Our favourite games speak to us in a secret language that makes their rules legible. They instruct us, guide our decision-making, and clarify how we interact with them. But how? The answer is found in the fields of user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design. In The Game UI Bible, creator of the Game UI Database Edd Coates explores the past, present, and exciting future of these rapidly evolving disciplines.
In the first half of The Game UI Bible, Coates discusses the foundations of UI and UX design. This section begins in the earliest days of PC, console, and arcade gaming and travels through to the modern day to track continuity and change in the fields’ key tenets as luminary designers elaborated on – and sometimes challenged – them.
In The Game UI Bible’s second half, Coates speaks directly to those luminaries. Across a series of case studies, Coates is in conversation with the key UI and UX designers who brought benchmark games to life, from God of War and Half-Life: Alyx to Inscryption and Monument Valley. These interviews are surrounded by essays on topics ranging from Nintendo’s Switch branding to the relationship between game UI and meme culture, all of which illustrate just how significant and far-reaching these fields are.
Featuring countless visual examples – and select spreads printed across see-through acetate layers allowing you to peel back a game’s UI element by element – The Game UI Bible is overflowing with UI principles in action. Whether you’re a gaming enthusiast looking to deepen your appreciation for the craft or a game designer looking to sharpen yours, there is plenty of wisdom for everyone in The Game UI Bible.
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Jim Unwin, LittleBigPlanet
Marie Jasmin, Assassin’s Creed II
Remi Laforte, Batman: Arkham Asylum & City
Dino Ignacio, Dead Space
Luke Nalker, Half-Life: Alyx
Whitney Bell, Civilization VI
Wren Brier, Unpacking
David Fernández Huerta, Monument Valley I & II
Alex Kanaris-Sotiriou, Roki
Andy Lang, God of War
Simon Brewer, Batman: Arkham Knight
Tom Kiss, Tearaway
Julien Mario, Dishonored
Miguel Sanz, Dreams
Dan Pratt, Need for Speed: Unbound
Andrew Shouldice, Tunic
Dan Mullins, Inscryption
Steven Walsh, OlliOlliWorld
Specifications
Author: Edd Coates
Hardback book
Illustrated cover by Doug John Miller
400+ pages
Game UI Database-themed slipcase
Signed by Edd Coates
Poster illustrated by Doug John Miller
A Word From Edd Coates:
Game UI is easily the most misunderstood and underappreciated field of game design. In 2020, I sought to remedy this by launching the Game UI Database, a comprehensive archive of more than 80,000 relevant screenshots, now used by game studios across the world. Now, six years later, as a culmination of my work on the database, and the notes I’ve collated over the past 15 years of my career as a designer, I’m thrilled to present The Game UI Bible.
This book has enabled me to dig deeper into the world of game UI/UX than the database could ever allow, recounting the deep history of the field, as well as some of the incredible innovations we’ve seen over the years. From the world’s first HUD in Space Invaders to the emergence of implicit UX and the growing relationship between branding and UI, I can comfortably say this is the most unashamedly comprehensive guide to game UI that has ever existed.
It has also allowed me to meet many of my heroes in the field who designed some of the most iconic and recognisable interfaces of all time. The birth of diegetic UI in Dead Space, the beautiful chaos that went into making Batman: Arkham Asylum, the reinvention of VR in Half-Life Alyx… all of their stories are incredible, and I know you’re going to have a lot of fun reading them.
I’m incredibly proud of this book, and I can’t WAIT for you to read it!
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