DAI 323 Week 7 Visual Hierarchies

http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/dishonored-your-guide-to-navigating-the-mean-streets-of-dunwall/

In this image, from the video game Dishonored, we see the visual hierarchies of color, spatial layout, and shape. As shown in this image color is the primary visual hierarchy designed to set it apart and make it obvious. There are three colors, each used to designate a different type of object. Yellow, the most obvious and eye-catching color attracts the player’s eyes to enemy locations. Blue is used to identify environmental objects such as security systems and watch towers. Green is used to show the location of items such as weapons and food. Shape is also an important factor in this image. Without being told what the colors represent the player can immediately tell by the shape of the objects what is a person, what is an item, and what is an alarm. The items are very small in comparison to everything else, the enemies can be identified by their shape because it is obvious that they have legs, arms, and a head. Finally, spatial layout is important to this image. The use of color to highlight objects and enemies allows the player to judge their location based on spatial depth, in other words the player can tell what is closer to him than other things. 

http://spong.com/article/22642/Batman-Arkham-City-Enhanced-Detective-Mode-Detailed

In the video game Batman: Arkham City two of the four primary visual hierachies – color and motion – are used to attract the player’s attention. In the game when the player activates “Detective Vision”, as seen in the above image, the color hierarchy becomes the focus as different things are categorized by different color. Enemies with ballistic weapons are orange while other enemies are blue, and melee weapons are yellow. While the color hierarchy does become the focus when in this mode, it still supplements the visual attraction of movement. The color makes the movement of enemies more obvious and eye catching, enabling the player to easily track the movement of their opponents in the middle of a large fight as well as diverting focus to the nearest enemies that move towards them to attack. Even when a player’s attention is driven to the orange enemies by color, immediately when another enemy approaches the movement draws the players’ attention.