WYGIB: Part Two! The Sierra Operating System

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

The Sierra and Lucas Arts interfaces are annoying.  Anyone who can manage to take off their nostalgia-tinted glasses should be able to see that these interfaces are irritating.

Blanket statements like this really don't make for good supporting arguments because they simply aren't true for everyone (myself included).  I happen to like the multiple-verb functionality of the Lucasarts interface because it gives the player a clear idea of the scope of their abilities (instead of a single click that does everything necessary depending on context, which I also happen to find to be very boring).  I do think the original interface (Maniac Mansion, for instance) had redundant verbs, though.  Similarly, I think the Sierra system works and isn't 'broken' (neither system really is), though with a Sierra structure you have to pay attention to cursor design instead of having obvious words to indicate options available.

One of the defenses that I always hear for using the Sierra or Lucas Arts multiple-verb interface over, say, the simple left-click to interact/walk, right-click to examine interface is that having multiple verbs gives the player more control over the player's actions.

I think you're missing the most important aspect of more options:  more potential.  The more options you provide, the more the potential for control rises (in proportion to the potential for confusion).  The problem you should address is how so few people seize this potential and make use of it instead of just having some verbs that may only be used once in a game.  Still, I don't really think this is a problem because my goal as a designer is more to provide an interactive story experience than to present the player with a ton of redundant acts they can perform, and my games have been fairly modest in that area up until now.

One of the games I'm making doesn't even HAVE mouse support or a user interface, just keyboard controls and a tiny, tiny inventory display, and in spite of the simplicity of using arrow keys to get around and two keys to pick up/use/talk or use an item on yourself I guarantee people will complain that it's either too complicated or that they'd rather have a GUI.  I mean we can argue back and forth on this subject all day long, but in the end you have to defer on the side of the masses, who clearly seem to prefer more over less, even when the 'more' has very little content.

[LimpingFish]

The thing about multiple-verb interfaces is that the more verbs you have more you need to make those verbs have a coherent influence on the game world. Therefore every verb has to have an influence on every object/person in that world; or else you left with lots of "You can't **** the ****" messages, which in my opinion, are incredibly annoying. Or lots of blank interactions. We know you can't talk to grass, but to use the talk verb on it with no feedback is just as annoying as being told you can't talk to the grass.

I agree with Vince that the Sierra and LucasArts verb GUIs are only still used for nostalgia purposes. You want to make a game that plays the same as early adventure games, so you use the same interface. No big deal. But by doing so, you're exposing yourself to all the foibles inherent to those interfaces. I don't think I'd label them "broken", but certainly "primitive", and therefore limiting.

In my opinion, the "look" verb interaction is a leftover from text adventures, when the game world was described rather than shown. Think about it:

A modern graphic adventure. There's a character sprite on the screen. He's wearing a trenchcoat and hat, and hiding in the shadows. You select the "look" cursor/verb, click on him, and the game says "That guy looks shifty." Well, I knew that from looking at him myself, so "looking" at him in-game was a waste of time. An oversimplification, maybe, but if you continue to distill the look verb down to the core of it's function, you may find that you could do away with it altogether.

[Makeout Patrol]

I agree with everything in the new article, with one exception. I absolutely agree that the Sierra and LucasArts interfaces are irritating as hell, and I think that anybody who doesn't have fond memories of the original games that used them will agree. (I myself have a soft spot for the early Sierra text-input interface, which is clearly terrible, but which was in some of the first games I ever played.) Seriously, I know this is a 'blanket statement,' but even if you're playing a game where multiple interactions are necessary, wouldn't you prefer an interface that doesn't require you to move your mouse all over the screen? I know that a lot of people have a soft spot for these interfaces, but it has to be said - there are much better ways of doing it. These interfaces were implemented in some great games, but they were designed back in the day when games were made by two programmers sitting together in a garage, without any consultation with usability experts.

