After only 19 minutes, his success rate dropped down to about 60%, and after one day it dropped down to nearly 30%. This means that when you learn something that is not meaningful, and with no method of any kind, you are likely to lose about 70% of the content learned from one day to the next. This is pretty inconvenient, especially for video games since they are usually experienced over several days, sometimes weeks, or even months or years. Given that the human memory is limited, and that we are bound to forget many things, how can we ensure that returning players are not going to forget key information over time? Game developers apply many tactics to avoid this caveat, from repeating information to displaying contextual tutorial tips. However, the most efficient methodology to avoid the impact of the forgetting curve is to reduce the memory load in the first place. The more information is always available to players, the less there is to learn and remember, which underscores the importance of having a good heads-up display (HUD).

The Fortnite team had a precise vision and collaborated very closely with the UX team to deliver a game that would be true to this vision and that would appeal to many different types of players. My contention is that the success of Fortnite is linked to their efforts in adopting a UX mindset. My goal here is to explain how to develop such a game UX mindset and build a UX strategy to help game developers around the world find success more quickly with the games they are crafting. This is especially crucial for independent developers who have fewer resources yet still compete with the thousands of games released every year.

这个过程从对输入内容（比如一段教程文字）的感知开始，当我们处理通过感知器官（我们拥有超过五种感知器官）传递的信息时，我们的记忆很可能发生变化。当我们开始学习新知识时，大脑中将产生新的突触——神经之间的连接——或者原本的突触被增强。你在日常生活中做的任何事——读一本书、看一部电影、和朋友聊天、阅读文章等等——都将“重新书写”你的大脑，因为大脑内的连接不是一成不变的，而是可延展的。正因为这种可塑性，我们才能够适应变化的环境。从感知外界刺激到形成调整后的记忆，我们的大脑中发生了许多变化。值得注意的是，我们的学习结果会受到许多因素的影响，比如注意力、动机和情感。

In summary, when we learn and process information our perception is subjective, our attention is scarce, and our memory is fallible. This is why having a UX mindset, which places the end users at the center of the development process, is key to offering the intended experience.

可用性指的是游戏可以被使用的能力，这意味着我们必须考虑到玩家的感知、注意力和记忆的限制。可用性是一个众所周知的用户体验支柱因素，并且多年来工业设计和电子产品设计行业已经建立起了明确的指导原则。最著名的是雅各布·尼尔森提出的“可用性准则”。我对这些准则进行了调整，使它们更适用于游戏开发，更贴近游戏开发术语。游戏可用性准则如下：

最后，让我们谈谈注意力。即便我们认为自己的调查环境的能力很强，我们的注意力仍然是有限的。我们无法扫描周遭发生的一切，注意力的作用方式就像聚光灯；我们将注意力投注到某些事物上，同时过滤掉其它刺激因素，就像你在一间吵闹的酒吧里试图听清朋友在说什么。这意味着我们无法有效地同时进行多个任务，尽管大多数人认为自己可以。当我们同时进行多个任务时，我们会错失很多信息，并且意识不到自己犯了错误。

1. Motivation

If you’re interested in diving deeper in these heuristics, I invite you to read the transcript of my GDC Europe 2014 talk. The goal of these heuristics is to ensure that the game is going to be as intuitive and easy to use as possible. We work to remove all the frustrations players might have that are not by design, such as difficulty navigating menus, unintuitive icons, or confusing systems. All the stimuli in the game (aka “signs and feedback”) need to be clear, consistent, and perceived as intended. We aim to minimize the cognitive load (i.e. memory and attention load) as well as the physical load (e.g. how many clicks to accomplish an action). We also try to ensure that players are not going to experience frustrating errors, or that they can easily recover from them when these errors are not where we want to challenge players. For instance in Fortnite, we want to challenge players in developing a strategy to survive while managing combat, harvesting, crafting, and building. We do not want, however, to challenge them in figuring out how to equip an item or to craft a weapon. Lastly, we try to offer various options — such as remapping of controls, subtitles, or colorblind mode — so that everyone can play. Throughout the development of Fortnite, we conducted countless UX tests to improve and polish the usability of the game.

Perception

This success story narrated through the lens of UX starts by understanding how the brain operates. Discovering and experiencing a video game, like anything else, happens in people’s minds. Thus, to anticipate how players will experience a game, it is critical to know the main capabilities and limitations of our brains. The study of mental processes (such as attention or memory) is called cognitive science. The diagram above shows a simplified version of what is going on in our brains when we learn or process information.

