There Are Many Ways To Drive A Car
How You Move Says A Lot About You
Game worlds are getting bigger every day, and players are expected to explore more space than ever before. And there are so many imaginative ways a team can navigate players from A to B, each with its own benefit.
One popular method developers use involves America’s favorite pastime: driving! Just looking at how developers handle this “driving problem” in so many different ways can show us how much a game’s UI can impact how players interact with the game’s systems.
The Ever-Present GPS Navigation
Understanding minimaps
We’re all familiar with the minimap, a small, off-to-the-side map showing the player what’s immediately around them. The minimap is a cultural icon.
In games, the minimap isn’t always synonymous with driving, but you can't look at the GPS-like UI element without paying homage. Because it takes a familiar mental model from our day-to-day lives, most players should find it more intuitive to understand.
What are we looking at?
In Cyberpunk 2077, this UI model works well for a variety of different scenarios, be they walking around, fighting for their lives, and, of course, driving.
This minimap solution highlights information without jumping to a map menu, allowing players to remain in their high-action flow state for longer. Great for a game with so many activities that might slip a wandering player’s eye while pulling 200 MPH in the Caliburn.
What comes with traveling at such high speeds is a problem I like to call “corner vortex syndrome.” Player attention will be tugged back and forth between the world and the map, with some players primarily focused on the map. And all of this is wonderful for getting players to content they want to do. But how do we continue to navigate players while focusing on keeping their eyes on the world around them?
On-Road Wayfinding
Watching where we’re going
Let’s put the GPS right on the road. Simple solution! It’s also compelling enough to start being rolled out into tools like Google Maps to help immerse and direct users as they walk. It makes me excited to think about something like this in VR!
As for the games that utilize this method effectively, Saints Row (2022) and Watchdogs (2014) immediately come to mind.
Take Saints Row, for instance. This series prides itself on its over-the-top sandbox worlds, and what fun would a sandbox be if you spent half the time looking away from it? Placing the primary navigation system on the road in the player’s immediate view turns the minimap into an auxiliary form of navigation.
And Watchdogs does this as well. The team sought to get players from location to location as effectively as possible, which works well for a game that uses its world as a venue for more elaborate quests and gameplay sequences at specified locations. But we’ll have to be careful as this method is another quick way to get players caught in the loop of going only from location to location without learning to explore the levels around them on their own.
Driving With Level Cues
Helping players find their own way
So, what about teams that want to focus more on immersing players in their world and having that directly tie in with their level design? Let’s look at Mafia 3, a game that transports players back to the 60s with all aspects of its design.
The navigation is subtle and shows up via road signs, a real-world signifier the character would use to navigate. Systems like this start leaning on the work of the level design teams to create a well-composed system of UI and level engagement.
Take a look at, industry darling, Mario Kart 8. There are no map-based navigation features, so the level design has to rely on different visual cues to help influence navigation. This is why it feels so rewarding to finally hit that shortcut you learned about on Yoshi’s Island.
It also risks frustrating players who might get lost or feel slighted by misunderstanding a visual cue, etc. I know I can’t be the only one to make a wrong turn on Paris Promenade.
Deciding How To Drive In Your Game
Finding your way
When it comes to driving in games, there's no one-size-fits-all solution. It's a complex challenge that affects many aspects of a game's design and player experience. Now that we’ve considered the bigger picture and how driving fits into the larger context of the game, we can create a more cohesive experience that reinforces other game mechanics.
So, next time you're designing driving mechanics or UI, keep in mind how they can build upon the overall gaming experience. It's all about creating a system that's not just fun to drive but also feels like a cohesive, immersive experience with the rest of the game.