People are responding by claiming that a two-option interface limits the puzzles. I disagree, for the following reasons:
1) As Vince Twelve points out, more than two options are almost always useless. There are only two options already; all that these extra cursor modes add to the game is a bunch of mouse movement and mode-switching. Babar, you say that you'd be irritated if the 'interact' command resulted in pushing a character over a cliff. When would that ever happen? Why would anyone ever implement that? How does that even make sense? If I'm 'interacting' with a character, I think it's pretty clear that I'm trying to talk to them.
2) If your puzzles are solved by choosing the correct interpretation with an object, your puzzles are terrible. Aren't puzzles supposed to be solved by abstract problem-solving? Do we not have inventory items to use? Are we incapable of coming up with puzzles that are more involved than "you have to talk to this man, not USE him"?

Very few games have used the multiple interactions to great effect, though they are out there. A lot of the appeal of Charlie Foxtrot and Ben There, Dan That came from the messages when you used the 'wrong' interactions on objects. I still didn't like the interfaces, but if they'd had a verb-coin GUI I don't think I would have been too heartbroken about the superfluous modes; the creators were using them, even if they weren't using them 'in-game,' if that makes any sense.

I actually love the one-click interface. It's the one I've got in the game I'm finishing up right now.

I also agree that the Longest Journey-style verb coin GUI is the best option if you truly do need more than one interaction, though this one is with reservations. You propose that a good verb-coin interface could be created if you selected a mode that then 'stuck' when you left-clicked. If you're doing this, it's absolutely essential that left-clicking always 'walks' when you're not clicking on a hotspot - there's a reason that 'walk' is the default cursor mode in most interfaces. If you're going this route, however, and this also applies to the two-button interface, you need to make it abundantly obvious to the player that the mouse is over a hotspot. You can do this by changing the mouse graphic (like in The Longest Journey) or by displaying a string with the hotspot's name next to the cursor (like in Beneath a Steel Sky). I also think that a good verb-coin GUI would just not show interactions that won't logically have any effect on the hotspot.

So aside from that, this little article basically says what I've always been thinking.

[Babar]

Babar, you say that you'd be irritated if the 'interact' command resulted in pushing a character over a cliff. When would that ever happen? Why would anyone ever implement that? How does that even make sense? If I'm 'interacting' with a character, I think it's pretty clear that I'm trying to talk to them.

Not to the designer of the game. The designer of the game views that specific character as an obstacle in the game, and the solution to the puzzle is to push him off the cliff. I just got there. I don't know anything about a puzzle, so I attempt to talk to the character. He gets pushed off the cliff. Just an example. Hell, flip it over. I wanted to push the character off the cliff (a fairly simple and easy way to solve the puzzle), but I am only able to talk to him.
See, what matters here is not the GUI, but the level of detail in the game. With good detail, either one of those systems would be 'unbroken', because each of those interactions would have an effect. A good game would allow me to do something like that. A bad game would not even give me a response to attempting that action. An 'efficient' and irritating game would not even consider it, because there was only 2 buttons to click, and one of them did whatever the programmer decided was the way the puzzles in the game would be solved.
Similar stuff has happened to me in some 2-click games (I am remembering KQ7 and Beneath a Steel Sky).

[MashPotato]

I also agree that the Longest Journey-style verb coin GUI is the best option if you truly do need more than one interaction,

Wow, TLJ had a verb coin?  My porous memory has failed me yet again

In my opinion, the "look" verb interaction is a leftover from text adventures, when the game world was described rather than shown. Think about it:

A modern graphic adventure. There's a character sprite on the screen. He's wearing a trenchcoat and hat, and hiding in the shadows. You select the "look" cursor/verb, click on him, and the game says "That guy looks shifty." Well, I knew that from looking at him myself, so "looking" at him in-game was a waste of time. An oversimplification, maybe, but if you continue to distill the look verb down to the core of it's function, you may find that you could do away with it altogether.

I think when the Examine interaction is superfluous (and I agree that it can be in some situations), it's often to do with writing.  Describing things exactly as they appear does seem a bit redundant, but including some background information, or adding a tinge of the character's personality to the description can provide more depth.  For example, instead of saying "That guy looks shifty", the character might add "I wonder if he's got something to hide", "I think I recognize him from a line-up" if he's a detective, or "I'd better stay away from him" if he's a timid character (well, nothing that lame, but you get my point ).  It's perhaps one of the reasons why the Examine option has been eliminated in many Myst-style first-person adventure games, where the character has no real personality (since the character is the player) and the graphics are detailed enough that the appearance of things are self-evident.

