Party with Super Mario Bros. on Switch via dialogue before jumping right into AI (Part 2/5)

In the Part 1, the table of “What if” ideas show how I think the Pixel products could be differently interacting with me among the scenarios I encounter in real life. Somehow in essence that my Pixel has been translated into my personal smart butler like Jarvis, where Pixel helps me handle all kinds of big-and-small things. Jarvis can talk, but since my Pixel has 6.4 inches in screen size, so currently we “talk” with each other through the graphical user interface by tapping on the screen. Until one day, I looked up and was facing toward my TV set, while playing the video game on Switch.

Text-based conversational and instructional interfaces are usually what Switch has been interacting with players. Switch does have sound effect and voice over throughout the game, but while been surrounded with laugher and playful sound in the living room, text on the screen with a pause can instantly catch people’s attention, like the Captain Toad saying down below, “Welcome, adventurers […].“

Welcome screen (Source: interfaceingame.com)

There are a whole lot of elements in a game, such as characters, level selection, menu, overlay, progress, and scoreboard, you name it. Dialogue is merely one of them. In order for players to conquer each one of the quests, those words in the dialogue reveals a facet of humanity, and guide the players to accomplish goals. I am not a gamer, and game-specific conversational experiences design probably are different from what we see on ChatGPT either, but we still can learn something unique and valuable out of it. Below are illustrated couple of observations that we can highlight in the game dialogue.

Text display orientation

Several styles of text alignment are shown below. In the Switch games, left or middle, or even right-aligned text format are all possible, where it depends on the culture and the language characteristics. But in the conversational user interface with avatar, character or profile photo, the text is usually closer and attached to the elements that it refers to or sources from. And since the response is generative letter by letter, which creates an atmosphere of real person on the other side that the player actually talks to.

Super Mario Party (Source: interfaceingame.com)

Text on the screen is usually the instruction that we all follow throughout the game. Therefore the timing, the context and the bounded screen size of that moment all convey critical messages of how well the experience would be felt delighted or disappointed. Needless to say that the people or hidden individual, whom we interact with behind the activity, always play the key role.

Queues placement and weight

People tend to unconsciously interpret the queues that they receive and construct reasonable meaning of the information displayed on the screen. In the game world, effectively building the sense of 2D or 3D environment could help players more immersively navigate and collaborate with each other. When a clear or vague goal in mind, making right or quick decision have significantly associated with the consistency by aligning the mindset with the action to be taken next. This would be even obvious when a variety of information formats thrown out at once in front of user.

In the screenshot of Mario Party Superstars down below, you can see that the four corners at top left and right, and the bottom left and right are showing the four individual players and their scores and rankings in order of the position where those characters are standing from the left to right. Each player can be able to quickly identify their own position as well as the place where they can quickly spot their eye focus on and toward the specific direction.

Mario Party Superstars Review - The Fault In Our Stars (Source: Gamespot)

And indeed the placement of the user interface elements usually depends on the game attributes and responsiveness. If it is a cooking or racing game, or the main stage is supposed to be at the center of the screen, the figures or additional information might be clustered and moved into left or right side of the edges accordingly (or thoughtfully provide accessible infographic style of information), so that players can quickly scan it and get the point they need. A few examples are pull out below to give you a brief idea of this concept, where you can see some examples of players’ avatar displayed differently on screen.

You can also watch the clip below and identify similar pieces of information (avatar photos, scores, rankings, assets, etc) are located in various places from one game to another.

Screenshots of Mario Party Superstars (Source: Mario Party Superstars Review)

Mario Party Superstars Review (Source: GameSpot Youtube)

text color and contrast

Texts itself communicate many kinds of messages to reader with subtle differentiated intentions on screen. Especially in the game world, where the visual details are all around from the dialogue conversation to the objects mixed with scattered distractions. One of the most highly immersive games, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (BOTW), fully illustrates the environment of conversational experience and the landscapes the player engages with. I personally haven’t played this game yet on Switch, but from one of the game’s screenshots below, it can be easily recognized that the visual hierarchy of how the texts in the dialogue try to convey.

The color-coded texts and the contrast quickly catch player’s eyes and allow her to tell the differences between those highlighted objects and others. One of the interesting parts of this game’s dialogue is that the styles of the dialogue text varies from one to another in terms of how the contexts at that moment try to suggest. Take Kaneli for example. Kaneli is one of the charaters and the chief of Rito Village. When he talks, he talks in two manners: internal and external. He talks to himself internally, and also talks to other characters out loud, where the text transparency differs in two manners in these two dialogues. You can compare these two side by side below, and also can go to the article that the outstanding UX and product designer Carlos Morla well addresses this juicy point in the game design.

The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild - Kaneli, Sha Warvo & Snowy Bird Search - Episode 92 (Source: Olizandri video on Youtube)

And of course, the game also includes several other kinds of dialogue designs that imply different contexts like instruction, narration, and explanation throughout the game, where it creates the emotions and feelings that naturally fuse the conversation into the story that lets you even unaware of all this magic.

Gaming is a world inherent with unique view and philosophy where it builds its own bricks and blocks, and the rule. In order to be caught up and live within so many impressive scenes and story, players would unavoidably bring the real physical world experience back to the virtual landscapes. We definitely could expect that the conversational interface, like what ChatGPT demonstrates to the world, be applied to the realms of digital or physical communication methods as one of the potential candidates of multi-channel interactive mechanisms.

In the next section we will go back to the Apps on my Pixel, and explore any possibilities or potentials when in applying conversational way of interaction in some of my frequently used Apps. It will be more like a discovery journey, a realistic case and scenario down to the ground. If you haven’t visit the first part, feel free to stop by in here. The full index is provided below:

Stay tuned.