Red Dead Redemption 2 is an example of a video game that provides extensive customization options for controls.

Usability Evaluation of the video game “The Last of Us”

In this case study, I conducted a usability evaluation of the video game "The Last of Us", where I identified both its key usability strengths and top usability issues."

Research Objectives

As specified earlier the primary objective of my research was to conduct a usability evaluation with a focus on identifying the top usability positives and issues.

To achieve this, I decided to evaluate the following key aspects:



• Player’s Experience: Assessing the player's first experience with the game and their initial impressions.

• Overall Evaluation: Gathering feedback on the overall gaming experience and players' general assessments.

• Understanding of Objectives: I aimed to determine whether players have a clear grasp of the game's objectives and goals.

• Gameplay Difficulty: Examining participants' subjective assessments of the gameplay difficulty.

• In-Game Tutorials: Evaluating the effectiveness of in-game tutorials and their contribution to the player's learning experience.

• Usability of Core Mechanics: Assessing the usability and efficiency of the game's core mechanics and controls.

• User Interface (UI) and Menus: Investigating the usability of the user interface, menus, and navigation within the game.

Research methods

Participants

I conducted a total of six tests with six participants. None of the participants had prior experience playing 'The Last of Us' video game. However with the exception of one participant, all of the participants had experience in playing games within the action/adventure genre.

Kian
Age: 16
Gender: Male
Console: PS4
Recently played game: Call of duty
Other games: GTA, NBA2K23, Red dead redemption
How often/week: 3 days/2-3 hrs

After establishing clear research objectives, I identified the key questions that needed addressing to meet each objective. Subsequently, I selected research methods that would effectively answer these questions.

For instance, one of my primary research objectives centered around evaluating gameplay difficulty. To achieve this objective, I posed several questions:

1. What is the perceived difficulty experienced by players?

2. With which aspects of gameplay do players struggle, and why?

3. Do players encounter difficulties in solving puzzles?

4. Do players comprehend the game objectives? are they able to identify what actions are necessary to achieve these objectives? can they successfully attain the objectives?

To tackle these questions, I opted for a combination of research methods, namely observations, probing questions, and interviews.

"As I mentioned earlier, I conducted a total of six playtests. Following the completion of the first three tests, I recognized the necessity of playing the entire game again in order to generate a more diverse set of tasks. Subsequently, after replaying the entire game, I conducted an additional set of three tests."

Here's the breakdown of the playtest structure:

• The test began with one hour of uninterrupted gameplay. This initial gameplay session was followed by a short interview to capture immediate feedback.

• After the interview, participants were given a 30-minute break to rest.

• Following the break, the participants engaged in another one-hour session of uninterrupted gameplay, after which I conducted a second short interview to gather additional insights.

• Participants were given one hour rest

• Following the break participants continued to play the game for another hour followed by another short interview.

• I then gave them a final 30-minute break to rest.

• After the break, they played for one more hour, followed by the final interview. In total, each participant spent four hours participating in the evaluation.

After the completion of the playtests, I used Dovetail to synthesis and analyse the data gathered during the evaluation process.

The data encompassed various sources, including:

• My personal observations while playing the game myself.

• Notes I took while observing participants during the tests. These notes captured their behaviors, responses to probing questions, and interview inquiries.

• Verbal communications and expressions of frustration or annoyance exhibited by the participants during the usability tests.

• My observations during two open-ended usability tests

I imported data into Dovetail, conducted a thematic analysis by applying coding techniques, and subsequently organized the data based on the labels I had assigned to the codes.

Finally I proceeded to create themes for my analysis. This analytical phase comprised both deductive and inductive approaches.

My analysis was deductive, primarily driven by the high-level themes I had defined - 'Top Usability Positives' and 'Top Usability Issues.' I systematically analyzed the sorted data to identify these positives and issues, aligning with my predetermined goals.

Simultaneously, my analysis was inductive as I delved further to identify sub-themes that fell under these overarching high-level themes. These sub-themes emerged organically as I explored the data

Without contextual help, players might face moments of frustration when they're unable to progress, which can lead to disengagement or even abandonment of the game.

In “The Last of Us” provision of contextual help ensures that players stay engaged and motivated to continue playing.

In-game hints provided through communication between characters. Characters within the game offer advice, suggestions, or direct hints to the player during conversations. These hints are designed to guide players through challenges or puzzles by providing them with information or advice about how to proceed.

These messages are designed to offer players guidance on how to approach a specific situation or encounter, especially when facing challenges like being outnumbered.