[LimpingFish]

I agree, but it's a conscious design decision to use the look/examine interaction in such a way, and more or less reinforces what I was saying about nostalgia.  We're used to being able to use the look/examine interaction to gain extra information not visually available on-screen, but this information was not otherwise available because of the limits of the graphics used.

But, regardless of graphical advances, it continues to be used in this way, because, right or wrong, current adventure games more or less adhere to a decades old template.

[Makeout Patrol]

Babar, you say that you'd be irritated if the 'interact' command resulted in pushing a character over a cliff. When would that ever happen? Why would anyone ever implement that? How does that even make sense? If I'm 'interacting' with a character, I think it's pretty clear that I'm trying to talk to them.

Not to the designer of the game. The designer of the game views that specific character as an obstacle in the game, and the solution to the puzzle is to push him off the cliff. I just got there. I don't know anything about a puzzle, so I attempt to talk to the character. He gets pushed off the cliff. Just an example. Hell, flip it over. I wanted to push the character off the cliff (a fairly simple and easy way to solve the puzzle), but I am only able to talk to him.
See, what matters here is not the GUI, but the level of detail in the game. With good detail, either one of those systems would be 'unbroken', because each of those interactions would have an effect. A good game would allow me to do something like that. A bad game would not even give me a response to attempting that action. An 'efficient' and irritating game would not even consider it, because there was only 2 buttons to click, and one of them did whatever the programmer decided was the way the puzzles in the game would be solved.
Similar stuff has happened to me in some 2-click games (I am remembering KQ7 and Beneath a Steel Sky).

All right, I agree, in that case it would be better to have a verb-coin GUI. I still think that there's pretty clearly only one way that you can 'interact' with any object in the vast majority of adventure games, though.

In my opinion, the "look" verb interaction is a leftover from text adventures, when the game world was described rather than shown. Think about it:

A modern graphic adventure. There's a character sprite on the screen. He's wearing a trenchcoat and hat, and hiding in the shadows. You select the "look" cursor/verb, click on him, and the game says "That guy looks shifty." Well, I knew that from looking at him myself, so "looking" at him in-game was a waste of time. An oversimplification, maybe, but if you continue to distill the look verb down to the core of it's function, you may find that you could do away with it altogether.

I think when the Examine interaction is superfluous (and I agree that it can be in some situations), it's often to do with writing.  Describing things exactly as they appear does seem a bit redundant, but including some background information, or adding a tinge of the character's personality to the description can provide more depth.  For example, instead of saying "That guy looks shifty", the character might add "I wonder if he's got something to hide", "I think I recognize him from a line-up" if he's a detective, or "I'd better stay away from him" if he's a timid character (well, nothing that lame, but you get my point ).  It's perhaps one of the reasons why the Examine option has been eliminated in many Myst-style first-person adventure games, where the character has no real personality (since the character is the player) and the graphics are detailed enough that the appearance of things are self-evident.

I completely disagree that 'look' is outdated. Sure, it can be useless if you're just providing information that the player already knows ("It's a door!" "Her shirt is yellow!"), but most games provide some important information through the 'look' command ("This door leads to the backyard"). Additionally, although "I can't talk to that poster!" doesn't add anything to the game, "It's a poster for 'Casablanca'... I know, that's the one where Gregory Peck falls in love with Audrey Hepburn, the runaway princess, while they're in Rome!" tells us both about the character that owns the poster and the character that's narrating, and really does serve to add depth to the game world.

[blueskirt]

While I don't deny a 2 buttons interface would be better for the 90% of adventure games that do not use the LucasArts and Sierra GUIs at their full potential, I don't think the Sierra and LucasArts GUIs are not at fault here, what is at fault is the game makers. Ideally, all verb interactions should result with either game progression, jokes or comments that tell something about your protagonist's personality or the situation.

