Looking at the use of threat

After the previous tests, I had the idea of looking into using threat to influence players’ decisions. Many of the previous tests had used this idea before in a more inferred and implicit way, such as the light and dark town, where the dark paths could be seen as threatening, and the bridges test, where there was a threat of falling if you choose the wrong bridge to walk over. I felt it was a good idea to do a test making the threat more explicit, or at least use more threatening looking architecture and geometry. Also, I felt that some players were finding the test levels boring, and I thought using threat would make it more engaging.

The level I made was set in a mine, with various junctions and paths the player could walk down in order to find a gem. After completing the gem, the mine would start to collapse, with rocks falling from the ceiling and the player camera shaking. The player would then have to go back the way they came, arriving back to where they started to complete the level.

Some of the paths were made to look ‘safe’, with smooth edges, blue lighting, a surrounding structure and plant life. Other paths were made to look ‘dangerous’, with red lighting and jagged edges.

The gem is placed in circular room. At the back of the room is another path leading to a dead-end. This was an extra little test to see if players would immediately backtrack after the mine starts collapsing, or if they will continue to think that the progression in the level was linear.

Most of the players who played this version of the level were experienced, with few novice players.

The one novice player that had played the map at that point enjoyed it, and mostly went down the safer looking corridors. After collecting the gem, she went back the same route she came in on.

The experienced players I had play the map were split between going down safer routes and dangerous ones. A few of the players had noticed the large pieces of rock in the ceiling, and had guessed that they would come loose at some point.

None of the players had trouble picking up the gem, which at this point I believe became conclusive prove that bright objects that afford some kind of interaction will be interacted with by a player. They didn’t need any additional flashyness, they just needed to stand out in the environment.

Something I noticed with all of the players was their reaction to the falling rocks. All of them assumed that they would be hurt by them in some way, even though there wasn’t any feedback telling them that they had been hurt.

Although I didn’t have much data from inexperienced players, I was coming up with an idea of how threat worked in the players head, and how it could be exploited.

My thinking was that threats were divided into passive threats and active threats. Passive threats were parts of the environment that looks threatening in some way, such as the jagged rock formations in the mine, or the dark alleys in the Light and Dark town. An active threat is something that the player believes will negatively affect them in terms of the games mechanics for example, an object that affords physical harm is threatening in a game because it looks like it could reduce health, as oppose to an environmental feature that looks a bit spooky.

What I thought I was seeing were inexperienced players attempting to avoid passive threats as well as active threats, and experienced players only avoiding active threats, and either ignoring or sometimes even being attracted to passive threats, due to them promising something exciting. 

It felt like a new idea, because a lot of indirect control techniques rely on drawing the player towards something, whereas this involved pushing players away AND drawing them towards certain areas.