More explict threat

My next idea after the refuge test was to experiment with a threat that was more explicit, in order to see if they had more (or rather any) effect on the players decisions. 

In this level, players walk around an environment with dangerous surfaces. These surfaces are covered with things that not only looked dangerous but actually afforded physical harm, such as broken glass and caltrops. None of these surfaces actually harmed the player however. I wanted to see if players would assume that they would be hurt, or if they would try walking over them anyway.

I did a couple of variants, one where the only threat was the surface themselves, and another where there were rockets and lasers coming into the building, in order to see if these even more explicit threats overrode how the player felt about how dangerous the surface were.

I only had a few experienced players play the level unfortunately, but what I saw was that all of the players hesitated while first going up to the dangerous surfaces, and it was a 50:50 split between those who were brave enough to try to go over them, and those who didn’t at all.

The addition of lasers and rockets didn’t seem to change the way they viewed the dangers.

At the same time, I decided to have another go at the threatening looking gates idea as used the in the Mine level, but instead having the architecture affect the players' play space.

It was as simple level where the players needed to travel down a series of paths to collect an item and then go back to the start. There were different paths and areas the player could go, these different paths being characterised with either smooth walls or jagged geometry. I wanted to see if this would make them hesitant to approach them.

I had many experienced players and only one inexperienced player, but all of them followed more or less the same route, which involved checking all the nooks and crannies in the level which had the jagged geometry, and also the ones with the smoother geometry. 

At this point in the research, I was continuing the have trouble finding inexperienced playtesters, which was becoming a major problem. With these two tests though, I had found new evidence that experienced players would avoid the jagged, unorthodox geometry. Some of the players said that they found them confusing, but in a way that wasn’t necessarily frustrating, a couple of them even saying that they thought it was cool and engaging. This is something I might incorporate into other work, but I don’t think I’m going to look into this further with the MA, unless a lot of novice players have the same opinion.