We should encourage people to raise the game experience so it fits their GUI rather than lower the GUI so it fits their game experience, to work harder to come up with funny or insightful reactions to useless interactions, to open the door to new puzzle possibilities by coming up with new verbs, something most LucasArts and most Sierra designers, with their text parser roots, weren't affraid to do.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

We know you can't talk to grass, but to use the talk verb on it with no feedback is just as annoying as being told you can't talk to the grass.

I disagree with this because if you get no response then you immediately know there's nothing more going on.  Normal people don't talk to grass, and reducing the number of button presses to a single click on everything wouldn't improve this if you 'wanted' to interact with the grass in this way.  Simply put, I'd rather just have no response at all than a canned 'you can't do that' response, because being told 'you can't do that' is annoying and a waste of time, and in my view at least, breaks immersion. 

[Makeout Patrol]

While I don't deny a 2 buttons interface would be better for the 90% of adventure games that do not use the LucasArts and Sierra GUIs at their full potential, I don't think the Sierra and LucasArts GUIs are not at fault here, what is at fault is the game makers. Ideally, all verb interactions should result with either game progression, jokes or comments that tell something about your protagonist's personality or the situation.

We should encourage people to raise the game experience so it fits their GUI rather than lower the GUI so it fits their game experience, to work harder to come up with funny or insightful reactions to useless interactions, to open the door to new puzzle possibilities by coming up with new verbs, something most LucasArts and most Sierra designers, with their text parser roots, weren't affraid to do.

I see your point, but if you're changing the game to fit the GUI, you're doing it wrong. The GUI must be designed to fit the game, and not vice versa.

[Vince Twelve]

First off, I just want to say thanks for all the great feedback so far!  I love this discussion! 

Secondly, I do agree that the flaws here are mostly the game makers' fault for under-utilizing the potential of the interfaces rather than an inherrent flaw with the interface itself.  I tried to get this across in the article.  However, since the Sierra interface I was discussing uses mostly "Talk" and "Use" for the puzzles, I think it is really hard to design a game that uses these two verbs in enough ways as to justify them.  I ballparked the number 90% for games that don't fully utilize this interface, but really I was just trying to cover my back.  If anyone can name one game, classic Sierra, commercial, amateur, whatever, that fully utilizes this interface to it's potential and list a few puzzles from that game where you had to use both verbs on the same item, or use the verbs in clever ways, let me know.  Otherwise I'm still going to put some of the blame on the interface.

Thirdly, definitely the word "broken" is an exaggeration to be more eye catching or controversial or whatever.  The games are hardly broken if I can still play through them.  I'm just trying to point out some fundemental flaws that are propagated through numerous AGS games, and calling them broken is kind of my catch phrase.  Hope no one takes it to harshly.

I think those replies cover a number of the complaints people had.  I'll still do some direct responses here.

Za_Uvek:

If applied correctly the Sierra interface can form some of the most clever, challenging and logical puzzles to be found. The verbcoin, bah, leaves no challenge and can be tedious most of the times.

See, but I still can't think of any examples of when the Sierra interface was applied correctly to form challenging and logical puzzles that couldn't otherwise be implemented in a less frustrating manner.  Furthermore, I'm not sure how you can say that the verbcoin leaves no challenge when it's fundamentally the same as Sierra, only changing the order of your command input.  Most Verbcoins that I've seen have "Look" "Use" "Talk" and "Inventory"  This is exactly the same as Sierra except that you select the verb after the item instead of the other way around.  What impact does this have on puzzles?

Note also that in the article, I'm not advocating for the verb-coin, just showing it as an alternative with it's own drawbacks.

MashPotato:

Keep the articles comin', Vince!  Reading this one made me think of the default-walk-thingy I just described, which is what I will probably use in my next game unless I can think of something better--these articles have been very timely, I must say Wink

Thanks Mash!  I like that "default-walk-thingy".  Anything that makes cycling the cursors less of a headache!  As it stands now, it's definitely unneccessary to have it as it's own cursor except in cases where there are hotspots all over the place and it becomes hard to click anywhere but on a hotspot.  I had this problem in one room of Resonance where there's a big car in the middle of the screen, and you have to use to choose strategic places to click to walk to the other side of it.  Still trying to figure out how to remedy this.

Stupot

I'm tempted to think there is something satisfying in trying lots of different combinations of actions; the more you are clicking on the mouse, the more you feel as though you are doing something rather than simply watching an interactive movie.

