Should a game be full screen by default? My instinct is to make it in a window, and allow players to decide to go full screen or not. #videogamedesign #ui #ux
Comments
Log in with your Bluesky account to leave a comment
I usually prefer my games to start full screen, but others may feel differently. Either way, it’s no big hardship to set it to that way as long as (a) it stays that way for future invocations, and (b) the setting is *really* easy to get to, and/or is asked to the user as a prompt on first run.
I have lived firmly on both sides of this arguement. I used to want games full screen on first start, but today I prefer borderless window. I did like how Bethesda did FO3, where the user set up some graphics before launch, perhaps that could work?
this is something i've thought about recently. i ended up defaulting to full screen (AAA games seem to do it more often than indies!), and give instructions in the first screen how to change the setting.
I think it actually depends on the game type for me. If I'm playing something first person or that's likely to lock the cursor, I'd say full-screen. But if it's strategy or the kind of thing you might multi-task to, windowed makes a lot more sense (maybe borderless windowed is the happy medium here)
Actually, amendment: strategy games with edge-scrolling go under full-screen too! All too easy to go out of bounds. Or just implement WASD scrolling, of course.
Intuitively I expect a game to run in full screen. But in the end it doesn't matter that much what is set by default. If it's only a key toggle, a usually in your games, everything is fine.
Comments
this seems to divide people a lot!
Though I think its generally native full screen resolution on start-up.
I'd love it if you would sport a pop-up like that :D