Designing for General Population

Tow months ago, I purchased the game "tomb raider". I have never play the "tomb raider" series and hardly ever played any puzzle game. I put lots of expectation since it is quite famous and some comments online saying how great the graphic it has.

As I began, everything was good, until I got stuck in a level. In the game, there is always one hint for the next performance which is very helpful. However, some of the hints are too implicit and it is a goal rather than a hint that tells what the next action should be. I spent about 20 minutes on it and still couldn't figure out what to do and there is no option to skip the level, so I gave up.

This game only has one storyline and players have to follow what it tells them to do. Compare this game to Grand Theft Auto 5 which has one major storyline and some minor ones. In GTA's main storyline, if a player fails a level for couple times, there is an option that the play may skip this level. I really like this feature and I play most of the levels in GTA and still continuing. This option helps when I get frustrated for failing a one level couple times and it doesn't affect my understanding of the story since I have gone through most of it in the failures.

The designer of Tomb Raider may not consider enough for general population. The game experience for the game designer and players are different. The difficulty of a game to designer could be a lot less than players. Some players may enjoy solving the puzzle in this game, but I am not so into puzzle and more interested in adventure. Most importantly, the frustration of keeping failing a level in a game lowers the game experience a lot.

The designer of GTA did a much better job on designing a product for general population than the designer of Tomb Raider who creates a game for a more specific group. Designer of Tomb Raider could have been more considerate to general population rather than considering only for fans of the Tomb Raider series and puzzle games. Small things like "skip" option really affects user experience in a great extend.

Bibliography:

https://www.google.ca/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj4nJTmovrRAhWJ5oMKHSgUCwIQjRwIBw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DRt_wruj1PfA&psig=AFQjCNGntfQBjHl6Gw1V29vPMk2A6pAaMw&ust=1486428983468038

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