Continued testing

Over the past fortnight I have been continuing to test the levels, made a couple of change to one of them to test some ideas, and created a couple of new maps and had them tested as well.

First of all were the changes to the previous map.

I changed the colour of the light in the ‘mystery’ room from red to the same colour used for the rest of the level, and I added a new room next to it with a plain looking entrance. I wanted to see if just the body would be enough to bring players towards the room, even with some minor completion. As it turned out, the players still went straight towards the ‘mystery’ door, not even looking at this new door, and only walked through it after checking out the mysterious one.

Another change was the position of this bridge.

I was concerned that the testers where naturally going over the bridge due to how the geometry was laid out. After players walked out of the ‘mystery’ room, the bridge was very close to them, so I though that they may be going over it out of convenience rather than its semantic properties.

Players ended up being less likely to over the bridge, but still showed signs of interest in it. One player looked across the bridge before taking the other, another looked below the bridge to see the water, and another walked halfway across the other route before jumping over the barrier. I still think that players are somewhat attracted to the structure of bridges, with their promise of some sort progress and there sole purpose of being travelled across, but it would appear that players will need some coaxing for them to go over them. This coaxing could be as simple as placing in near the centre of their line of sight, as shown with the previous map that did this.

For the subtle change to the interactive valve, I had a look at the ‘Uncharted’ series.

The games are a good example of using contrasting colours to make certain props in the level stand out and more noticeable, cluing the player in to a potential route through the level (notice from 2:12 onwards, the use of red on the top of the signal box and the use of sky blue on the drain pipe to contrast with the cream colour of the wall it’s attached to.)

I tried this out on the valve by making it a blue colour. Sure enough, players now recognised it as something to interact with, or if they didn’t know how or about being able to interact with things, something of significance.

This theory of making things stand out with colour is causing some problems with the level though. Players, if they are unsure of what to do, assume that this particular light is something of significance, for the same reason the valve.

This is something that I need to keep in mind when designing non-experimental levels. I need to make sure that there are no other props accidentally performing any guiding functions. It’s very tempting when laying down props to place objects to jazz up the area, and make it look more artistically interesting. But it seems that it will be necessary to make some areas look purposefully dull, or at least less interesting, then others to make the guiding work.

I made two new maps to test a couple of other ideas I had.

This map, which I’m going to call ‘The Bridges One’, is to further test the notion that bridges attract people towards them. I’m using the floating black squares particle effect to make the gaps in the floor more noticeable, which should in turn make the bridges more noticeable.

I’m also testing the idea of simplicity verses complexity. Do people take the simpler, easier approach, or are they attracted to one which is more interesting but demanding?

The last thing I’m testing is whether or not people are attracted to novelty, or newness, in games as much as they are in reality. To test this, I’ve made the level very blocky, with square recesses in the walk, mainly perpendicular lines making up its geometry and having abstract floating black squares. Half way through the level the player may notice this.

The hypothesis is that the players will walk over to it and investigate.

Thankfully, playtesters did what I thought they were going to do for the most part.

Players often walked over the bridge structure at the beginning of the level. There was one tester who didn’t, but I believe it was due to the black square particle effect not firing in time, so the player didn’t notice it.

As for the simplicity verses complexity sections, results were mixed.

  

Most players at this part took the simple option and went up the steady slope. There were one or two that jumped up the steps.

But for this part, it was the opposite. Most players jumped over the blocks and the one or two walked past them.

It would appear that players like to take the simpler option, but are attracted to scenarios that look fun. Jumping over cubes was more intersting and fun. Jumping up steps is boring compared to jumping over a drop that could potentially kill. The risk is exciting. People who don't play many games may not want to due to lower confidence in the controls and lack of knowledge of the jump button.

Due to the fact that there were a few players who went against the trend, it seems that the route that the player takes is going to depend on their personality.

The 2^nd level I made was to test whether or not players are attracted to or repelled by the unknown.

I’m doing this by making a maze like level, made up of rooms connected by at least two paths. One path is straight so that player can look down it, and the other has a curve in it so that they can’t.

The results were a bit inconclusive. The tunnel which people chose seems to depend mostly on personality, and whether or not they saw a particular tunnel first. Some players walked straight through the first tunnel they saw. Others stopped to look and think about what way they wanted to go. These people usually went through the curved tunnels. Curious people are attracted to curious things it seems.

In another observation, most people, if they walked straight towards this half-submerged statue, they walked around it anti-clockwise, which funnelled them into a tunnel behind it. People walked over this way probably because there was more openness in that direction.