I see what you're saying here, but I have to believe that there are better ways to add complexity to a game than making them try multiple combinations.  With the Sierra system you get "Ooh, it's a person!  I know, I'll try to Talk to him!  Haha!  Solved that puzzle!"  And with more verbs (LA) you get "Ooh, it's an item!  Let's systematically try every verb on it!  Aha!  The developer meant for me to Push the thing!  Solved that puzzle!"  Neither of those satisfy me, but maybe some players enjoy those small victories. 

Edmundo and JBurger  I quite agreed with your posts!  Thanks!

ProgZMax  What happened to our unified voice?    I apologize for the blanket statements.  Part of it was me trying to ruffle some feathers in order to generate discussion.  Both of these system's faults usually lie in the under utilization by the designer.  Really, if AGS didn't exist to bring adventure design to the masses, I probably wouldn't have any problem with these interfaces.  However, I do think that both interfaces are really hard to design for because properly utilizing all those verbs takes care and planning.

I'd still like to hear more examples of games that do utilize the full potential of these interfaces.

LimpingFish and ProgZMax

We know you can't talk to grass, but to use the talk verb on it with no feedback is just as annoying as being told you can't talk to the grass.

Ha!  I agree!  The grass probably shouldn't be a hotspot at all, actually, unless there's some puzzle in which you need to use it.  And ProgZ' point regarding this is interesting.  On one hand, I don't like not getting feedback for my actions, but on the other hand, having no response helps me filter useless "I can't do that" statements from useful clues.

One thing that I did in Nanobots was to remove mouseover indications for things that couldn't be interacted with using the active verb.  So if you were using Chembot's "Mix" ability, the mouseover text only appears when the cursor is over something with liquid.  Clicking anywhere else results in nothing.  Better, I thought, than having her say "I can't mix that, dummy!" all the time.  Similarly, you can try to push most things on the desk, including bots, but things that are nailed down, like the shelf connected to the back wall, don't produce a mouseover effect.  That shelf only produces a mouseover for Brainbot's "Analyze" action, because you can gain some useful knowledge from doing that.

The problem with this is that, for example with the grass, if I mouseover it with the talk cursor and get no mouseover indication, or try to click on it and get no response as ProgZ suggested, I assume it is not interactable.  So when a later puzzle involves using the scissors on the grass to get some grass clippings, I don't think of it, because I'm under the assumption that the grass is not interactable.

Makeout Patrol A good post.  Thanks.

Babar

The designer of the game views that specific character as an obstacle in the game, and the solution to the puzzle is to push him off the cliff. I just got there. I don't know anything about a puzzle, so I attempt to talk to the character. He gets pushed off the cliff. Just an example. Hell, flip it over. I wanted to push the character off the cliff (a fairly simple and easy way to solve the puzzle), but I am only able to talk to him.

An excellent point!  And this is a situation where having the choices would make the game excellent.  Two ways to solve the puzzle, talk to the guy, or just go the easy, evil route.  Here, if the developer were so inclined, clicking on the character with the two-button system could make the character think to himself 'How do I want to go about this?' and then give some options (via a dialog choice or something) "Threaten him."  "Sweet talk him."  "Push him off the cliff." etc.  However, having these choices worked into the verb system of a Sierra/Lucas Arts interface would be much more elegant than having to choose the choices from a list.  Use the hand to push him, the talk to talk to him, or give him that cake from your inventory to try to sweet talk him.  That would be an example of a well-implemented Sierra interface.  Now just keep that up through the rest of the game...

Also, having a contextual verb coin would work here well.  A contextual verb coin doesn't have "Talk" "Look" "Use" on it, it has a different set of commands for each object you click on.  So, a potted plant might have "Look" "Break off a leaf"  "Push to the left"  "Push to the right" "Hide behind".  Not all of those would be needed in the game, but adding them can add that complexity and sense that you still have to figure out what you're going to do with it yourself.  And it's a choice that requires more thought than "Hmm... should I use 'Use' or 'Talk' on this plant... Duh."

blueskirt  I also see your point, but I have to agree with Makeout Patrol.  Perhaps it's just a semantics argument, but I think the interface should be designed around the gameplay, not the other way around.


