Physicality means the physical limits on play, such as how many fingers and thumbs a player can realistically be expected to use, or how much skill you should demand from them.
Physicality also refers to the need for player actions to feel physically natural. Players are often at one remove from a game, which means they have less tolerance for intellectual or arcane actions that they might have in another setting. The interposition of a controller and a screen is a barrier to total understanding, so a videogame has to work harder to craft actions and rules that players will instinctively understand. Physicality also plays a role in immersion.
Physicality is one of the six creative constants that apply to all videogames.
Related Topics
- Controller
- Creative Constant
- Expertise
- Fun
- Haptic Feedback
- Immersion
- Lensing
- Natural Action
- Profit
- Self
- Time
- Transference
- User Interface
- Verb
- Weird Controls