Reminders serve to alert the player to their current status and suggests a specific action to mitigate the danger. They help players manage their resources and stay alive in challenging situations.

The contextual help that guides a player gradually through new gameplay mechanics, such as opening doors, using health kits, jumping, climbing, aiming and shooting, and selecting/swapping weapons.

In-game tutorials teach players in a clear way how to use different weapons, their use cases and limitations immediately upon acquisition.

A dedicated reference section is also available for tutorials that that players can visit at any time to review them.

Minimalist design: UI for weapon selection has a minimalist design. The layout and display of data is clear and quick to interpret.

Efficiency: The UI allows for easy, one-click/two click access to essential items like weapons in holsters, health kits, explosives, and throwable objects. Allowing having at least two holster and later in the game two more additional holsters makes it easier for players to change their guns quickly in situations they are outnumbered.

Crafting Convenience: Players can craft weapons directly from the selection menu, eliminating the need to navigate to a separate crafting menu.

Visual Cues for Crafting: The inclusion of a wrench icon next to cartable weapons provides a clear visual cue to the player, indicating that they have the necessary resources to create a new weapon. It is also helpful because sometime players may miss the wrench icon on the right bottom corner of the screen.

Holster Management: Changing the equipped weapon in your holster can be done with minimal clicks, enhancing fluidity during intense combat situations.
Distinct Section Designs: The UI design separates short guns and long guns into distinct sections, further aiding in efficient weapon selection and management.

Clear Crafting Requirements: The game uses a clear visual indication (grayed out items) to show players what they need to craft a particular item. This helps in reducing confusion.
Missing Ingredients Highlighted in Red: By using the color red to indicate missing ingredients, the UI communicates a critical piece of information effectively. This draws immediate attention to what players need to gather before they can proceed with crafting.

Wrench Icon for craftable items: The wrench icon provides a clear and intuitive visual cue that signals when a player has all the necessary components to craft a specific item. It simplifies decision-making for players.
Item Count Display: Showing the number of each item that the player already possesses is a convenient feature. It gives players a quick overview of their inventory and helps them make informed decisions about what to craft.
Intuitive “skills terminology”: The game uses terminology that players can easily understand, such as "healing speed" or "crafting speed." This clarity in language ensures that players know exactly what each skill does and how it will impact their gameplay.
Clear skill improvement requirements: Indicating the number of pills needed for skill upgrades is a straightforward way to communicate progression requirements.

Initial pace of the game

The majority, 5 out of 6 players, expressed concerns about the game's pacing at various stages. In their final assessments, they collectively perceived the game as slow and occasionally boring.

The initial lack of sprinting mechanics potentially influences the perception of the game's pace. This early restriction on movement speed might have affected their perception negatively.

Additionally, the intermittent disabling of sprinting during moments of conversation and movement could contribute to a sense of frustration and slowness.

In-game tutorials are unlocked at various stages to guide players. Surprisingly, out of six participants, none of them checked the initial five unlocked tutorials. This oversight could potentially elongate the increase curve for players, hindering their ability to grasp important strategies early on, particularly in combat situations where the right strategy is crucial.

Unused mechanic: Pull back on L and press X to do a quick turn

Despite its usefulness in combat situations, where quick turns are crucial to evade infected attackers from behind, this mechanic in the game went largely unnoticed by players. This oversight may be attributed to the lack of repeated messages or reminders, especially within the context of the gameplay.

In specific scenarios, players experience frustration when stuck at a checkpoint, especially when outnumbered. The presence of four holsters proves beneficial, enabling players to swiftly switch between guns, mitigating the risk of running out of ammo and resorting to time-consuming weapon slots.

Initially, none of the players acquired the third holster at the first checkpoint due to a shortage of parts. It remains unclear whether they were aware of the option to obtain additional holsters.

To explore this, I conducted a test during the "safe house" chapter. During the test, when participants were explicitly instructed to upgrade their weapons due to an upcoming encounter with a large number of infected, none of them acquired a new holster. Upon probing, all participants mentioned that they were unaware of the existence of this option, and their attention was more drawn to the limitations of other firearms. Additionally, the less visible nature of the description indicating the possibility of acquiring a new holster, specifically the "holster for the second holster," may contribute to players overlooking this important gameplay feature.

Participants did not notice the description “ Holster for a second pistol”.

All participants encountered challenges and expressed frustration with the difficulty of aiming and shooting in the game, particularly during combat scenarios, where four participants struggled to successfully eliminate opponents.

