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.