Blood Bowl II

Blood Bowl 2 is the sequel to the famous Games Workshop football fantasy game. Manage and lead teams of Orcs, Skavens, Chaos beasts, and even Humans!

How to keep the precision of strategy pc game while designing for console accessibility?

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Main challenge:

• Adapt controls from PC for Xbox One and PS4 consoles

Additional challenges:

• Create content and lore in accord with Games Workshop original design and guidelines
• Localize some of the content for a french audience
• Set and tweak console-specific features (such as controller vibration and player accounts)

Keep the controls as quick and precise by linking functions to specific buttons.

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The idea was to keep the navigation through the different menus as quickly and straightforwardly as possible.
We initially tried to keep as many existing components as possible for the console versions, so the idea was to keep all the buttons and use the controller to move selection among the different buttons.
But we soon realized that this represented a substantial time consumption, as players moved across many buttons to reach the one they wanted to hit.

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Directly linking functions was more efficient, but no matter how much we tried, it wasn't intuitive for confirmation pop-ups (yes/ no buttons).
It would take players several seconds to understand what button to press while it was near-instant when options were on screen, and the player had to move the selection from one to the other.

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Despite our first instincts, and multiple iterations and rollbacks, we ultimately realized that the idea of having one system that would fit all cases was a mistake, and we kept both approaches depending on the situation.

Assign controls, test, iterate, repeat.

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First, we defined and differentiated the primary and secondary functions to establish a hierarchy in the controls.
After defining the hierarchy, using XML script, I mapped functions to the controller inputs, and in close collaboration with the QA team, tested them,
registered the results, and made changes accordingly.

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We repeated this process on the different features and functions of the whole game. Rolled back, when rollbacks seemed preferable.

Multiples rules can be more transparent than a single one.

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Among the many iterations we tried, we couldn't find one system that would suit all cases, so we used different ones.

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Steve Krug said it best, in his book Don't Make Me Think:

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"Clarity trumps consistency" - Steve Krug.