Halo Infinite Observer

Halo is becoming one of my favorite esports to watch. It's nice to see a game that is extremely fun to play and absolutely insane to watch the greatest players play. The one thing that stood out to me was the Observer view for watching the games. It features poor visibility within the HUD making it almost impossible to read any stats with the white text on a bright colored background. This also made it impossible to watch at all on a mobile device. I decided to adjust the Observer view to be more accessible and to help new viewers watching Halo.

Stat Boards

The updated stat boards help provide better contrast with black text on the brightly colored backgrounds. White text would also help on dark colored backgrounds. Showcasing players that are dead with a darker outline around their stat bar helps viewers understand who is alive and dead on each team, while a white outline would be good for showcasing the player being spectated or highlighted on the mini map. I updated the score as well with black text on the bright colored background, while also making it larger to help provide more emphasis and readability to the score and time remaining in a round.

While watching, I noticed that the scores flip when the spectated team switches. This can be very confusing to viewers to understand the score of the current game if the scores flip sides every few seconds.

Mini Map

Halo does not have a mini map system within any games and especially not for competitive. It makes sense to not have it either for Observer mode to keep things consistent from player to spectator. This is one place that I believe should be adjusted. Having a mini map in the bottom left corner can help with new viewers understand what is going on within the map, where players are positioned, and can also provide even more tense moments when you know players are close together and about to get into an engagement. The mini map isn't just for viewers either. This system can help with coaching teams and help make them better, which in turn makes for greater competition, which also makes for even better matches and more strategic play that players might not have thought about before. This is also big for the casters, as it provides more information to them to help tell a story.

Lastly, this isn't a perfect example of a Observer view, but I wanted to bring attention to accessibility issues for viewers, as well as possible ways to make the game easier to understand for new viewers to the game.