VISUALIZATION TECHNIQUES IN VIDEO GAMES

Video games rely extensively on visual information displayed to the players. Current digital games show enormous amounts of data, and generally in complex 3D virtual worlds. During a game, there is new data added constantly, but it’s also important to have access to information already collected. Menus, minimaps, aiming cursor, character’s health and capabilities are some of the data categories displayed in games. This paper aims to identify how video games present useful visual information to the player, if principles of visualization are applied, and highlight techniques that would be addressed to games for improving their data visualization.