Cognitive load in games: What it is and how to think about it

Have you ever heard someone say, "This game is a real brain-burner," "There are a lot of rules to learn to play this game," or "This game seems too simple"? What they are talking about is cognitive load -- how much of your brain you need to use to pay attention to something. 

There is not a one-size fits all amount of cognitive load that is "right" for games. Different games fit into different zones for different people at different times: 

• Sometimes after playing a heavy strategy game (aka the brain-burner) I want to play something lighter, because my capacity to focus and pay attention has been used up. 
• Sometimes I like to play a very complex game with lots of rules, so I can pull my mind off of other preoccupations. 
• Sometimes I like a game I can play in a cafe and still have conversations with the other players.

How much of a person's brain you hope and need to engage depends on the type of game you want to make and where and how you picture it being played.

It is useful to separate cognitive load into three categories:

1) Learning and Memory: how much brain power you need to learn and remember how to play a game. This will vary by type of game. There is no right answer for this category. Each person has different preferences, and each time and place has different parameters. 

2) Navigating user interface (UI) and information design: how much overhead your brain needs to process information and manipulate game elements. You want this to be as minimal as possible, so that the player can put their attention on the other categories. 

A few things to avoid to reduce overhead:

• Centered text
• Low contrast (See more in Mistakes in Card layout)
• Too many symbols
• Mixing symbols into the middle of text
• Extra clicks, and small targets for UI buttons, etc. (In computer interfaces)
• "Incoherence" - things not being similar in design when they could be.  
  
  Information Design in Board Games, another blog post, goes into more detail.

3) Strategic thinking: the fun, interesting, engaging part. It is coming up with strategies for play, figuring out the puzzle of it, thinking about what you would do differently next time. Sometimes a game is so simple it doesn't have much of this at all, and then I feel the cognitive load is too low. You can't get engaged.

More ways to think about it

Sometimes people think a game requires a lot of strategic thinking but the cognitive load they are experiencing comes from learning the rules and struggling with the interface. Go is a classic example of the opposite. The basic rules are so easy, the interface is so easy, and the strategic layer is incredibly deep. 

Designers sometimes over-simplify the design process. They advise "make fewer rules" or "always reduce cognitive load". I prefer "make fewer extraneous rules" "make fewer clunky, inelegant rules", and to ask "does this rule help the game become its best self?" or "does this rule make the game more interesting?". 

You can make a game that is simple to learn and easy to play, yet has no depth and is dull. You can also make a game that is hard to learn and hard to play, and has no depth and is dull. How to create strategic depth and complexity in your game? Sounds like another post to me!

Sometimes your intention is to create a more complex game, and therefore you may need more rules. George Orwell said it well, "Use as simple words as possible. But NO SIMPLER." Sometimes you need a complex word for a complex idea, or complex rules for deep games.   

Three Main Types of Cognitive Load:

• Intrinsic Load: The inherent difficulty of the material or topic being learned.
• Extraneous Load: The unnecessary mental effort caused by how information is presented (e.g., poorly designed materials).
• Germane Load: The productive mental effort devoted to constructing schemas (permanent knowledge structures).

Impact and Management 

• When the total load exceeds capacity, learning is hindered, errors increase, and focus declines.
• To optimize cognitive load, aim to reduce extraneous load, manage intrinsic load, and promote germane load.

 

How to use these ideas when designing games 

1) have an idea of what types of players, and environments you imagine your game being played by and in. 

• Some games are much a harder to play in crowded, noisy environments. Some are not. 
• Are you making a "pub" game? 
• A social game? 
• A day-long strategy game? Adjust the complexity to fit. 
• Are you making a game that people might play between other deep games? 
• A game couples might play in a quiet evening? 
• Is the game meant to be played a lot of times? You better have involved, complex strategic possibilities, or people aren't likely to return. 
• How old are the players who you think might like to play it? Is it a large range, or small? 
• Can the players read? Do complex reasoning? Have good eyesight? 
• How much memory is required. 
• Lots of questions to ask.

2) What is the medium your game is being played in? 

• Is it a board game? All those rules have to be remembered to make the game play smooth. That means you have to streamline more than on the computer. 
• Are you making a computer game? The computer can automate and remember a huge amount, so your complexity targets can be different, but you really have to make sure your interface is smooth. 
• Are you making a game people play with friends, no board, word of mouth rules transmission, like charades?

