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Thank you to all the people who have sent games in to the Interface Drama Master List. If you've sent in a game and still haven't seen an update, I've been working my way slowly through the submissions. Thank you for your patience! (By the way, if you want to submit a game, the form is here.)

Since starting to play through more interface dramas, I've realized that certain IDs follow visible trends, which I'd like to roughly outline here. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but rather, the groundwork upon which myself and others can build future ideas. Some of the games referenced here will contain mild spoilers.

Broad themes in interface dramas

Cozy and safe interfaces

These games are meant to be single player experiences and usually feature a chatbox; examples of games that are of this theme are A Normal Lost Phone, Secret Little Haven, Terranova, and normal_fantasies.exe.

Many of these games use nostalgic UI from the 90's and 00's and feature LGBTQIA+ characters (though not always—both emily is away and Videoverse are primarily concerned with heterosexual relationships). The conflict of these games exists between the world that happens inside the interface versus the world outside the interface.

In normal_fantasies.exe the player chats with their AI girlfriend who showers love and praise on them while receiving hateful messages on their Facebook feed. In Terranova while Tourmaline and Cherry are physically far away from each other, their chat messages within IM are intimate and close. The world of the interface is portrayed as a safe haven for the protagonist and their friends whereas reality or the outside world is full of conflict and fighting.

Uncomfortable or antagonistic interfaces

These games are told primarily through functional or business-oriented interfaces. Examples of these games include Human Errors, Alethicorp, .... The primary conflict of uncomfortable or antagonistic interfaces lies between what the user wants to do and what the interface will allow them to do.

Speculative interfaces

Assumptions we make about interfaces

I'd like to talk about the assumptions that we make when we use interfaces. This is loosely based off Jakob Nielsen's ten principles for interaction design. This is important since many interface dramas subvert these assumptions or use interface in a way that is unexpected and intentionally jarring to players.

  1. The interface is designed to help the player complete a goal. Most interfaces are designed for a purpose; to help us access our bank accounts, to write code, or to make digital art. We assume that these interfaces were built to complete a goal; and even with interfaces where we don't know what the goal is, we assume there is some hidden goal to discover.
  2. The interface will not intentionally lie. According to Nielsen, an interface should communicate clearly the system's state as well as errors in input. With this in mind, we may expect an interface to obscure the truth, but never intentionally lie. Lying would defeat the purpose of completing a goal efficiently.
  3. The interface will follow logical standards. When a player sees the "your friend is typing..." three dots (signal) in a chat box, they expect, logically, that someone else is typing and they will soon see a reply (response)—if nothing were to happen they would rightfully be confused. The flow of an interface is assumed to follow this kind of signal/response logical pattern.
  4. The interface is designed to be controllable by the player. While not explicitly stated, because the interface has things that seem "pressable" or "interactable"—also known in design as affordances—it indicates to the player that it is able to be controlled to the player's will.

These assumptions are sometimes subverted in interface drama to build tension or to put friction between the player and the game.

Subverting expectations with interface drama

Some examples of games that subvert these assumptions are:

Alethicorp asks the player "What is the greatest number of civilian casualties you would be willing to accept to eliminate a dangerous terrorist?" If the player types "0" an error message will show: "Please enter a number greater than 3." Even if the goal of the player is to admit to no civilian casualties, the interface will not allow them. It begs the question: what kind of job is the player signing up for, exactly?

(example of game)

The Interface Drama Master List has been gaining some interest; I got a message from someone saying that they were using the list as a source for their essay on queer-coded spaces on the internet, and how some interface dramas represent the online queer experience.

That makes me happy to hear. The nostalgic LGBTQIA+ interface drama games I've played serve as a kind of historical message from my generation about the loneliness of not having the words to describe who you were, and the pervasiveness of religious and societal pressure not to come out.

CJ is a designer and indie dev. They write as a hobby. If you like this article, why not say hello in an email or buy them a coffee to support their work?