-图标与反馈

注意力

For example, in the early days of Fortnite, during the closed Alpha online tests, some players were complaining that the game was too “grindy”. They felt that it took too long to harvest the ingredients they needed to craft more advanced items as they were leveling up. Where was this coming from? Did the game have a design issue? The system designers verified their math and concluded that the harvesting and crafting systems were correctly balanced. So why were players complaining? This issue kicked off a long investigation to find out why this was happening. If it was not originating from the design, then the hypothesis was that it could originate from players’ (subjective) perception. Many elements were thus investigated. One of them was the UI (user interface) for a feature called the “weak point system”. In Fortnite, when players harvest an object in the world (say, a pile of rock) a weak point appears, encouraging players to aim at it. As they scavenge the object, if players aim at its weak point they destroy it much faster. The problem was that in our early UX tests, we were observing players completely ignoring these weak points. This issue could be seen as trivial, but it potentially had a relatively huge impact in ripple effects, as the whole harvesting system was based off players using the weak points. Therefore, if they were not using it they were taking much longer than designed to harvest anything, which could in turn obviously impact their perception of the harvesting speed. This is why the team iterated a lot on this tiny UI element. First, it was made bigger and more obvious, as initially players were not even realizing that it was there. Once it was standing out more, players were spotting it but then thought it was a cue indicating to them which item they were currently targeting. In the end, designers removed the weak point from the initial experience in the “Save the World” mode (the player-versus-environment mode), so that players would have to unlock it in the skill tree. It thus became a meaningful reward with more fanfare, which overall did the trick. A majority of players were finally hitting the weak points after this change. At least in “Save the World” mode…

记忆是另一个值得我们考虑的重要元素。我们拥有记住大量信息的能力，有时我们可以记住很久以前发生的事情。然而我们也会忘记许多事。18世纪末期，德国心理学家赫尔曼·艾宾浩斯发现了记忆快速下降的规律。他将这一规律制成了著名的“遗忘曲线”。为了绘制这幅曲线图，他强迫自己一串毫无意义的音节（避免熟悉因素的干扰），并在某些时刻回忆这些音节。下面这张图展示了他的研究发现：当他记住所有音节后，他可以立即把它们复述出来，此时成功的记忆量是100%。

CONCLUSION: DEVELOPING A UX STRATEGY

If you analyze a game like Fortnite through this UX lens, you can identify all the efforts that were made to make the game usable, to avoid as much confusion as possible, and to remove as many frustrations that were not by design. I explain a few examples in this video made with Ars Technica. In terms of engage-ability and motivation more specifically, Fortnite is a game where you always progress towards specific goals in the player-versus-environment mode (“Save the World”). In the “Battle Royale” mode in which players compete against each other, those who lose can quickly start again and hopefully get better the next round. The cosmetics options and dance moves offer good autonomy, as well as the “Creative Mode” in which players can build whatever they want. Relatedness is very strong in Fortnite: it’s a game where players can compete, cooperate, or just hang out. It has become more than a game; it’s a social platform where players chat, dance, are creative, or even watch a concert together. Also, well-known influencers and stars streamed the game early on, which made the game a must-try (although this is not something that can be anticipated during the development — luck also has a role). Regarding emotion, Fortnite has a very polished game feel: it is quite satisfying to interact with the environment. The world is goofy and encourages experimentation, as explained by Darren Sugg, Creative Director of Fortnite, in this Game UX Summit Europe keynote. The game also offers many surprises and mysteries. For instance, there is often something mysterious before a new season, which is raising players’ curiosity. Lastly, the gameflow of the game is polished, more specifically in “Save the World” mode where the onboarding has been carefully planned (see the transcript of my GDC 2015 talk and GDC 2016 talk explaining our onboarding plan and process).

