Mobile Gaming – Top 5 Factors Leading To Bad User Experience

Mobile isn’t just the future, it’s today and it’s everything. It became a natural extension to the human body without much exaggeration. With the evolution of gaming and their compatibility, mobile phones became the vessel for some high-end games. Without the rich consoles and distinct controls, mobile phone gaming experience depends highly on the personalized experience. To get that user experience right, developers have to consider different combinations of variables that affect the behaviour of gamers while playing. It can be the make or break element for the games to stand the competition on stores and stay on the mobiles of gamers.

Dysfunctional, dated and cumbersome interface :

The first impression is always the best impression. This simple rule will never become dated. First-time user experience (FTUE) is a user’s first interaction with the game. It is important to have a clean and simple interface that makes it easier for the user to take less time in understanding the game and get right into the game. With the attention span of users being drastically reduced by the day and the increase in free alternative games on the store, it wouldn’t take much time for the player to exit from the game and go for another.

Performance :

The change in the performance of games is deemed to be compromised when the Gaming sector got another platform in mobiles other than the PC consoles. Players will not take no for a performance dip. They want to get into the game quickly and play as smoothly as possible. So, it is essential to bring down the loading time and make the game multithreaded. If the game is feature-rich, it is also important to have a simple UI for consistent framerates and optimum performance overall.

Power consumption :

One thing that players don’t want to experience ever while playing a game is a notification of low battery or over-heating or even worse, mobile getting switched off. Games that involve complex graphics and hefty user interface usually fall prey to this issue. Such games not only eat up your data quietly but also put the hardware of a mobile phone under heavy load and increase the power consumption and temperature. This distracts the players during the game and puts their excitement off. That momentary distraction may even cause the player to exit the game.

Touch-to-display latency :

The time gap between touching the mobile screen and witnessing the result or reaction for that is called Touch-to-display latency. It is more popularly known as LAG in the game. Longer the latency gets, harder the ability to focus. Though the latency is mostly device-dependent, it can also be reduced with thoughtful design and development. Smooth renders, optimum resolutions for UI and non-UI elements in the games, and consistent frame rates can help to reduce the touch-to-display latency.

Navigation and clarity in the goal :

Nobody wants to be lost in a game with no clarity of what to do, how to do and where to go. This is where the navigation can make a difference with proper structuring to the game. It involves menu identification, ease of access to the core features and having a flowchart. It allows the user to reach for his required option without sweating around. This architecture will also allow the user to have clarity on what his go-to actions are and what his final objective is. A lack of it will only turn off the user’s experience and make him wander over the UI aimlessly. A simple UI, easily accessible menus, entry points, exit points and defined daily goals with rewards are essential to keep the gamer excited throughout.

The end-user experience is what defines and decides the fate of any game. The cost of customer retention is increasing by the day with new games popping up every single day on the stores. A bad user experience will only make it worse by losing gamers, investors and eventually the revenue. Companies like RubixQ which gaming solutions hire to improve the user experiences in mobile games with mobile test automation, monitoring solutions and other techniques to reduce user-end related issues for a better product.