Exclusive UI Interview with 38 Studios' Irena Pereira

[Cody Bye]

Constructing a formidable user interface for a massively multiplayer game is a lot like putting paint on canvas. You dab a little here, touch up there, create a solid foundation, and a couple happy trees, then start back over again after you've realized that your masterpiece looks like a big pile of poo. That may be a bit of an over exaggeration, but the Ten Ton Hammer staff does believe that UI design is one of the most under prioritized pieces of the entire MMOG experience, and to make sure it gets the attention we know it deserves, we sat down with 38 Studios' recently hired Senior UI Designer Irena Pereira to chat with us about her goals for the future of UI design and how she's going to use her experiences to create an amazing experience in 38's upcoming MMO project, Copernicus.

"There have been many competing games since the release of WoW and, as I said before, they replicated a lot of its UI (some of them down to the same color scheme for buttons and the like)," she continued. "While this, in and of itself, isn’t a bad thing, these games have failed in terms of interface because they didn’t go to the same level of polish of WoW, nor have they understood the reasons behind some of the choices Blizzard made. Blizzard makes a concerted effort to design from the perspective of the player."

To read the entire exclusive interview with Irena, make sure you click here!