 

How I got into the Games Industry

The other night, I was talking to someone while we were sitting around after playing a board game. They wondered how I got into the game industry to begin with.

It is an unlikely story. I was homeless, living in a tent in the woods, and this guy I know who was working on a D&D title for SSI - Al Qadim: the Genie's Curse - needed a play-tester. He knew I used to spend lots of time inventing games, so that's a reason he asked me. This was back before cell-phones and email and all that, so I am not even sure how I got in touch with the guy. Maybe a party in Northampton. Something like that. But I said yes, and that began my career in the computer game industry. 

 

I used to get up from my tent, sneak into a gym nearby and shower, take the bus over to Northampton, MA, and show up for my job as a video game play-tester.

Luckily, I got along with everybody, and I had good design and computer skills. As time progressed, they let me do some design work as well, lay out some levels and side quests. It was pretty interesting work. Al-Qadim was an action Adventure game set in the Arabian Nights D&D universe. What do I remember about it at this point, 30 years later? Not much... there was a big genie, some caves to explore, some oceans to cross, and someone snuck out of the village under a sheet or something. Maybe a cyclops hid under a sheet?

It was a strange time for me. I would get checks and not know what to do, since I had been living a scavenging lifestyle for a little bit. I don't think I even had a bank account at that point. I got an electric guitar with my first paycheck and stored it in a friend's room. They even misspelled my name on the first few checks. "Jim Dubious".

 

After The Genie's Curse released, they signed me up for the next game - Entomorph: Plague of the Darkfall, by SSI - as an assistant designer. Along the way of that game's development, they fired the lead designer, and I stepped into the role. 

This was another action RPG, where you are slowly turning into a giant bug, and have to find out the reason why and reverse it. Strangely that is almost all I remember about it. But... I think there were "molemen" that lived in different caves and they were very important to the story. And there was a time traveling spider queen???

It was different coming in part way through a project as lead designer, as opposed to starting off that way, as I did for Majesty the Fantasy Kingdom Sim. I just carried things to completion and made few high level decisions. The interface and engine were already set, the story pretty much determined. Lots of game play tweaks though. That's one of the less glamorous, but vital, sides of game design and development: play it again and again, adjust some numbers, do it again. It is something I have done a lot of over the years. I would say it is central to making games. Especially to making them play well. Here's an example of how I did that with the City of Demons board game.

 

Read more about my history: How I got into Game Design 

Accelerating Costs Create Homogeneity in Video Games - and That's Bad.

We've all seen it in those mobile games: the first level of a skill costs 1 point, and the next one costs 10 points, and the next level costs 50 points, and so on, in some way or another.

I'm here to tell you why that sucks for long term play, and why everyone does it.

The second part is the easiest. Why does everyone do it? It arbitrarily prolongs the playing time of the game, so you will be tempted to spend more time, see more ads, buy more gems, etc. It takes less design work to make since you don't have to assess different strategies against one another.

 
Why it sucks is fairly straightforward, but takes longer to explain: If all the level 1 skills cost 1, and there are 5 of them, and all the level 2 of those skills costs 10, then you will most likely get all the level one skills first, then all the level 2 skills, and so forth. Specializing doesn't happen, just general heroing. You have 1 path really. Next game, same thing. The same grindy path.

If on the other hand, level 1 and level 2 skills and indeed all level of skills cost 1 point to get to, then once you have bought a level 1 skill, and you get another point for upgrading, you have an actual meaningful choice still: do you specialize in that skill and boost its level, or do you get another skill. There are so many more types of paths for your skills during the game, therefore more interest, more replay-ability in the future, and more strategies for play.

Two types of Agency in Games

What does it mean for a person to have agency?

In social science, agency is defined as the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices.

Why is agency important?

It empowers players to influence their own path to mastery. By encouraging players to take initiative, you enhance their cognitive ability to take control, increase motivation, and help ensure they  are engaged with the game.

 

There are two ways that applies to games:

The first is imaginative agency, which means the player has the choice to be and imagine who they want to be. Some ways of allowing this are to make synonyms and analogs of items in your game. For example, have a sword and and axe. Thy both give you +1 Attack, yet you can pick which one you prefer. 