Also, the necessity (or lack thereof) of the "look" verb is an interesting discussion.  It likely depends on the way you design your game.  I'm kind of wishing that I had left it out of Resonance because there's so much to write! 

[Za_Uvek]

Agreed, I must have verbcoin mixed up with something else and it has no impact on the puzzles.
However, I will always see the Sierra interface as challenging and logical. Frustrating, no, really hard for some, yes!

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

What happened to our unified voice?

There are some things I just can't agree to!

The problem with this is that, for example with the grass, if I mouseover it with the talk cursor and get no mouseover indication, or try to click on it and get no response as ProgZ suggested, I assume it is not interactable.  So when a later puzzle involves using the scissors on the grass to get some grass clippings, I don't think of it, because I'm under the assumption that the grass is not interactable.

You don't actually assume this because talking alone doesn't yield results, do you?  If it's clear you can use the grass in some way, I typically make the use/interact/examine command do 'something' to indicate there's value there.  If something has no value at all, I typically just give it no other action than maybe examine, since so many people seem to enjoy looking all over game screens at things.  This actually seems to be a very common 'need' in games of this nature, like 'find the item' games, which rely heavily on examining everything.  People seem to like to be able to look at (and get a response for) virtually all of the items in a room, and it's an easy way to extend gameplay without hurting anyone.  Basically, by simply 'cutting off' a redundant action on an item, I'm effectively telling people 'this action is useless on this thing' without any delay, and without some kind of annoying statement that either insults their intelligence (I can think of a few recent games which do this) or annoys them.

[Akatosh]

If anyone can name one game, classic Sierra, commercial, amateur, whatever, that fully utilizes this interface to it's potential and list a few puzzles from that game where you had to use both verbs on the same item, or use the verbs in clever ways, let me know. 

Me Go Store one through three. 

[Storygamer]

Hey Vince!

I actually agree 100% with your arguments here--it actually felt like I was listening to myself talk, since the points you made in both this and in Part One were all things I've noticed myself while playing games.  I got a good laugh out of your Venn Diagrams--I've often thought that exact same thing about the Talk/Use functionality in games like Gabriel Knight, King's Quest, Quest for Glory etc.

One thing I would change before you post this on your blog: I wouldn't draw specific examples from the indy-game community.  Perhaps it's just that I myself tend to be a bit more sensitive to indy game-makers because they're...well, indy game-makers.  A lot of them (I suppose I should say "us" even though I have yet to produce a finished AGS game for the community) are your average work-in-an-office or going-to-college variety of person and might not be used to criticism of their admittedly amateur games.

So, I would either be vague about which games you mean (instead of "Ben There, Dan That", say "one indy game I recently played"), or use examples that are commercial rather than free-indy--such as the aforementioned Gabriel Knight, King's Quest etc.  There's plenty of commercial games to draw from, whose designers are used to negative response and know the risk they take when they produce the game, that you don't need to rely on free indy games as examples.

Just a thought, take it or leave it.

[Dualnames]

Vince, must say that I agree with what you actually do say(concerning part 2).

Verb coin is good but the delay time is.. terrible. But concerning game interfaces they must be created in order to fit the purposes of the damn games. Example(this is not a self promo): In the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, many things are defined by the fact how long does it take you to do things. And opening your inventory to select items can be stupid and takes time as well. That's why I've implemented the quick slots. Also the game was initially designed to have a sierra style gameplay. But since this would make the game frustrating and very very difficult I decided to go with a very simple verb coin system based on the Reactor's 09 improved verb coin system, which I call Reactor Flipped. Since left click opens the GUI. However based on what you say about verb coins disadvantage that sometimes confuses the player, talk interaction is only available when you talk to characters. Also the game DOES use sierra interface(Dark rooms), but then its very important and the game depends on the interface being like that. There's no bloody pops up but one which is in the top left corner and can only be active if you really want. Not accidentally.

