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I've been playing some Left 4 Dead on co-op with a friend, and it's great, hectic fun. An interesting design detail in the game is the glowing outline that your fellow survivors have. This feature arguably does have consequences for the game's emotional design - but how, exactly? Let's stargaze at L4D, i.e. try to understand the game's design in terms of emotional play experiences, with a design takeaway conclusion to boot.

First, the outline functions as a map marker: you can find your fellows, as it is definitely harder to survive alone. Thus, the design supports co-operation in the sense of keeping together as a group. It also prevents falling under friendly fire, as any human shape without an outline is a zombie.

Second, once your fellow survivor gets into trouble and possibly pulled away from the group, you'll be able to find him or her instantly. This makes it much easier to help the other survivors.

Looked at from this perspective, they might have added the glow to the rescue helicopter, or boat, as well - even if it does not have health in the same sense. Yet these vehicles present an important, emotion eliciting location in the level, where all culminates.

Finally, there are health meters for each survivor on the bottom of the UI. Yet, when the action gets hot, it's the color of the glowing outline that matters. As a pack of survivors, you re doing as well as the average hue of your glow: it is an instant indicator of your standing and chances in the fight. The glow embodies your collective strength, and quite literally, as it outlines the characters bodies.

In conclusion, here we have a design feature that might appear quite trivial but which, through closer analysis, has enormous consequences for gameplay, both in functional and emotional terms. It is a feature that amplifies your sense of care for your fellow survivors, and literally highlights their importance regarding the goals of the game.

I can't yet quite label the design detail - this would require identifying similar solutions in other games. I'll get to that. Meanwhile, imagine for a while L4D without this design detail. A lesser game, right?

Design takeaway: Think about visual cues regarding character design; especially cues that would both help in amplifying your players' need/affinity to cooperate or interact with the character and fulfill a functional purpose of an indicator (health, etc.) at the same time. Expressive and functional detail melted into one?

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