Another important thing for promoting imaginative agency in a game is to make sure equal things have equal powers, ie. no degenerative strategies, or unbalanced character classes. Which character class would a player like to play? Ranger, Warrrior or Rogue. They might have different mechanics and powers to differentiate those play styles, but have the same chance of winning. Otherwise, if the warrior is just better, there is a divide between strategy and imagination. You have to pick the warrior to win, but you feel like playing the Ranger. There is a lack of coherence there, and it will turn off both the imaginative player who likes to get immersed in their character, and also the strategic player who likes to experiment with different strategies.

 

That leads me to my next point, strategic agency. Which means you can choose and define your own strategies in a game. This should be obvious, since it relates to meaningful choices, and balanced elements. But if there are one or two strategies that are clearly superior (in the final analysis), the depth and interest of your game is going to be short lived. People might like it while discovering those strategies, and then its over. Having a wider pool of possible paths to victory not only increases the replayability and depth of your game, it helps give people strategic agency. 

 

It makes me think of the meta-game in a Magic the Gathering format. If one or two decks are dominant, then the format gets stale quickly, because you see those decks way more often, and feel forced to take one of those to win. The more types of decks have a winning chance, the more strategic variety and agency there is in a format, which is more interesting for players.

Engaging Game Design

The trick is to make your material so fascinating that you cannot stay away from it, so intriguing that you ignore negative feelings and second thoughts, so rich with interest that the concepts of "good" and "bad" hardly occur to you.

- From 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel, by Jane Smiley, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author

 

While Smiley's words are intended for writers, I found that they offer good insight for game designers as well. Crafting a game is not merely about following design principles; it's a creative pursuit that benefits greatly from engagement with the material.

The Essence of Engagement

At the heart of Smiley's quote lies the concept of engagement—the deep, immersive connection that creators forge with their material. For game designers, this means more than just understanding the mechanics, rules, or components of a game. It's about cultivating a deep interest in the world you're creating, the elements of your game, and the experiences you're crafting for players. When designers are genuinely engaged, their enthusiasm permeates every aspect of the game, from its thematic elements to its game-play dynamics.

Ignoring the Noise

When designing a game, you will often encounter obstacles, doubts, and critiques. Creating a game is involves challenges, both internal and external. However, as Smiley suggests, when you're deeply engaged with your material, these obstacles fade into the background. The engagement with your game propels you forward, allowing you to navigate challenges with creativity, resilience, and determination. By focusing on what truly excites you about the game, you can overcome doubts and second-guessing, and more easily continue the work of developing the game.

Measure your Engagement

Some questions I like to ask when evaluating how engaged I am by a game I am working on are:

• Are there boring or tedious parts? If yes, can I remove, shorten or enliven them? How?
• Do I gloss over any parts?
• Do I get tired of telling any particular rules while playing the game?
• Are there any parts or concepts or themes that I really like that I could expand upon?
• Do I want it be longer or shorter when I play through it?
• Do I want to play again soon?
• Are there exciting discussions after a play? Is there "telling the story of the game" after?
• Are there any "if I only I had done..." statements afterward?
  
• Are players interested in and paying attention to each other's turns, just to see what happens? 

 

Beyond Good and Bad

Smiley's assertion that the concepts of "good" and "bad" hardly occur when deeply engaged with material apply directly to designing a game. While clearly evaluating a game's mechanical merits is essential, being overly preoccupied with rigid definitions about games can stifle creativity and hamper your progress. Instead, focus on creating game experiences that are interesting, meaningful, and that grab your attention. By thus immersing yourself in the creative process, you can ignore limiting notions of what you "should" be doing and other ideas that may hold you back from crafting your game.

Conclusion

Jane Smiley's insight into the creative process serves as a good reminder for game designers: engagement contributes to forward movement and compelling design. By cultivating a deep connection with their material, designers can navigate challenges, keep themselves interested, and continue work on their game. Ultimately, the more time, effort and thought you put into a game, the better it turns out, so finding ways to keep going is essential.

 

Hits & Misses

I've been making games for most of my life, ever since I was a kid. In my twenties I got a job as a professional game designer. After that I created a lot, in a lot of mediums: Web games, Palm Pilot games, card and dice games, conceptual games, board games. 

One thing I've learned is that every game you make can't be your best game. Sometimes due to circumstances, your game is underdeveloped. Sometimes you try a new idea, and it doesn't work out. Sometimes you make a good game, but it falls flat anyway. Sometimes there are hits, and sometimes there are misses. 

This is not to say that your effort has no influence. It's to remind you that there are circumstances and influences in the world in addition to you that affect what happens. Development timelines, funding, marketing, shifting costs and norms, what medium you're working in, who's on your team, publishers and distributors going out of business or being acquired, trouble in your family and personal life: all these can impact your project.

