About this time last year I wrote a small piece on adding a bit of entertainment to the install process for PC games, citing in particular Blizzard’s World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Litch King, as a good example. I have a feeling that Blizzard is going this direction will all their games, because the same thing happens when you install StarCraft 2. It was a good idea before and it’s a good idea now. The install process is sadly still necessary for PC games and giving the player something to do while waiting for that little progress bar to tick forward is always a nice addition.

Kotaku has the full series telling the entire story if you are interested, check it out here.

I’ve talked about my love for the Brutal Legend menu before, even went as far as describing it as golden, it’s nice to see designers release such an amazing indepth look at their work. Joe Kowalski UI designer on Double Fine‘s Brutal Legend goes into great detail explaining how he created the interactive gate fold album. The After Effect’s flowchart in particular is astounding, showing just how much work such an awesome menu really took.

It’s nice to see UI designers in the game industry showing their work in more detail. It’s this kind of stuff that pushes us to improve, build off of each other successes and continue to not just make great UI but great experiences as well.

TouchArcade reported yesterday on an interesting patent filed by Apple in 2008. The patent fin question is US20100081505 and is titled ACCESSORY FOR PLAYING GAMES WITH A PORTABLE ELECTRONIC DEVICE. The patent is described as follows:

Circuits, methods, and apparatus that provide user interfaces for playing games on portable electronic devices. One example provides a game accessory having input controls for playing video, audio, and other types of games. The game accessory can have input controls, such as buttons, joysticks, and D-pads. Another example provides a game accessory having a thumb pad or keyboard. Other possible features include microphones, cameras and camera lenses, speakers, a second screen, rumble, and motion detection. The game accessory may have a recess sized to fit the portable electronic device. Inserts or removable adapters can be used to fit portable electronic devices having different sizes. The portable electronic device can be held in the accessory using sliding covers, clips, or other engaging members. In other examples, the accessory can communicate with another accessory for head-to-head game play. The accessory may include circuitry for power, identification, and authorization.

This is all very interesting and exciting for the future of Apple’s devices, especially when it comes to gaming. Since the SDK 3.0 there have been a few devices in the work from third parties, I’ve mentioned 22moo‘s GameBone before, but there hasn’t been any noise from Apple itself. With Apple supporting the development of a physical controller I think it’ll have a stronger chance of being supported by software developers, than 22Moo will have. It’ll be exciting to see what the future holds for iPhone gaming.

See Touch Arcade’s full article here.

The iCade, an arcade cabinet for your iPad. It’s not real, but man do I ever wish it was. I love anything that’ll get us past replicated d-pads. Until this is actually made we’ll just have to hold out for an iPad version of the Gamebone. Thanks for the chuckle ThinkGeek.

If you’re in New York and you want to sit in on an awesome talk from Kevin McGinnis the lead Rock Band User Interfaces Artist I’d recommend clicking this link and registering to sit in on the discussion. It’s bound to be a good time. As Jason Santa Maria said in his tweet, “come early or stay late to play Rock Band on the big stage!”

About Kevin McGinnis
Kevin is a North West native of the United States and for nearly 6 years has been the Lead User Interfaces Artist at Harmonix Music Systems. He has worked with and directed designers, printers, animators, programmers and outsource companies across virtually all disciplines of design. His roots are in graphic design and holds a Masters Degree in Graphic Design from RISD. Along with being in the trenches creating Interfaces for video game industry Kevin likes to share his experiences which brings him to speak around the world from Seattle, San Francisco, Germany, Poland and South Korea.