Episode 08: User Experience in Papers, Please

After our discussion of Papers, Please ’s lessons in instructional design , this week we found the game’s interesting and sometimes counterintuitive applications of user experience and design principles. There’s friction in almost everything you do in this game, but why isn’t that annoying? And just how does Papers, Please handle abstracting analog objects into digital representations? Why did we keep playing despite such a high cognitive load? This is our second episode of a three-part series. We’ll conclude our Arstotzkan adventures next week, when we examine Papers, Please’s moral choices and emotional impact. Papers, Please is available on PC, Mac, Linux, and iPad. At the time we recorded this episode, the iPad version was broken and didn’t factor into our discussion. Show Notes & Links: How to Game Friction for Better UX Mass Effect’s terrible inventory management system Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Reality is Broken, by Jane McGonigal Affordances Zotero Video review of Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor Other games mentioned in this episode: Mass Effect No Man’s Sky Betrayal at Krondor Steel Battalion Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor

You can listen to Episode 08: User Experience in Papers, Please online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Episode 08: User Experience in Papers, Please is an episode from Unlocking Games by Chad Haefele & Brandon Carper.

This episode is 0:00 long.

This episode was published on Oct 7, 2016.

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