I remember a period of time when I was having incredibly bad insomnia, and was still developing web games. I got through my current one, The Journey to New Earth, and it worked! But afterwards I kept finding very weird bugs and also realized the game needed much more development to play well. So I took the opportunity to revise it.

My games on the Palm Pilot gained dedicated and excited players. Many players of Adventure Solitaire counted it as their favorite game on the Palm OS. And I made a modest living for a while. But then the Palm OS itself got overshadowed by new and exciting cell phone technology -- smart phones. So there went that for me. And yes, I could have ported them to phones, and then other phones, and so on. But learning each phone and OS is a big project, and I decided against it.

I ported one of my web games to Java. It took four months. Did anyone play it? Maybe one guy. So much time, so little result. I ported some Palm Pilot games to Windows. Same thing. They'd been successful on those other platforms, but not on the new ones. So then I chose to make board games, in part to avoid the obsolescence issue for digital games.

Some luck's bad, some luck's good. Majesty wouldn't have been the game it was if it hadn't had several extra years of development due to switching publishers a couple of times, once at least because the then current publisher was going out of business. So that was some good luck that led to a great game.

I think it is helpful to think of your entire pantheon of created games as an iterative, interactive process of design. You can learn something from each one, and that experience contributes in some way to the next one. This view also helps you not get too attached to whether one particular game succeeds or fails. Work as well as you can on your current game, understanding that all the circumstances and events will have effects, and see what happens. And then make your next game!

Don't Do Mystery Math!

I have been playing this tower defense game, Guardians, on the iPad for a few months now, and I am up to level 526 (?) and I was thinking about how a score is calculated in a game. In Guardians, I have no idea. I just finish the level and there is a score. Sometimes 1000, sometimes 10000.

As I was wondering about this, I noticed a "?" in a circle next to my score for the current level. I was like, "Oh, maybe I can click it!" (Which says a few things: 1. I hadn't noticed it in over 500 wins of the game, and 2. I wasn't sure it was a button. Maybe they could have made it larger, and shaped like all the other buttons in the game...) 

 

So I click it and it takes me to a screen which tells me the general idea of how to get a good score: finish fast, use as few towers as possible, and a few other things. And... I am still in the dark about how my scores are formed, since they made a mistake that is particularly easy to make in digital games  (as opposed to board games) which is not showing the numbers. I wrote about that here. 

Without numbers, you can't really evaluate, or weigh the different elements in your score. Was finishing fast more or less important than using fewer towers? I will never know because they didn't show the numbers! That screen would have been a great spot to show the exact numbers for each section, and then the total, so if I wanted, I could try to maximize my score. Which I don't, since I don't care. I just like to finish the levels.

Mystery math is that behind the scenes calculation that comes up with a score for something. Don't do it. Always tell the players the numbers that form their score. Or better yet, ask if you really need a score in your game? Can you just record if they finish a level or not? Or maybe the three stars thing? You know: one star for finishing, 3 stars for finishing without losing any health, and 2 stars for... for... some other random thing. Which I also hate, but it is slightly better than a mystery score.

My favorite thing for tower defense games, since they are real-time, is to simply record how fast you solved it. That encompasses a lot of different elements of the game, and has an easily understandable result.

If that is not the feel you want for your game, is there any other one number element that you think determines the core elements of the game? Maybe the best score in your game equals spending the least money, ie, being the most efficient.

Me and my game night buddies came up with the "Mystery Math" phrase while playing board games on Board Game Arena. Since the end scoring of a game is automated, it just starts adding up behind the scenes things and showing the end result. Albeit usually afterwords with a chart breaking down the categories, which does really help. But in many games the interface is hard to follow and you're still not sure what happened, especially while it is happening. This is a particular interface problem that comes from "porting" a real life game to an online game. Really, new interface elements have to be thought about and added to make the game play well on the new medium. Like light up outlines, and animations to help draw your eyes to whatever element is being referenced.

When playing a board game in real life, you get a better sense of the numbers that add up to your final score since you have to add up the categories by hand. (Sometimes, like in Carcasonne, with those &%$^ farmers, you still aren't sure why you lost or won.) 

