Feature: 'GDCE: Black & White 2: How to Design a Giant'

In today's main Gamasutra feature, we cover Lionhead designer Ron Millar's GDC Europe session, looking at the relationship between the user interface and the user experience. Ren Reynolds reports on this presentation as Millar explained the design philosophy behind the Black & White 2 UI, its implementation and the challenges that innovations in gameplay presented: "The design philosophy that Lionhead Studios adopted for the sequel to Black & White was to enhance the player's feeling of being a god in the game world by immersing them as fully as possible in that world. What this meant in practice was to largely reject the standard model of game menus and data-panels for an interface that forms part of the game world itself. This presented the design team with all kinds of challenges which were made even harder by the decision to expand the scope of B&W 2 beyond its god game heritage to include elements such as real-time strategy, simulation, city building and a physics engine. Undaunted, the team believed firmly that "underlying systems can be deeply complex" just so long as you "make them simple and fun for the player to access."" You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject (no registration required, please feel free to link to the article from external websites).