10 Things You Didn’t Know About Video Game UI

10. How A Game Forces You To “Read The Screen”

One of the first things you learn when starting out a specialism in UI is the rather craply-named “screen real estate”, which makes it sound like the art of building student halls on top of your TV.

But it’s the priority and flow of how you read the screen, because each part has a different level of importance.

Here in the west the highest priority radiates from the centre of the screen outwards (dead centre being most important), with top-left corner being most important, and bottom-right being least (we read from left to right).

This means you should always put the most important UI in the centre, then work your way down the priority list. If your character has an important resource you need to manage from second to second, don’t put that information in the bottom-right, you toerag!

Interesting point - in a fighting game, player two gets a mirrored UI - we instinctively expect the information to be read in reverse (and most of us can do so without any problem) - and that’s why in fighting games the bars deplete into the centre!