Interface as Gameplay

Recently, I was reading an article by David Sirlin about minimizing unnecessary clicks when designing a game. One of the examples he used was the reload system in Resident Evil 5 – apparently, you have to click 5 times to do a fast reload of your gun (presumably like Gears of War) that you pretty much have to do if you want to be competitive in multiplayer. In the article, Sirlin declaimed against this "5-click tax" on the player every time he wanted to reload. Which got me thinking about interfaces in general.

Awhile ago, Blizzard announced that they were putting "multiple building selection" into Starcraft 2. A quick recap of the last thing I wrote on this blog: MBS is a change from the original game's interface that became highly contentious in the Starcraft community. Essentially, in Starcraft you can't select multiple buildings at once. In Starcraft 2, you will be able to. The main argument people use for this change is simple: it's an obvious interface improvement, because it streamlines the interface. Why wouldn't you put it in?

I'm not going to argue that Sirlin's wrong in criticizing Resident Evil 5's reload system (I've never even played the game) nor am I going to talk about the pros and cons of multiple building selection here (more on MBS here). Instead, I want to contest the implicit assumption behind these two arguments, and behind most discussions about interfaces in games: that there is a difference between a game's gameplay (the real game) and its interface (not the real game).

A screencap from a youtube tutorial of quick reloading in RE5. It's actually kind of a cool emergent mechanic (or exploit, depending on how you look at things).

I think this assumption is a bit easier to see in the multiple building selection debate in Starcraft 2. When people say that multiple building selection is an obvious interface improvement, they're implicitly dividing what a player actually does in Starcraft into two broad categories: the "real game" and the hoops you have to jump through to play the "real game" – which we'll broadly label as the interface. If you talk to people about strategy games, especially real time strategy games, you start to notice this distinction a lot, implicitly or explicitly. There seems to be a very large majority belief that the "real game" of Starcraft is the part where you're basically the commander-in-chief – you're making split second decisions, ordering flanks, deciding when to expand, deciding where to place your army. Unfortunately, though, because humans cannot communicate telepathically with computers, this clumsy thing called the interface had to be created in order to play the "real game." In this argument, the interface is basically an unlucky necessity – we have to use it, so let's make it as intuitive and streamlined as possible, and get it out of the way so we can get back to playing the "real game." Sirlin's article has sort of the same implicit assumptions, although on a smaller and more arbitrary scale. Obviously, aiming, which is obviously just about handling the interface, is part of the "real game" in FPS games, but clicking to reload is not.

On a basic level, this line of reasoning does make a lot of sense. People want to create clever strategies in Starcraft – a strategy game! – and losing at the game because the other person could handle the clunky interface more adeptly is frustrating. However, if you look a bit more closely, it falls apart. If there's a difference between what is purely interface and should be "streamlined" or "improved" and what is gameplay, what exactly is it? How do you tell which one is which? Where does one begin and the other end? In my mind, the answer is: you don't, because there is no clear difference. In fact, there often is no difference.

At this point, I'd like to differentiate between interface that obviously doesn't affect gameplay and interface that could possibly affect gameplay. Let's arbitrarily call the former harmless interface, and keep the latter as interface in general. There's a reason for this: I want to avoid confusing selection mechanics with harmless interface elements that can obviously be streamlined without changing anything. In most games (although not all), this means menu screens, high score boards etc.

In most games, we can break gameplay up into two types: decisions and actions. In Starcraft, decisions are, well, decisions – should I tech up or rush him? Should I move my units across this bridge? Can I chase his fleeing army, or can he punish me for it? Should I attack his expansion or his main base? – while actions are more about how quickly and efficiently you can click. For the most part, decisions are mental, while actions are physical. To most casual Starcraft players, decisions are the "gameplay" the part where you get to pretend to be a general, and actions are the ugly externalities of the "interface." But are actions in Starcraft entirely about the "interface?" What about split-second decisions, and what about proper micromanagement? Is there a difference between being able to move your units to flank quickly and being able to select more than one building?

I tried for an hour to find a screenshot of the SC2 interface that wasn't grainy youtube quality and couldn't find a single one, so here's a battlecruiser in space.

Let's leave Starcraft for a moment and take the distinction into another game: Guitar Hero. In Guitar Hero, the distinction between gameplay and interface is absurd. But within a song itself, the interface – the buttons on the guitar that you press – is the gameplay. If we made the distinction that Sirlin's article makes between reloading and the rest of Resident Evil 5, or the distinction that Starcraft players often make between mechanics and decisions, the only "real" gameplay in Guitar Hero would be deciding when to use star power – the only decision you actually make at any point in the game. The rest of the game is totally mechanics - there is absolutely no line between interface and gameplay. Guitar Heros' interface is the controller, so your ability to interact with the controller is your ability to use the interface, which is basically all of Guitar Hero's gameplay, minus star power (which you have to waggle your guitar to get going, so there's even a bit of interface in that too). While the distinction between interface and gameplay in Starcraft is somewhat intuitive, the same distinction in Guitar Hero makes no sense whatsoever – Guitar Hero is obviously a game about controlling the interface.

Now we can look at a slightly less obvious example – Resident Evil 5. Resident Evil 5 obviously has considerably more decisions-based gameplay than Guitar Hero, but still a significant amount of actions-based gameplay – most notably, aiming and shooting, one of the cornerstone mechanics of the entire FPS genre. But what's different about paying a "5-click tax" to quick reload and having to aim your gun every single time you want to shoot someone? Both are purely mechanical like clicking Guitar Hero buttons, so why is one considered an externality of the interface and the other a respectable part of the "real game?" Why isn't aiming a 1.5-inches-of-hand-movement tax?

The same applies to a real-time strategy game like Starcraft. Where does one make the arbitrary distinction between certain types of interface-interaction – fast-paced micromanagement or the ability to accurately and quickly move the mouse – and others – the amount of units you can select or the speed at which you can click hotkeys? Why is the former considered part of the legitimate, "real" game while the later is an externality of the interface that should streamlined and removed if possible? As far as I can see, there are no reasons for these distinctions. They are born, presumably, from the difference between what the game is, and some semi-communal idea of what the game should be like. But in the reality of the game, the "interface" is as much part of the mechanical gameplay as anything else. There is no practical difference between having to click 5 times to reload, having to click 5 times to select buildings, and having to hit 5 notes quickly to beat a song in Guitar Hero – there is no reason one should be considered a result of the "interface" and the other a result of "gameplay."

Common counter-argument: An RTS is a strategy game, therefore the game is intended to be about strategy, not about fast clicking. One flaw in this argument: if the game was intended to be about strategy exclusively – that is, decisions and not mechanics – it would not have been an RTS, it would have been a turn-based game. In any RTS that is played at a competitive level, it will always be better to be able to click faster. But an even deeper flaw is that this argument implies that a game should be played how the developers intended and gameplay should be restrained if it threatens to take a new course – which essentially precludes any possibility of emerging, interesting mechanics and leashes the game to being solely about the developer's original intentions, and not a collaborative process – a conversation – between developers and players.

That said, I don't think that removing single building selection in Starcraft is bad, nor do I disagree with taking out the 5-click quick reload in Resident Evil 5. This also isn't a rant against streamlining interface – in general, I think making the interface part of gameplay more intuitive can be very helpful. What I'm arguing here is not that these things are good, but that if they are bad it is because they are boring, unintuitive, clunky, or otherwise bad gameplay mechanics. In other words, the inclusion of multiple building selection might be good because it creates interesting gameplay or gives the game a better flow. The 5-click reload should be taken out because it is tedious gameplay. Interface should not be considered excess fat to be trimmed off the "real" game.