> has been proven kind of moot since most games have their own domain specific UI schemes and people love them anyway.
I emphatically disagree. There are still jokes (from legitimate annoyance) that the main consoles have different conventions for buttons and button names. It's awkward to navigate menu system with a simple up, down, left, right, accept, cancel when accept/cancel move around system to system. At least on desktop computers Spacebar/Enter and Escape are mostly consistent.
As for in-game control schemes, it's generally coalesced around wasd + mouse and USE. Even with that there are jokes (stemming from legitimate annoyances) about putting down a game for a week because you're older, are a parent, and have other responsibilities, then having trouble picking it back up.
This is a major reason I'm incredibly selective about the games I play and one reason I avoid online play. Sure, I'm one data point, and it may not apply to a majority of the cashflow for gaming, but I see it expressed online quite often.
I hear you. I forget the control schemes as well, whether they are keyboard or controller.
But the thing about those is that they are 'hidden' and require memoization. There is no on-game HUD that would show legend of all the available actions all the time. If you could have that, then people would be much more comfortable about even the hidden schemes.
There are game UI:s that are mostly mouse operated, and expose the user interaction grammar using the game specific, visual UI narrative. My kids seem fine navigating between those. A great example is Roblox, which has lot of "controller heavy" games where there are custom UI:s for building and configuring lots of things.
There are no guidelines that the authors defer to, but, they organically try to make the UI:s as understandable as possible. Most of the time they copy established conventions anyway, and when they don't either the UI is still understandable or no-one will play the game.
I emphatically disagree. There are still jokes (from legitimate annoyance) that the main consoles have different conventions for buttons and button names. It's awkward to navigate menu system with a simple up, down, left, right, accept, cancel when accept/cancel move around system to system. At least on desktop computers Spacebar/Enter and Escape are mostly consistent.
As for in-game control schemes, it's generally coalesced around wasd + mouse and USE. Even with that there are jokes (stemming from legitimate annoyances) about putting down a game for a week because you're older, are a parent, and have other responsibilities, then having trouble picking it back up.
This is a major reason I'm incredibly selective about the games I play and one reason I avoid online play. Sure, I'm one data point, and it may not apply to a majority of the cashflow for gaming, but I see it expressed online quite often.