[The Ivy]

"The Legend of Kyrandia" had what I would consider a very helpful interface. If my memory serves me correctly, clicking on something would automatically interact with it. If you clicked on something you could pick up, like a gem, the gem would become your cursor. You then had the choice of leaving the gem by clicking on the ground, or placing it in a slot in your inventory. The inventory itself was always "open" by being docked at the bottom of the screen. You could even sort things according to your whim.


Spot the big freaking red gem.

As far as I recall, clicking on something you couldn't pick up would yield something like a look interaction, and the game would basically tell you whether or not the item was useful. Clicking on a person would lead to a conversation, although I think these were mostly done as cutscenes rather than interactive dialog trees. Not a bad way of doing things, in my opinion.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I mostly agree about Kyrandia, since it's one of my favorite adventure games (and certainly one of the most polished-looking Amiga adventure games made).  Since so much of the gameplay revolved around massive inventory management, the pick up and manually place items approach probably made the most sense to them, since by the time you reach the caves you're dropping items everywhere to pick up new stuff to come back and get the items later!

  I would've liked it if the right click auto-tossed the inventory item in your hand back into the inventory, though; that would've made things a bit quicker if you picked up the wrong bauble from the inventory or just wanted to quickly toss in something you got from the scene .  All in all, I did like the interface, though the gameplay was fairly uncomplicated and wouldn't have really benefitted from a set of verbs.  It was far more inventory-related than anything else.

[Snarky]

I should say how glad I am that you´re doing these posts, Vince. I actually have an HCI degree (though nowadays I´m more involved in user studies than in usability testing), and I think interface design is an underappreciated aspect of game making.

The first article is pretty uncontroversial, basic stuff, and I pretty much agree. In the second, though, I think you make a number of problematic statements.

First of all, the "Sierra Operating System": One of the important things about making a UI is to tailor it to your application. An adventure game is not an operating system, and the design that is right for Windows is not right for King´s Quest, or vice versa. Your little example is therefore only confusing and misleading.

One of the ways in which games are different from OS-es (and most other apps) is that many of the traditional concerns of usability (efficiency, no unnecessary complexity, obviousness, learnability) either do not apply, or only do so with modifications. Most tasks in most computer games are made much more difficult than they need to be; usually the computer could do most of the work for you, but where´s the fun in that? (The usual joke is that the optimal usability solution for any computer game is a button marked "WIN".)

Back in the 1980s, Eric Solomon wrote a book on game design where he described adventure games as games where the object of the game was to figure out the interface. Obviously, he was describing text parser games, where discovering the set of useful verbs is indeed a big part of the gameplay. If the UI was obscure, this was at least in part deliberate. The trend in graphic adventures since then has been towards simplicity of UI, probably for the better, but we still need to maintain the balance inherent in the fact that adventure games still are about trying to figure out what you can do.

In analysing a game UI, we need to take into consideration not just all the usual usability aspects (when they apply), but also how well it supports play. That is, ways in which it makes the game more fun. (For example, a "highlight all hotspots" feature, found in some adventure games including Simon the Sorcerer, is helpful from a usability POV, but arguably reduces the fun-factor of playing.)

OK, on to the specifics of your complaints about the iconic Sierra/LEC UIs. Mostly, you seem to have a problem with the number of distinct actions offered. The debate of one-action vs. multi-verb UIs is much broader than the particular pros and cons of these two interfaces, and has been going on since parser games were first replaced by point-and-click. I am not convinced that that you are right when you argue that in most games you only need to be able to do one action to each object in the world, and I think your Venn diagrams are inaccurate representations of at least most LucasArts games. One example I´ve seen used before is the "Push Sophia" puzzle at the Cairo bazaar in FOA. And even if many objects only have one meaningful associated action, it is not always obvious what that action is (remember the "Idol of Many Hands" drowning puzzle in Monkey Island). Having more verbs available does genuinely increase the number of possible actions, and thereby possible puzzle solutions. (Though obviously doubling the number of verbs does not double the number of possible meaningful actions. The effect is not linear.)

