10 Things You Didn’t Know About Video Game UI
3. The Basic Principle Behind Loot & Unlock Icons
Feedback to the player is one of the facets of UX that seems simple, yet can be extraordinarily tricky to get right.
Do you trickle-feed your players lots of lovely scrumptious bites of reward-y goodness, or do you hold out on them and give them one enormous, explosive, giganto-reward?
However you do it, you need to make those rewards worthwhile. And, unsurprisingly, one of the simplest ways of conveying value is to use imagery that the player associates with a sense of wealth.
You probably didn’t realise how often you’re being manipulated this way, but colour-coded items always have purple (the regal colour) to signify “important” items, and gold (the... well, money colour) to signify the “best”.
Icons that signify progress/winning are almost always rosettes, coins or trophies (and even other, less obvious stuff like stars are always made of gold, of course) - hell, PlayStation charts your personal value in tiers of trophies, whilst Xbox has its own currency (signified as G, or Gamerscore).
You may THINK you’re earning a new special power, or secret attack, or even just EXP., but the next time the big flashing lights start - look at how much is all about the money.