This week, I got an elderly couple to play some of the test
levels. This proved very valuable, as it brought up the issues and difficulties
they have playing games which I hadn’t considered. I had them play 3 levels:
First of all was the bridge level.
I set them up playing one of the bridge levels without any
enemy npc’s. Straight away they had trouble controlling the game. They often
would get caught on the low railings, and be confused when it wouldn’t let them
go forward. The interesting thing about how they played was how they viewed
their relationship with what was on screen, the game world as a whole, and
themselves. They didn’t appear to mentally place themselves within the game
world, and didn’t think of playing the game as controlling themselves or a
character going through it. But rather it seemed like they viewed the controls
as a way to change what appeared on the screen. As I was explaining the
controls, I mentioned that they pressed a key ‘to move yourself forward’, at
which point they both looked confused and asked what I meant by that. At one
point, one of them had lined up the camera to see a diagonal view of the
bridge, but when they needed to turn the camera to the side to negotiate an
obstacle in order to cross it, the bridge went of screen, and they immediately said
‘I’m lost’ and tried to get me to sort it out for them. They were panicking a
little bit. Other frustrations they had was not being able to move forwards and
turn at the same time. Although it’s possible to do that with the games
controls, it takes a bit of skill and muscle memory to know where the keys were
and to be able to control it confidently enough so that they didn’t fall off
the bridges.
Because they had so much trouble controlling the game, only
managing to get past two bridges, I don’t think that the materials the bridges
were made of played a significant part in where they choose to go. Nonetheless,
they both decided to go over the metal bridges only, which were also lined up
in a row almost end to end. After first going over a metal bridge, it appears they
decided to stick with what they were comfortable with.
The next level they played was the light and dark town.
I changed the level a little by adding in another little
experiment. I changed the goal from ‘can you find the cake?’ to ‘can you find
the stone statue?’, with the goal written down in the game world on some paper
by a dead body.
I had the idea of using similar or related objects as a
cookie crumb trial leading them to the stone statue. For this level I placed a
statue, but this time made of copper, at a junction leading to the one made of
stone. This was done in the hope that players would see the statue, and because of that think that they were on the right path to the statue they had to find.
They got on with this one a lot better than the bridges
level, mainly due to it not having a failure state and them getting a bit more
used to the controls. However, they didn’t appear to actually enjoy the
experience, finding it a bit boring due to its lack of rewards.
The use of the two copper statues ended up working quite
well. Both of them were drawn to it and it gave them some motivation to carry
on playing, but they felt disappointed when they realised that the statue was
copper, not stone. They thought they had won the game and then it dawned on
them that they hadn’t.
After finding the first statue, one player carried on down
the path it was part of, and the other when the other way, in a 'just in case I
miss anything' fashion. The look of the area gave some troubles later on when one
of them arrived at the main square at the end.
They had previously noticed the falling yellow leaves near
the first statue, and when they saw the falling leaves in the main square, they
asked if they were retracing their steps. After a moment they realised that
they were in a new area and carried on as normal, but it still gave them a brief
moment of confusion, which could of resulted in further confusion if they decided
to go back the way they came. Either way, this is someone else who has felt
lost when arriving in an area which shares visual features with a previous
area.
One final thing to mention was that both players followed
the illuminated path and didn’t go near anywhere that was dark. One player
asked me in a matter of fact way ‘I take it I need to go towards the lights’,
so it looked like their decisions were logical rather than emotional.
And lastly the 3rd person with a fixed camera cake collecting level.
This was the level that they liked the most. Only the wife
of the couple played this level, as the husband at that point had gotten pretty
fed up of it and didn’t want to play it. The wife liked how often she got
rewarded, and how the game was centred around using skill to control the
character on the screen. Every cake picked up felt like an achievement. What I
found interesting was how she reacted to her failures in controlling the
character. In the other levels, if they bumped into something, got lost or fell
off something, they would get a little down and frustrated, in a kind of sombre
rather than angry way. But when controlling a character, instead of feeling bad
about herself, she got frustrated at the character. She kept on saying ‘you
stupid man’ when things weren’t going her way.
Again, she followed the lit areas and didn’t attempt to go
down any of the darker paths. I ended up having to finish the game for her, and
when I showed her the dark foresty areas, she didn’t seem too surprised, so it
looks like she didn’t go down those paths due to some emotional connection with
the dark or because of disinterest.
I’m going to carry on experimenting with the idea of object
and environmental semantics, using similar objects to what players need to find
to point them in the right direction. However, I’m also going to be looking
into different control schemes. One which is simple but relatable enough for
players like the elderly couple to pick up easily. I’m going to think about how
I could add it some kind of ‘touch’ element to the controls as well.
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