Persistent Minimap / Radar

In one corner sits a disc, rotating with the player or fixed to north, showing the immediate surroundings: allies, detected enemies, objectives, sometimes only things that moved recently. Rules about what registers are where the design lives. Motion trackers show movement but not identity, radar may ignore anyone crouching, and some games mark only players who fire. Unlike a map screen it updates continuously and is read peripherally, without stopping play.

Bungie put a motion tracker in the corner of Halo: Combat Evolved in 2001 to solve a console-specific problem. A thumbstick turns slowly, so an attack from behind is unfair in a way it is not with a mouse. Strategy games had carried minimaps for roughly a decade by then, so the innovation was less the widget itself than its adoption as a permanent fixture of the first-person shooter.

Cognitive load dropped and competitive play changed shape, sometimes completely: at a high level the corner becomes the primary display and the world is glanced at only to shoot. That shift reduces stealth to the management of a dot. Designers push back with suppressors, perks that hide movement and radar-free modes, and with the argument that a game read through an abstraction stops being a place and becomes a chart.