I ran into a time management problem with the beginning of
this semester. This month, I have been finishing my work for the initial
release of Rise of the Triad, and as a result, have had very little time for MA
work. However, I have done one experiment that produced interesting results.
Not having the time to create something of my own, I had my
Dad, someone who plays very little video games, and what he does play is exclusively
racing games, play through the first level of Silent Hill Shattered Memories.
I chose it because this first level is non-conflict and exploratory
focused, with only the minor challenge of navigating through the level. The
objective only has a narrative context, you are searching for the player
character’s missing daughter, but exactly where she is is something the player
is required to discover for themselves. This means that the player's only task is navigating around the map, which makes it easy for the player to play, and easier for me to see why certain choices are made.
I looked at the game during the first semester to analyse its
indirect control techniques, where it mostly used brightness to make certain
doors and objects standout against its dark environments. The contrast of
brightness isn’t too obvious, because the player can use a torch which lights
up the majority of the screen, so the brightness of these objects appears in
the corners of the players vision.
Even without the light shining on it, the door is still slightly illuminated
My Dad had never played a game like Shattered Memories
before, and I feel his thought process (which he rather helpfully gave a
running commentary on) is going to become very useful in the future when
finding inspiration for new techniques, granted that other people follow it.
There were a few big takeways from watching him play.
Firstly, the indirect control methods used by the game worked. Doors that were
highlighted in the dark were noticed, and he successfully and smoothly managed
to navigate through the level. There were a couple of instances where it was
required of him to climb over a fence (by walking up to it and pressing a
button), and he ended up not knowing how to progress, which was due to not
knowing that the fence could be interacted with in the first place.
The second was how much affordance played a part in his
decisions. There is a moment in the level where you’re in the back room of a clothes
shop and you need to get past a locked door, which has a note pinned to it. The
first thing he did was start looking around the room, saying “Where would I put
a key?”, thinking in a grounded, realistically logical sense. He spent a few
moments looking at cupboards and shelves. What he didn’t do was read the note
on the door which told him that the key was in one of three jackets on display
opposite the door. People not reading text is something that appears to be
shared between active and non-game players, although I would like to test on
more people before using that in practice. Last semester I observed that when
players are confronted with different problems and stimuli, they first use
their experience of other games to decide on how to approach it. What I’ve seen
here could mean that people with little or no game experience could use their
real world experience instead.
The third big takeaway was how he interpreted progression.
Any semblance of backtracking was met with some frustration. The level starts
outside in the snow, and as you continue on you go into and out of several
buildings, alleys and parks. The first time he exited a building, about a ¼
through the level, he sighed and said that he had ‘already been outside’. This
didn’t stop him from quickly getting back on track though. However, at one
point, the player walks into a diner, meets with an NPC and is then required to
walk outside again and partly backtrack through the level to progress. This
didn’t go well, as he spent a good 5 minutes in the diner, wondering where to
go, attempting to walk through a non-interactive door. He became confused and
didn’t want to continue playing, and only walked back outside after figuratively
‘giving up’. To him, progression is strictly linear, with a constant stream of
new novel places. Any resemblance to any previous places feels like going
backwards. Of course I would like other people to play to see if this idea of
progression is shared, because and I have a feeling that he may feel this way
due to him only playing racing game regularly.
Something that surprised me was how much he explored. Upon
entering an area, he would look and walk around the area thoroughly for
potential exits before choosing one to go through. This exploration mindset
seemed to be the main driving force of his play style, as there were a few
moments where he would enter a room with the exit lit up right in front of him,
but he wouldn’t notice it and instead looked around the area. He didn’t appear
to be impatient, which seemed strange to me, considering how much he wanted to
skip the non-interactive opening cutscenes. This could mean though that
exploration gameplay is something has the potential to be enjoyed by a
mainstream audience of people who’ve never played video games before.
Moving forward, what I would like to pursue is the idea of affordance,
and how you could make an environment not just look but feel more real. I would
need to run the test past more people, but if people do fall back onto real world
experience as much as my Dad does, making something in game feel more or less
dangerous than it actually is could be a key idea for indirect control for
non-gamers. During my time on Rise of the Triad, I’ve learned a lot more about
Unreal. My next experiment will be taking the metal and wooden bridges test
from last semester, and use ‘camera anims’, which let you control the position
of the player camera while they are still playing, to try make the wooden
bridges fell dangerous, and see if that has an effect on player choice.
