Practical Game Design

Perceived performance

Perceived performance is as important as actual performance. We are talking here about a few minor tweaks that can help give the impression of overall better performance to players. Lowering the max FPS is another common trick, a game capped at 30 FPS might look more fluid than a game that struggles to maintain consistently 60 FPS.

Another common way to improve perceived performance is to enhance the player experience during loading screens.

Loading screens are obviously one of the most obvious and direct feedbacks of a game technical's performance. The bigger the game, the better the graphics, the longer the loading times. Same with online multiplayer games: finding matches or connecting to servers might take a while ...