例如，在《堡垒之夜》开发早期，在alpha封测结束后，一些玩家抱怨游戏太肝。他们感觉升级过程中采集物资制作高级物品耗费的时间太长了。这个问题从何而来？难道是游戏的设计出了问题吗？系统设计师重新验证了数据，确认采集和制造系统的平衡性没有问题。那么为什么玩家们会产生这种抱怨呢？为了解决这个问题，我们进行了长期调查。如果不是设计导致的，那么有可能是玩家的主观感知导致的。因此我们审查了许多元素。其中之一是游戏的用户界面中的一个叫做“弱点 (weak point)”的功能。在《堡垒之夜》中，当玩家采集资源（比如一堆石头）时，物体上将显示一个 “弱点”，鼓励玩家点击它。如果玩家点击“弱点”，他们就能更快地摧毁物体获得资源。但在我们的早期用户体验测试中，我们发现玩家完全无视这些“弱点”。这个问题看似微不足道，却引发了严重的连锁效应，由于整个采集系统的数据平衡都基于玩家点击这些“弱点”，因此，如果玩家不点击它们，那么采集时间就会比我们预计得要长，这也导致了玩家对采集耗时长的抱怨。因此团队对于这个小小的用户体验元素进行了多次修改。首先，“弱点”从视觉效果上被放大、更显眼。当“弱点”变得更显眼后，玩家终于注意到了它，但他们以为这是在提示他们当前操作的物品。最终，设计师在“Save the World”模式（PvE模式）去掉了“弱点”，把它变成了一个可解锁的技能。这个技能瞬间变得有意义，得到了许多玩家的好评，基本上解决了这个问题。大部分玩家在新版中开始点击“弱点”。至少在“Save the World”模式中……

游戏中的情感包括 “游戏感(game feel)”和提供新内容两个方面。“游戏感”指玩家与游戏互动时的感觉。游戏感与视角、操作和角色有关。它是一种“身临其境的感觉（sense of presence）”，能够带来这种感觉的有：对玩家行为做出恰当反应的AI角色，一个有意义的故事或优质的配乐等等。它还与游戏的真实感有关，这里指的是游戏整体内容的真实可感，而不是画面的写实性。情感还在于为玩家提供惊喜和新鲜感，我就不详细讨论这个方面了。我们偶尔需要一些新鲜事物打破无聊。这也解释了为什么在线游戏需要不断推出新的内容、活动、模式、皮肤或者赛季。

总结：制定用户体验策略

人们在处理信息时的注意力程度是影响信息的学习和储存的关键因素。你的注意力越集中，你就越能有效地处理和储存周遭的信息。我将解释感知、记忆和注意过程存在的限制，以及我们在制作《堡垒之夜》时是如何解读这些限制的。注意，大脑是极其复杂的。我们处理信息的过程并不像上图中展示的那样简单，它不是一个线性的过程，甚至不算一个过程。我们在解释大脑运作方式时，经常用电脑作比喻，因为它是一个非常生动的比喻。但大脑的运作方式和电脑并不一样。它更复杂，科学家们也仅仅初步了解了这个运作过程。接下来我要简要地解释这些思维过程的限制，如果你想进一步了解这些方面，你可以阅读我2015年游戏开发者大会演讲的记录。

感知是一个主观的过程。取决于我们的DNA、知识背景、期待、文化和语境等因素。这也为电子游戏制作带来了诸多问题，因为我们希望玩家按照我们预期的方式理解游戏。如果感知是主观的，我们该怎样确保游戏中的视觉效果和声音效果按照我们预期的方式被理解呢？简单来说，我们做不到。这也是为什么我们必须进行用户体验测试，邀请目标玩家体验正在开发的游戏。用户体验测试的形式有很多，但我们主要通过调查来确定目标玩家是否按照我们的期待理解游戏。例如，2013年时，我们邀请了一群玩家试玩游戏模型，我们询问他们游戏图标代表的意义。结果玩家们对陷阱图标产生了不同理解，有人觉得它代表弹药、或者树。因此正如我在2014年游戏开发者大会上谈到的，图标设计者对图标的理解和玩家的理解存在偏差。由于陷阱是《堡垒之夜》的一个主要功能，我们必须修改这个图标，消除玩家可能产生的误解。在用户测试结束后，我们决定把它改成一个类似捕熊夹的图案。《堡垒之夜》中并没有捕熊夹这个陷阱，但所有测试玩家都能理解它的意义。这个案例表明人们对同一件事物的理解是不同的，无论是用户界面元素、角色设计、声音效果、视觉效果还是环境。

Fortnite is one of the most successful video games in history, and this success fascinates and confuses many people who have made efforts to account for how a game could have become such a phenomenon so quickly. As the former Director of User Experience (UX) at Epic Games, where I worked on Fortnite from 2013 to late 2017, I would like to share the different steps that were taken by the Fortnite team to build what would later become the phenomenon we now know, through the lens of UX. My background in psychology, my occupation as a UX strategist, and my personal work on the game likely bias my perspective since we are all susceptible to unconscious biases. However, this analysis, unlike those that have been proposed thus far, is a firsthand account that was presented in several Game Developers Conference (GDC) talks that I gave before Fortnite was released, and in my book The Gamer’s Brain: How Neuroscience and UX Can Impact Video Game Design (2017).