Abstract
A Game’s narrative is perhaps one of the key components of creating player immersion. As technology advances, game developers increase their toolset for creating increasingly complex game worlds. The UI has a crucial role, providing the player with feedback about the various attributes and mechanics within the game. Some games sought to integrate the traditionally intrusive UI within the game’s narrative and art, by the means of Diegetic UI. The goal of this research paper is to understand how integrating the User Interface into the game’s art and narrative—creating what is called a Diegetic Interface—can increase the feeling of immersion for the player. To identify the processes through which meaning is observed in Diegetic UI, we’ve relied on the Discoursive Semiotics proposed by A. J. Greimas and to assess if these Diegetic Representations affect Usability, we employed Game Usability Heuristics proposed by Desurvire and Wiberg. The methodology proved to yield interesting results regarding the relationships between UI and Narrative as well as the Usability impact derived from such implementation in the game Metro: Last Light.
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Doval, G., Almeida, F., Nesi, L. (2022). A Semiotic and Usability Analysis of Diegetic UI: Metro—Last Light. In: Duarte, E., Rosa, C. (eds) Developments in Design Research and Practice. Senses 2019. Springer Series in Design and Innovation , vol 17. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86596-2_11
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