I can understand the usefulness of interface design standards for a phone company or a bank. But how can you say standards are useful for game designers? Game designers need to have flexibility to make things interesting and challenging. Flexibility is certainly important. Game designers need flexibility in crafting story line, and in optimizing the level of challenge and excitement in a game to create a

sense of flow and immersion. But players shouldn't have to get creative in trying to figure out which button the designer decided to make the FIRE button in this level of the game, or where the designer decided to show the player's health meter on the heads-up display.