheme. Some of them operate on the principle of tank controls, occasionally with a combination of locking-on to targets. And these games turn out to be a lot of fun. So is it actually "Better" to do something that's "standard"?

>>1370194 Skyrim in particular was jarring. By that time in my life, I had only played Morrowind, and only a little bit. But the entire premise of Skyrim (I pirated at launch because 'oh look famous game') was "medieval fantasy game." And then I opened up the menu and saw everything was set in fucking FUTURA, the same font used in K. A. Applegate's "Remnants" series of sci-fi teen books. It really threw me for a fucking loop.

>>1366087 The UI in the new Zelda games is tragic. It's so, so bad.

>>1371556 I agree. That along with this open world, no dungeon BS makes me very hesitant to play it.

>>1371857 It's not that BOTW is a bad game. It's just the furthest afield Zelda game ever made, in a way.

Factorio's GUI just works

>>1366043 Excessive compartmentalization, poor internal communication, horrendous leadership. Corpos not only have completely different teams working on the game proper and on the UI, but also put so many meetings and documents and formalities and managers-in-the-middle between the two it's a miracle if any coordination still manages to happen. And that's if they don't outsource the whole UI side of things.

>>1371940 I tried picking up BOTW again after putting it down during the pandemic. My first thought after about 20 minutes of play was "I forgot how boring this game was"

>>1371123 They're discardable garbage with no atmosphere or attention to detail. Systems just exist to pad out the game

>>1370194 Skyrim is probably the first AAA example of a terrible flatshit ui

>>1371123 Ehh Red Dead Redemption exists. Far Cry is just an arcadey franchise that (aside from 2) doesn't bother with immersion

>>1371312 >"Is it" working, though? I mean, no? That's why people are generally dissatisfied with AAA games and how homogenized they feel. It's sort of why this thread exists. >Is that actually a good design choice? I wouldn't say so, I simply think standards become standards because they're easy to copy and apply to games in lieu of creating something new. >So is it actually "Better" to do something that's "standard"? No, and I don't think so -- that's sort of the point I was getting at. Games that are classics or memorable are so because the people who made them were willing to take a chance and try something new, or keep to their autistic artistic vision despite pressure from the industry or their contemporaries.

>>1376763 FarCry 1 was extremely immersive

Do you prefer games where you can just toggle UI elements fully or mostly off? There are few games that do this natively. I had a mod on Dragon's Dogma that toggled the UI layer off entirely, even menus.

>>1377106 >Do you prefer games where you can just toggle UI elements fully or mostly off? Just started playing Fuel, where half of the UI can be toggled on and off with the push of a button, and '''OH GOD, YES! I didn't realize how bullshit and distracting game UIs were until I realized that I could just turn the fucking things off. The only problem with a game like Fuel is that you kind of need it because of how easily you can be lost without even the damn compass (But that's also a problem that could have been solved had the mini-map had the compass attached to it).

>>1370194 Seeing Skyrim UI menu makes me angry every time i see it. RPGMaker hentai games have a better looking UI than this. They put not zero, but negative effort while making this: Their goal was to normalize ugly, lazy and boring UIs and they succeeded at that. Now every single game is like this. God i hate Skyrim. I FUCKING HATE SKYRIM AND I WISH ONLY THE SLOWEST, MOST PAINFUL DEATH UPON ALL THE NORMALNIGGERS WHO ATE IT!

>>1366514 I liked all the variety of Claptrap units in BL1. A shame they all got wiped out in favor of the main Claptrap we have now, but I guess it makes sense as that is the closest the series has to a mascot besides Lilith. Meanwhile, yeah the older UIs work well, although I do feel like, they have a lot more wasted space as the series goes on? I'm not sure if that's just to account for some vault hunters are going to be really big, ditto for weapons looking small on BL4's UI right now. However, I do like that they are accounting a bit better for the weapon tool tips, making them float rather than like, covering up your entire vault hunter. It's not shown in the images, but the skills screen does feel just about right given how enormous they are in 4.