Even if this was not so, I would argue that, when used well, it increases the immersion with the game world, and thereby makes the game more fun. Like you quoted in that post by Lee in Limbo on your blog, a fun adventure game should be about more than just solving puzzles. The ability to "do stuff" that aren´t (just) moves in a puzzle solution is essential to making any non-abstract game fun. In an adventure, this starts off with simple things like being able to walk around, look at things, and try actions just because you want to. Having more verbs creates more opportunities for non-essential stuff to try. That´s what Sierra tended to do with all those "useless" cursor-object combinations.

Now, I agree that many games, especially those that are not by LucasArts or Sierra, in fact only use one action verb per object in almost all cases. And since neither interface is in fact perfect, the other benefits of all those verbs may not be enough to justify them. Often, you can compensate for removing a verb by adding an inventory item or a hotspot. For example, in FOA you could "Use cattle prod on Sophia" or click on "Sophia´s back".

So yes, a game designer should definitely take a look at his or her game, and see if multiple verbs are necessary to the puzzles, will help immersion, or is otherwise a good thing for the game. If not, a right-button: look, left-button: walk/action UI is probably best. If more verbs ARE needed, however, I think that the LucasArts and Sierra UIs are both fairly decent solutions to a pretty tricky problem, and they have the VERY SIGNIFICANT benefit of being standardized and well-known by most players. Most amateurs are not likely to come up with a better design on their own, so you´ll end up with a worse interface that people will have to learn just to play your game.

What´s so great about the Sierra and (especially) the LucasArts UIs? To be continued...

[Snarky]

(Sorry for the double post, but the two are logically separate.)

Let me sing the praises of the standard LucasArts UI (I always called it the Scumm Bar, but that seems to be just me), since that's the one I'm more fond of.

OK, so the drawbacks are obvious. It takes up around a third of the screen. It requires moving the mouse back and forth to one corner of the screen any time you want to do something (or learning some not-always-obvious keyboard shortcuts). How often do you ever use Push or Pull? But let's look at the positives!

First of all, it's incredibly intuitive to use. All of the verbs are right there on the screen (well, they took away "walk to" in the later versions, but by that time people were familiar with clicking on any non-hotspot to walk there), and it's obvious that they represent the things you can do. Compare that to, for instance, verb-coins, which are IMPOSSIBLE to use unless you know the secret (the game will simply appear to not respond to anything you try). Try giving a novice gamer an adventure with a LucasArts/style UI versus a verb-coin UI and see which one they find easier.

Secondly, the sentence bar is pure genius. If you're just mousing over things, it shows you the hotspot name, but if you click on a verb, it starts to build a sentence: "Look at ... important-looking-pirates", "Use... rubber chicken with a a pulley in the middle with ... cable" This is a great "fun feature" that encourages exploration and play (and that "Eureka" feeling when you suddenly put the right ideas together), but it also serves as a transition for players coming from a text parser background. ("See? It's just as if you wrote the command yourself")

Thirdly, the inventory is on-screen along with the main game world. This makes the inventory-based gameplay that is the hallmark of LucasArts titles much smoother than it would be with, say, a Sierra interface.

Fourthly, LucasArts put in a bunch of little touches that makes it much more user-friendly. First of all, you have the default action on right-click. Then you have the "cancel-action-while-walking-towards-hotspot-by-clicking-on-something-else" feature (which separates a good LEC-UI clone from a poor one). Then you have the keyboard shortcuts, and the way they still light up the buttons and start building a sentence in the sentence bar. I think that for an experienced player using shortcut keys, the LEC interface is one of the quickest and most efficient there is.

Finally, you have the nice way the interface is darkened out during the cut-scenes, creating a widescreen effect, and the way the dialog options fit in the same space during conversations.

It should also be recognized that LucasArts invented (AFAIK) the idea of hotspot indications on mouseover. And I can personally vouch for the fact that it's remarkably playable even without a mouse, using the keyboard arrows to control the cursor.

So are all of these excellent properties just luck? Was the UI just put together at random by a couple of programmers without any usability considerations and without any thought to design, like Edmundo argues? If you believe that you're on crack. The LucasArts UI, particularly in the form first seen in Monkey Island, was a remarkably elegant design, and a great step forward compared to what had existed prior. It's a little clunky nowadays, and later innovations (like double-click to skip to the next room) improve on it, but it's still a pretty good choice for an adventure game designer, especially one making a game in the same spirit.