It's worth noting that all participants began the game in normal difficulty. There is an option called lock-on aiming that could potentially aid participants in aiming and shooting, but this feature is exclusively available in easy difficulty. Two key issues were identified: firstly, participants were unaware that they could change the gameplay difficulty from within the game, perhaps because this option is not prominently visible in the options menu. Secondly, unlike in easy difficulty, where players receive a prompt to activate lock-on aiming after failing to progress past a certain stage, no such prompt appears in normal difficulty since the option for lock-on aiming doesn't exist, and there is no indication that players can adjust the game difficulty.

Given the differences in experience and preferences among participants, there is likely to be significant variation in attitudes regarding control mapping. Allowing participants to customize controls according to their preferences can enhance their comfort and overall gaming experience. However, in the case of "The Last of Us," customization options are limited, restricting players from tailoring controls extensively to their liking. This lack of flexibility may impact the comfort and satisfaction of players with diverse preferences and experiences.

In certain situations within the game, such as the cemetery with numerous clickers, some players expressed a desire to save their progress after successfully dealing with a few clickers due to the difficulty of these encounters. However, saving the game within a checkpoint is not an available option, and players are generally unaware of this limitation.

Upon being killed, players attempted to load the game from their last known point after defeating some clickers, only to discover that their progress had not been saved. This realization resulted in frustration.

The core issue probably lies in the auto-save feature consistently overwriting the last manually saved file. Although saving within a level is not possible, the activation of the save option when players attempted to save the game within a checkpoint led to confusion and contributed to their frustration.

Players experienced confusion when they received a message stating, "Collect parts to upgrade your weapons," without clear guidance on where they could actually perform the upgrades. Upon observation, users tended to look for weapon upgrades within the crafting menu, leading to confusion about the upgrade location. This confusion persisted until they encountered the first workbench, where they finally received the message, "Use scavenged parts to upgrade your weapons at a workbench."

To alleviate this confusion, providing the information about using parts at a workbench for weapon upgrades when players first receive the "collect parts" message could prevent unnecessary uncertainty. This preemptive guidance would help players understand that they need to locate a workbench for weapon upgrades

For users with prior experience in similar game genres or knowledge of real-life weapons, understanding the use cases of guns may not pose a challenge. However, participants lacking prior knowledge about the genre and firearms might find it difficult. For instance, a female participant without domain knowledge about guns struggled to comprehend the use case of a hunting rifle and used it ineffectively at close range, resulting in frustration. Another example is the "shorty" where, from the description alone, users may not grasp that it is a short shotgun.

Additionally, the absence of information about the use cases and characteristics of the guns at the workbench contributes to a steeper learning curve for those unfamiliar with firearms. Providing more detailed information or in-game tutorials about the attributes and optimal uses of each firearm could enhance the understanding and effectiveness of players, especially for those with limited prior knowledge of guns.

In this segment of the game, a dialogue unfolds between Joel, Tess, and Ellie, effectively conveying to the player that the building is infested with infected. Crucially, the discussion highlights the unique trait of clickers—they lack vision but can discern location through sound. This information becomes pivotal for the player's understanding and strategic decision-making within the game.

Limitations and futher research

Limitations

1. Designer Intent: Without insight into the designer's intent, definitive conclusions about whether identified usability issues were intentional or unintentional are challenging to make.

2. Small Number of Participants: The limited number of participants hinders the ability to draw conclusive insights into factors like fun factor, perceived gameplay difficulty, and other attitudinal assessments.

3. Representativeness of Participants: The lack of diversity in terms of age, gender, experience with the genre, and cultural backgrounds among participants may impact the generalizability of the findings.

4. Players' Motivation Profile: Absence of information on players' motivation profiles limits the context for analyzing attitudinal data.

Further Studies

1. Difficulty Levels: Testing the game across various difficulty levels to assess how different challenges impact the user experience.

2. Retrospectives: Conducting retrospective analyses, involving participants reviewing recorded gameplay, could provide deeper insights into their behaviors and decisions.

3. Surveys: Implementing a survey methodology with a larger sample size to gather more reliable data on subjective preferences.

4. Diary Study: Utilizing diary studies to collect attitudinal data during extended gameplay sessions, offering a more nuanced understanding of players' evolving perceptions.

5. Thematic Analysis of Player Discussion Forums: Exploring player forums for thematic analysis can uncover valuable insights into player goals, needs, pain points, and expectations.

6. Analytics and Gameplay Data: Complementing behavioral data collection with analytics and gameplay data to obtain a comprehensive understanding of player interactions and patterns.

In normal difficulty, the lock-on aiming option is unavailable, and participants are not aware that this feature exists in easy difficulty.