Before I even begin writing this post, I want to clarify that this is not a review of a video game. For the record, I just started playing the game and I’m really enjoying it so far. My intentions with this post is to document a UX issue that could have been caught with some extra UX analysis but an example outside of the regular domain for UX discussion, (which is usually business applications.
Disclaimer
For the record, the content contained within this blog post is based solely on my experience with the Xbox 360 version game and the character import feature. This, in no way, reflects the thoughts or opinions of anyone at BioWare or Electronic Arts.
Plus, the game is fantastic as per all BioWare titles that I have played.
A Quick Introduction
For all those people out there who read my blog and are not video game players, Mass Effect is a series of games from BioWare for the PC and Xbox 360. The first game was released back in 2007 and the second game was released recently on January 26th of this year. One of the interesting features of the Mass Effect games is the ability to make storyline decisions that effect the outcome of the game. For example, when you come across the last “queen” of an alien species, you can choose to whether or not to kill it. This decision ultimately decides whether or not the alien species will become extinct.
With all sorts of different decisions like the example above in the game, it would be a pity to see the consequences of your decisions disappear because they made a sequel to the game. Different game means different save file, right? Not exactly. In the case of Mass Effect, you are able to import your character information from the first game (assuming you finished the game) and continue the story of Mass Effect with all the consequences of the decisions you made in your previous game.
This is an amazing feature and I was really pumped to hear about it. The idea of continuing through to the new instalment of the series with all of the decisions that I made in the game world carried over is a fantastic one. Turns out there was a little more to it.
My User Experience
After playing a bunch of Dragon Age, I was very excited to get into the sequel for Mass Effect, and because of this I pre-ordered my copy from Amazon and patiently waited for launch day.
It arrived for the weekend, and my better half and I prepared for our night playing this amazing game. We loaded up the game, went to the character import tool, and waited to select our save file from the first Mass Effect.
Loading complete. Result: No games found.
Huh. Well, let’s try setting the storage device to make sure it is pointing at the memory card.
Loading complete. Same result.
That is the short of it. Most of our evening was spent reading up on how to make this work. Eventually we came across this article explaining things. Turns out that when you beat the first Mass Effect, a file is created on the Xbox 360 that is not visible through the regular interface where you see your other save files. This is a file that is just not visible by any regular means provided by a game or that operating system.
The Red Ring of Death
In our case, our first Xbox 360 red ringed and needed to be replaced. Considering that we had access to memory cards to move our save files to the new console we figured we were covered. Apparently, that was an incorrect assumption.
Not to be deterred, we went out to find a copy of Mass Effect 1 (as we lent out our copy) and returned home to beat it again, which made the hidden file on our hard drive and life was good.
The UX Fail
I suppose you could say that my case was an special case. I mean, how many players are going to be playing the second Mass Effect game on a different console, have their copy of the first game lent out to a friend, and only realize that they need the game when rental stores are closing?
The last two problems could be chalked up to bad timing. But the Xbox 360 failure happening between the release of Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2? Not only has almost every Xbox 360 owner I know had their console die on them, but I have heard of others that have had the same hardware issues.
Considering that these hardware issues are common play with the Xbox 360, why would you consider adding a feature that is strictly dependent on the hardware? Hence, the UX fail and my reason for writing this post.
In the end this experience was not detrimental to my game. I am playing the game and really enjoying it. Still, when we open up a game only to have the excitement whisked away by features that appear to be broken, it takes away from some of the magic and ultimately makes me question the value in my purchase.
The Point
The point is simple: when you are developing features that live in the unexplored regions of your software genre make sure you spend the time identifying all the possible failure points. It doesn’t mean that you have to support all of them, but you will probably want to try and cover the ones that are likely to come up.
The other point: showing people in Developer Land that user experiences live outside of their business and web applications. The exist in all types of software, even games. And although they can be fantastic games, they can still fail with the user experience in some capacity.
Catch you on the flip side.
Resources
Mass Effect Homepage
BioWare Homepage
Joystiq – Game Informer: Xbox 360 at 54.2 percent failure rate (August 17th, 2009)
Note: I realize that a survey done by a magazine may not be the best source, but the Xbox 360 hardware issues are well known in the gaming community, and this article shows that there are at least more than just myself with the problem.
