First experiments

This week, I’ve created a list of different levels I would like to try out, and I’ve started blocking them out. These are the one I’ve finished so far:

Warm colours vs cool colours, seeing what colours people are drawn to, or whether or not it makes much difference at all.

Light areas vs darker areas. I've done a few variants of this map. One has the player starting in darkness and another where they start in a bright room. I wanted to see if the environment that the player starts will influence the areas they want to go in. For instance, will a player who starts off in darkness be more willing to enter dark areas, or will players who start off in light be entering them out of curiosity. I'm also working on giving the players a torch, and seeing if that will influence where they go.

Indoors vs Outdoors. There are a couple of these, one where it is raining and th other where it's not. I wanted to see if people are affected by virtual weather as much as they are by real weather.

Elevation. I've got a feeling that people want to be as high as possible in a maze like environment, so I made this to see if that's correct.

Lines. In this map there's a couple of different coloured lines going through the level. I want to see what colours people go towards, but also how much they follow them. 

Lines vs arrows. This map only has blue coloured objects, and I want to see if arrows or lines have a greater influence on people. This map may need to some work, as it is unlikily that a realistic game will resort have giant arrows on the wall telling player where to go. At the moment it could be said that the arrows represent an object that is more directing to the player, like a signpost, and the line representing something more subtle like foot prints. It might be a better idea to make the realistic looking map with the signposts and the footprints.

While making them, I had some thoughts about different or additional directions that I could go in. Instead of just investigating and trying to find new ways of guiding players, I could ask the questions like ‘How much of a players personal experience do they use while playing a game?’, or ‘Do players need to be guided?’

Beginnings

And now, a Masters degree in Games Design...

I'm going to be looking into the idea of indirect control in games. In a game that gives the player a lot of freedom in what they do, there is a chance that they can become lost or otherwise not know what to do. Indirect control is where the designer shows the player what to do, without the player knowing that they've been shown it.

For my BA in Games Design, I created a level where the player walked through an environment collecting items. I guided the player firstly by using text prompts, symbols and having the player repeat actions. But then those prompts faded away and I used more subtle methods, such as having objects move or fall in an attempt to get players to look in the direction that they need to go.

I'm going to be looking at this in greater detail, and one of the first thing I'm going to do is run playtests to see if there are things that people naturally gravitate to when they are playing. Things like colours, lighting, certain graphics and different materials. I could also look at if the results change if the player is put into different contexts, for instance if the game involves shooting, will they gravitate towards the same things if they were playing a puzzle game?

There is a whole host of variables that could be tested, so over this week I'll be reducing them down to realistic amount that I could test.