From what I’ve learnt so far, I’m considering a future project where the level design could change depending on a players personality. I’ll need to think about it more however. The next immediate step is to take what I’ve learnt so far and put it into a distributed level. The digital distribution service ‘Steam’ allows for members of the public to make content for select games, which other people can download and give feedback on. It is my to do just this.

Testing

This week I started properly on testing the maps that I had made. On Friday (5/10/12) I rounded up a group from the university and got them to play the desert like level.

Some things I noticed:

Everyone went over the bridge. Everyone. Even though they didn’t need to and could just walk around the edge of the hole. This may be because the other route wasn’t visible enough, and the cartoony style the bridge has made it stand out more against the rest of the level, but it makes a good argument for the theory that people can’t help but go over bridges. I will make a map which will test this further, involving the player going over different bridges, making sure the visual style is consistent and that all possible routes the player could use are easily noticeable.

The majority of the playtesters went through the tunnel. And if they didn’t go through the tunnel they down the left path. It did seem that the players were viewing the section as three separate paths instead of a wide are with a tunnel running through it.

Hardly any of the player went through this middle tunnel. They instead seemed dead set on going over to the bridge in order to cross it, which might have been due to its cartoony-ness.

There was one case however, where a player didn’t go through the first tunnel but looked through it twice, once through the entrance and once through the exit, and then went underneath the middle tunnel. To me, it seems that they didn’t go through the first tunnel because there was no need to; they already knew what was through it and that there was nothing inside of it. I’m not sure why they decided to go through the middle tunnel; maybe there was a part of them that wanted to go through a tunnel like structure but they felt that they missed their chance by not going through the first one? Or maybe they were just curious as to what was over there.

After this, I picked out some things I wanted to look into for the next map:

- Are people attracted to mystery? (I don’t think it was something I looked into enough with this map)

- Will more people go through tunnel if they couldn’t see where it went? (Although this links into mystery)

- Are stand out visuals attractive..?

- ...or are semantics more attractive?

And I came up with this

This section is here to see if players will go into the tunnel. Originally the inside had a blue light, but it was changed to be similar to the rest of the level to make sure that it wasn’t the difference in the lighting colour that was attracting people to it.

This is the ‘mysterious’ section.

And this is the semantics vs stand out visuals section.

So far, I’ve had one person playtest the level.

Some things I noticed:

The first thing the player did was look behind the crates. I placed them there for decoration because the artistic side of me thought that the room was looking bare. He problem is that the player has now gone looking for something and has become unsatisfied that nothing was there. I’m going to have to be careful in the future about moments like this. Perhaps it could also mean that guiding players successfully will require some areas of the level to look boring and plain to make players disinterested in them.

The player went into the tunnel after a bit of thought, further showing that people associate tunnels with going through them.

The 'mystery' section worked well, the player went for it.

The player also went over the bridge without thinking too much about it. However I’m not convinced that it was entirely the bridge that caused the player to go over it. The green light from the sludge under it might have had something to do with it as well. I’ll try a different version of the map with the sludge replaced with water and the green light turned off.

The player had no way of knowing that the valve was interactable. It’s pretty typical for a game to have some sort of highlight around interactive items, but as this project is all about making things more subtle I’m going to try something different.

Some new things to think about...

This week, some things happened.

I started off with a new experiment around ‘nature verses technology’. I had heard of research that had shown that people are more relaxed and happier when the natural world is around them, and I want to see if it applies to games as well. I will get people to play it, and see if they are drawn to natural green areas or the metallic technology centred areas. Constructing the map will also give me some practice at composing art assets.

The map isn’t finished yet, and it is taking longer than I want it to. I should have it finished soon.

I do however have some doubts if it’ll work. I had someone play a map with rainy outdoor and dry indoor areas to see if they stayed out of the rain, like they would in reality. However, they didn’t.

Instead, the player wasn't bothered much by the rain and instead used it as a landmark to get around the level with.

I went to the Eurogamer expo on the 27^th September, and while there I met Richard Perrin, the creator of a game called Kairo. I told him about my MA research, and about how the playtester didn’t do as I thought they would. He replied with ‘well, rain is more interesting’. I had also recently watched a TED talk by JJ Abrams, about how he uses mystery in his work, and how much of a driving force it is in many forms of entertainment. This led me on to thinking that I could use the player’s own curiosity to help get them round a level. I would like to create a level testing this out in the near future.

After showing the ‘nature verses technology’ map to my tutor, he suggested that player could be more willing to travel through a tunnel, because it is the sort of shape that people associate with travelling through.

To test this, I have made a small, linear map with some different obstacles.

These obstacles are what, I feel, people semantically associate different actions with. For instance, people regularly go over bridges in reality, so I fully expect people to go over this bridge, despite there being another route around the hole in the ground.