I understand why many modern board games obscure each player's total points until the end. It is so that you can't tell who's ahead exactly, and be discouraged about it. It can let a player feel like they might catch up. It can help a player focus on the game dynamics and experience and not the competition. It can keep dramatic tension high until the end. Who will win? But it also feels like mystery math until the end, even though you could often do the math during play.

Its not my favorite, but I don't hate it, at least, in board games. I prefer point-threshold games (when someone reaches X points, they win), and goal oriented games. Or just whoever has the most points at the end wins. No mystery math in those.

 

9 Ways to Stress Test your Mobile Game

So many games (and apps) seem like they are developed in a perfect environment: the best hardware, the best lighting, and with the best accessories like stands and headphones. Unfortunately, most of us don't use the games in anything close to those environments, so in order to address that, I have made a list of ways to stress test a mobile game, for developers to follow and make their games more usable to more people.

 

1) Play on the couch, while eating a bag of chips. 

Take the iPad you are testing on out of the stand and go sit on the couch holding it. Put a bag of chips next to you on the couch. If you hold the iPad with one hand, can you reach all the game controls with the other? Ie, do you need to have a two handed grip because there are buttons on each bottom corner in landscape mode? Check for constraints like that. Maybe your game can't be played with one hand. But then it also can't be played while eating chips, which is a serious trade-off!

Now try laying down on the couch and playing it. Go ahead, just do it.

A screen shot from Gravity Rider on the iPad. Notice the controls are on the bottom left and right. You need two hands to play this. No eating chips and playing this one! (Also the pause is in the upper left... you will probably crash your bike often trying to get up there in time!)

 

 

 

 

2) Play it on the tiniest screen you can find. 

I know you can play it on phone or tablet and it is the same game, but  go try it on the phone for a long time and realize you might need an interface there that is different because it is so much smaller. 

A fingertip sized button (and buttons shouldn't be much smaller than that!) takes up so much more room on a phone than a tablet.

 

3) Turn off the sound and play it! 

Many people play with the sound turned off or very low, because they might be in a group setting or it is night or something. Are all the things the player needs to be notified of (especially in a real time game) clear enough without sound? Do you need to make the animations bigger or more central when something happens? Do you need to pause the game with a pop-up dialog?

 

4) Listen to the music of your game... for 3 hours. 

Did it drive you crazy with its repetition? Because most in-game music does that to me, and I shut it off after the initial play or two. If your game lasts a long time your music should ideally keep up. Maybe you need a dynamic soundscape or computer generated music.

 

5) Listen to the sound effects at a medium volume, not on headphones!

Are they annoying? To you or anyone nearby? Ask yourself for real. The same goes for the voice acting. Bad voice acting ruins everything. I played Smallworld 2 on the iPad, but the voice-over they had for the die roll win and loss was SOOOO gratingly bad, I had to turn off all sounds. (Partly because there was no option to just turn off the bad voice acting.)

Ok, not this old!

 

6) Play it on an older tablet or phone. 

Many people hold onto their old hardware until they are forced to upgrade. Does your game take that large audience into account? How did your game function on that older tablet? Was it slow? Did it crash randomly? Did it work at all? Maybe you can't make it work there, but maybe you can. It is something to think about.

 

 

7) Give it to someone who doesn't work with you and who you don't know. 

Watch them play it, and don't tell them anything about it. What are they not understanding? What are they not doing? If they are frustrated and acting stupid, that's probably your fault as the designer, not theirs.

I like to playtest a game with people that don't play games much, because it gives me a certain kind of feedback that is more useful and different than from people who play games a lot and have ingrained ideas and preferences.

 

8) Play your "tutorial" 10 times, and see if you hate the world after, or anytime during it. 

Do you really need that "click here, click here, click here" thing you are calling a tutorial? Because most people know how to play a mobile game. And if your interface is too complex to figure out, maybe you need to have a better interface rather than a boring tutorial that people click to get through and don't learn too much from anyway.

I have quit an enormous number of games due to these type of tutorials. I like if I am given an option to try the tutorial, or just start the game, and I really prefer the term "how to play" to "tutorial".

 

9) And as I usually recommend, play that game for 100 hours at least. 

And another couple hundred hours after that. More or less, depending on how complicated your game is. Notice anything that becomes tedious in the mechanics of the game, or in the use of the interface, and revise them! Try weird strategies, do random things while playing. 

Games are a dynamic medium and have many pathways through them. This is what makes them unique and interesting compared to other media. But it also means you have to put in more time traveling those pathways in order to make a good game.