>>1370183 > you'd find generally better UI design I think using a word like "better" is a bit tricky here, because to be better means you've employed some measure to objectively categorize one over the other, which is why we are in this problem in the first place. They're using things like seconds spent, which is an objective metric, to justify their flat design decisions. >How is this UI better than the other? <Well it's easy cause user tests saw particpants spent 10% less time in menus <Feedback from participants said the UI was easier to read >Thanks Dev! Ship it to the final version If we make discussions about art, we would say that these UIs employ a flat technique the produces an unremarkable experience, but Indie UIs have a larger range of expression, some which enhance the stylistic synergy of the game with all of its elements. This sin't a criticism of your point, but I think is a common trap that people talking about games can fall into. >>1371312 > As a method to push software (And on occasion hardware) evolution. I don't doubt that, but if a game like Mario 64 used 3D acceleration to just make the same 2d style of gameplay just with a 3d model, It wouldn't be as impactful. The technology is in service of the game. This is beside the point though as UI elements rarely have innovative features that new technology needs to be utilized to make possible.

The only thing that matters is that the most amount of people possible can read the menus.

>>1380730 They can't even do that nowadays Most normalfags can barely use the bloated menus.

Turns out this is all just part of a bigger trend known as "refinement culture", which can be summed up as everything getting optimized to the point of sameness. https://web.archive.org/web/20250118073931/https://lindynewsletter.beehiiv.com/p/refinement-culture

>>1391655 >optimized <not cheaping out on designers because every godforsaken cent must get into shareholder ass crack

Who cares? All this whining about modern games, but the best examples of SOVL UIs are from modern Persona games. Particularly Persona 5 and P3 remake.

>>1391692 Its more about readability than anything. Even for these bland ass images, They likely paid thousands in order to research, design, and comission it. If we understand that people cannot readily read cursive, or even if people have hard times reading text on their phone, it illuminates why these brands have shifted to something plainer and readable from even 1000 feet away.

>>1391692 >cheaping out These """designers""" get paids tens of thousands for this shit

>>1391655 >all of the fonts are just varieties of Arial now What the fuck.

>>1391655 >>1391938 >single global communist government unifies all aspects of existence under its direct, centralized rule >literally print books about this centuries ago saying this is what they will do >people still act surprised when it happens Amazing. They almost deserve to win.

>>1391706 If only the Persona games were half as soulful as they were back in PSX days.

Game devs are now soulless giant machines with way too many chefs, and too many hoops to jump through to let any real artists originality shine. As a result the menus are boring and "safe"

>>1377106 Depends on the game, but yeah this is a really nice feature if it's per-element. I really don't like auto-hiding HUDs though which is a more common trend in the industry, just takes it out of my control. One of my favorite things about Day's Gone was it's "survivor" mode tying your UI visibility to a stamina system of sorts and you having to press a button and "focus" to bring it up, getting hit or other things disrupting your focus taking you out of it. Another thing that really gets my goat is when devs make the UI worse from entry to entry when trying to modernize it, like what happened to Monster Hunter when going from GU to World and from Rise to Wilds. I don't care if I get a stupid item wheel I'll never fucking use it doesn't make up for how clunky everything else was made.

>>1398182 >>1398192 It's a disservice to Germany to claim that they are responsible for this. It sure as shit wasn't ethnic Germans. ✡Bruno Taut✡ and ✡Erich Mendelsohn✡ were the architects responsible. They detested traditional German styles, choosing to subvert rather than imbue. Mendelsohn explicitly advocated “creative internationalism” in architecture that “dissolves borders and brings people together.” There was a conscious and purposeful movement to destroy objective beauty in art and architecture.

>>1398256 >Mendelsohn's Einsteinturm That shit is top tier though

>>1391797 >If we understand that people cannot readily read cursive >people Well they're genus Homo at least.