From the course: Universal Principles of Design
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Hick’s law
- [William] Hi I'm William Lidwell and this is Universal Principles of Design. In this movie, Hick's Law, When It Pays to Run with the Herd. When you look back at the golden age of video games, almost all of the games could be played with just one joystick and one button. These relatively simple input controls forced gameplay to present problem situations with a small set of options. Pac-Man, up and down, left, right. Space Invaders, left and right, and shoot. Donkey Kong, up, down, left, right, and jump, and so on. As a result, games were easy to learn, and fun for players of all ages. Compare this to the input controls of modern gaming consoles, like the PS4 and and Xbox One, which have something like two joysticks, a directional pad, eight buttons, two triggers, and then many of these are expected to be used in combination with one another. This enables very sophisticated gameplay because games can now present problem situations with 10, 20, or more options at any given time, but…
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