Simplicity vs Complexity

Last week, I meet the animator Candy Guard. She was giving a lecture about her work, and something that struck out at me was how much she based it on reality. She specialised in observational comedy based around everyday, relatable experiences. Part of the charm of her work is seeing scenarios that remind you of your own life.

I asked her how essential it is for her work to include these naturalistic scenarios, and whether or not she could imagine herself doing anything more abstract. The answer she gave didn’t really answer the question. Instead she went into detail about her art style. She uses simple line art for characters and environments, as she considers it to be ‘more universal’ so that more people would be able to identify with the characters. The simplicity of the visuals allow for the characters to become a near blank canvas for the audience to project themselves into; there are less variables that need to line up between the audience and the character for them to be relatable, it makes the character more malleable in order to fit the mind of the viewer.

I was inspired by this, and asked the question ‘would the same thing apply to 3d environments?’ Would the malleability of the player’s behaviour change if the level was visually simple?

I created a block out of a level, which included a selection of the different cues I had been testing up to this point, namely lights and visual threat.

I also tried something new with some lines as paths for the players to potentially follow.

I’ve only had 8 people play the levels so far, but there were some noticeable differences in how players behaved.

At the beginning of the level I had placed this spike trap. To get over it players need to jump onto the raised beam to give them the necessary height to make it over. If they just jump over the beam without looking, they fall in. This makes sure that players fear the other spikes immediately afterwards. I placed a red light by the spikes so that there is at least some clue that something dangerous is down there.

All simple level players didn't look at the first spike jump and dived straight into them. But 3 of the 4 complex level players noticed the spikes, and made it across safely. 

Although there's not enough people to form a solid conclusion, it would seem that the semantics of the red held more weight in the decorated/complex level. Perhaps the stone temple-like visuals held additional semantics that prepared the players for danger.

This area was a continuation of the previous fire level, where I was testing to see how player react to different levels of environmental threat. With that test, I came to the conclusion that players viewed different sized threats as the same as each other; there is no such thing as something that looks a little bit threatening. Watching people play through these new levels gave more evidence for that. Everyone chose to go through the large spiked path crouching under them to fit through the thin gap underneath. All the players also stopped and looked at their options before choosing a path, so it was clear that this was a thought out decision rather then something they did on auto-pilot.

A choice in the levels between whether to go down a light or dark path still brings up the same outcome as it has the past couple of tests; it’s about 50:50. What could be interesting is how players choose which path to go down. Those playing the simple level where generally more cautious about committing to a path, they would walk down one, turn around to see where the other went, and slowly edged forwards into making a decision. Those playing the complex looking level where more likely to down one path and stick with it, although some would backtrack afterwards to see where the other path led. This is something that I would like to look into more, maybe with an additional level focusing in it.

Finally there was the new test with lines.  This didn’t go as expected, as only one player, playing the complex level, followed the line laid out on the floor. The majority of the players took the first corner on both levels. One player on each level took the corner furthest away. It would seem that the manipulative power of lines on the floor doesn’t change with the complexity of the visuals.

Some interesting result came from this experiment although, as stated before, I’m going to need to get more data before I say that it’s a definite conclusion.