Rockstar Games have a unique vibe with theirs games. They have a strong movie influence. They want their games to feel as engaging and immersive as watching a flick in a movie theater. I joined the team as a UI Lead when Rockstar games took over the Midnight Club car racing franchise with the mission to create a more immersive experience.
For our first foray in this franchise on PS2, I decided to avoid the 2D screens that would disrupt the user immersion in the environment. I then opted to display the frontend menus as if they were projected on some buildings in the city, it worked particularly well because the action always happens at night in the game (it's an underground street racing game that takes places in different cities). I had to create some camera animation to transition from any places in the city to the frontend projection site. After the success of this approach, we worked on new sequels of the game on more powerful "next-gen" consoles (ps3, xbox360), it gave us the opportunity to afford more resources for UI. We went full on and decided to implement a seamless experience. The user never quits the city, there are no cuts, the camera alway travels in the environment from one view to the other. All the menu elements are positioned in the 3d environment. We created floating menus that would be able to be displayed at anytime, anywhere in the city. We spend lots of time and resources to make sure the camera framing and the menu behavior would be perfect. I had to consider all kinds of special cases to avoid menus to collide with other 3d models. We treated the UI as a real character in the game.
The final result is stellar. The player feels a real sense of immersion and the engagement was greatly improved. The game has a movie feel with a real continuity. This approach has been so successful than it has been used over and over by most games in this genre. (Drift, Blur, Need for Speed, etc.)
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