A common explanation says product UX removes friction while Game UX creates it. That comparison is convenient, but too broad. A banking product may deliberately slow down a risky transfer. A game should usually make changing subtitles straightforward. The category alone does not tell us which obstacles belong.
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The more useful question is what the effort contributes to the experience. Does it create an interesting decision, protect someone from a costly mistake, or simply make an action harder to execute?
Put two kinds of difficulty beside each other
Imagine a survival game with limited inventory space. Choosing between medicine and ammunition could support the intended tension. Repeatedly opening nested menus to discover which items can be combined may add effort without improving that choice.
Both situations take time. Only one necessarily asks the player to make a meaningful trade-off. Even then, the distinction depends on the game: inspecting an object could be part of an investigation rather than an interruption. You need to understand the intended activity before simplifying it.
The same action can serve different goals
In a commerce flow, a long search for the correct product may delay a purchase. In a game about exploration, searching can be the activity the player came for. Measuring both by completion speed would reward very different design choices, and could damage the second experience.
That does not make game evaluation purely subjective. You can observe whether players understand available actions, explain the consequences of a choice, recognize feedback or recover from failure. Then ask how those behaviors relate to the intended tension, curiosity or mastery.
Use failure to locate the problem
My RDR2 target-selection study focused on the recipient of an interaction. The question was whether players could anticipate whom they would address. Improving that information could preserve the pace of the scene while reducing unintended actions.
A useful playtest question is “What do you think happened?” If the player can describe a missed timing window, there may be a learnable challenge. If they believe they selected one character while the system selected another, investigate the communication first.
Neither answer proves the design is successful. A clearly explained challenge can still be tedious, inaccessible or poorly balanced. Game UX needs both the clarity of the interaction and an account of why the player would want to engage with it again.