If you like board games and this post, go read 7 Ways to Stress Test you Board Game.

Or read more about Digital Games and Design.

Meaningful Choices in Games

Something which sets games apart from other mediums is dynamism, ie, the ability to travel through a game by a different path when you play a different time. And that ability to go by different paths requires choices to be made by a player. But not all choices are created equal! The best choices are ones that are meaningful, and by that I mean choices which are understandable and affect the dynamic environment in response to having been chosen.

There can be apparent choices when there are actually none, which is the poorest kind of dynamism in a game. For example, in this iPad game, Soda Dungeon 2 (also available on Steam and for Mac), I have been playing lately, every time your party of adventurers defeats a boss, you get to pick a treasure!

And yet, there isn't really a choice, because you have no information to use to help you make a choice. They could have just given you a random treasure and the effect would be the same. There is not actually a choice here. What they could have done to make that a more meaningful choice is to label one chest as "gold", one as "equipment" and one as "mystery". That's not perfect but it lets you think about what you need in the game a little, and if you want to take a risk, you can pick "mystery".

Also, every once in a while on your adventure in Soda Dungeon 2, you get to pick an alternative path:

While this is slightly better, since one of the choices is labeled (yet locked, so again, not a choice a lot of the time), the other two choices are complete mysteries, and since they give you no information about anything which might happen if you choose one over the other, there again is not actually a choice.

Now maybe there is something clever in their code that says the right most choice is always more dangerous or something, and you could learn that over time, but that alone isn't enough. There has to be more information presented to the player to make an informed choice with. In this example, maybe they could label the two mystery choices "risky yet rewarding" and "safe but less rewarding" and it would at least let a player pick a play style at the moment.

The bad side of including these types of non-choices in your game are two: 1) they sort of paralyze the player for a second while they try to figure out with no information which thing to pick, and 2) they add in extra clicks, which I am a fan of eliminating. Why not just pop up the found treasure? Over time, less clicks, less time wasted. Also, making choices meaningful makes a game more strategic, more replayable, and more dynamic.

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Soda Dungeon 2 is a fun and silly game, despite these spots where it could be made better. You hire heroes and send them through a simple dungeon to collect loot and defeat bad guys.

Mistakes in Digital Games - Show the Numbers!

I've played a lot of Gravity Rider, an iPad game, lately, and it made me think of some user interface feedback for digital games.

Gravity Rider is a motorcycle racing game with a futuristic twist. Racing the bikes around the track is pretty fun. Everything that surrounds racing the bike is pretty tedious. Upgrade, get chests, lots of gamification and pay to play stuff, which never help a game play well.

The item to discuss today is the garage. You can flip through and see the different bikes you own and their stats... I mean you can sort of see their stats. Because the stats are just shown as bars! And you don't really have a sense of what those mean, and you definitely can't precisely compare the stat of one bike to another. I mean, sometimes you can say that THAT bike is definitely faster, and THIS one has a higher rotation stat (whatever that means, a different UI problem). And if the bars are even vaguely similar in length for a stat on different bikes, you just can't tell what is what.

The main way to fix this is SHOW THE NUMBERS!

Say, "this one has a speed of 5. This other one has a speed of 4." Put the actual number near the bar. Very helpful. In a real-time game, you might even say this one moves 3 feet per second, and this other one moves 4.5 feet per second. Even more helpful. Then people can evaluate the game better. Like, they might then say, "Oh, this one is 1 lower speed, but 2 higher acceleration. There are a lot of stops and starts on the upcoming race track, so maybe that is a good trade off." Otherwise it is more like, "Maybe I'll just try this one."

Let a player know what the numbers are, so they can make precise choices instead of approximate guesses.

Imagine your game was a board or card game. Without the numbers, it literally wouldn't be functional. So not showing the numbers in your digital game and letting the computer just use them makes the interface non-functional, even if the game runs fine with those hidden numbers.

Maybe you want to have a sense of mystery. Fine, don't show the numbers if that is what your game is all about. Otherwise, SHOW THE NUMBERS! They help a player understand and make meaningful choices in your game.

Images above are from Gravity Rider. Notice they do have a number, which is a conglomerate of all the stats. Possibly. But we don't know for sure. It is mostly a useless number to base a decision on. Except to say, overall this bike is better.

Here is the link to Gravity Rider. Give it a try. It is actually fun to ride the bikes around, yet could be a much better game overall.