For my MA, I will be investigating how indirect control can
be used to improve complex 3d games for people who have never played them
before. This will have applications including serious games, but something I am
interested in making games for the elderly. The elderly, as a demographic, are
being missed out, and this gives an opportunity to make something that is
unique, innovative, and could genuinely make people feel better.
However, if I am going to use this research in order to make
a prototype for a product, I feel would need to do some further into making a
suitable UI and controls, as well as looking into what kind of 3d environment
game most elderly people are going tolike playing. If such a game exists.
I would like to do to start off with, having non-gamers to
play through some of the experiments I did less semester, in order to see how
they react to non-game 3d environments, and whether or not this relates to how
they behave in real life.
However, soon I would like to move onto making actual games,
with objectives, rewards and punishments, mainly for personal practice.
Something I have currently been looking at is the O.C.E.A.N.
theory, a psychological model for how people are motivated.
Jason Vanderburg, a designer at Ubisoft, had a talk at GDC
2012 where he applies the theory to game design.
What he's doing is applying it to game design decisions on a
macro scale, such as deciding on a game’s mechanics, aesthetics and context.
Something I would like to look into further is applying the
same theory to level design on a micro scale, where instead of being able to
predict what game’s people will buy, you could predict what moment to moment
decisions they would make.
A few weeks ago, I met the artist Micheal Brennand-Wood, who’s
artwork is characterised by having lots and lots of detail.
His idea behind the art is that having so much detail will
draw people in, as they take their time to discover and appreciate the pieces’ intricacies.
His art is designed so that people at first see the image as a whole, but the
longer they look, they notice the smaller details.
I thought it would be a good idea to try this out in a game
level, becuase if successful, it could be a unique and fresh way of drawing
attention.
The level is made of T-junctions, like many of the experiments
before it, with some turnings more detailed than others. Will players be drawn
to this detail?
As well as talking to Brennand-Wood, I also sat down with Pete
Bottomly, technical designer at White Paper Games. I talked to him about the
design of their adventure puzzle game Ether, and a point that he brought up
concerned the narrative in relation to the puzzles. Because the narrative is
mature and serious, dealing with such subjects such as Alzheimers and relationships,
the puzzles are naturalistic; they run on real-life logic. Having puzzles that
were more abstract or comedic, such as other popular adventure like Monkey
Island, wouldn’t fit with the game and do justice to the subjects.
As a bit of a side experiment, I placed this cartoony object
near the end of the level. One of the things that I thought about earlier on
in the semester was the idea of games being separate world with their own
rules, and whether or not having stylistic inconsistencies, such as someone
throwing a hand grenade in a sedate adventure game, would confuse players.
I’ve only had a few people play the level, one being Shawn
Moony, an artist at Atomhawk Design, and the rest were people who have had very
little experience is playing games.
All of the players seemed to react positively to the
detailed sections and looked at them for some time. Not everyone saw the
cartoony bottle, but when they did they stopped to stare at it for a while and
asked me what it was doing there. Since they did that, it looks like it ended
up breaking their immersion. It was however probably the most effective stimuli
I’ve tested at drawing the player’s attention for a prolonged period of time.
It’s something that could be used if there’s a case when a break in immersion is
a price worth paying for grabbing someone’s attention.
Something interesting happened when Mooney went down this
darkened corridor. He said that he got a little bit scared. I asked him what
kinds of games he plays, thinking that his experience of other games might be
influencing his emotional state, and he said that he played a lot of horror games,
and said that he felt that other players would have a similar reaction to the corridor.
However, when the inexperienced players played that section,
they didn’t feel any sort of emotion. I asked them why and they said that ‘it’s
just a video game’.
Around this time I sent an email to Alexander Bruce, creator
of the puzzle game AntiChamber, a game that has puzzles that go against game
design conventions.
I asked him about the development of the game, and he had
noticed that different players went into the game with different expectations of
how it was going to play, as it used the popular first person perspective (FPS).
He noted that people who played a lot of FPS games were worse than those who
hadn’t played games before, as the FPS players were too used to the logic behind
those games, and they needed more time to adjust to the logic used in
Antichamber.
This experiment is a similar situation. Mooney was scared in
the corridor because he’s associated darkness in games with things jumping out
at him, because that’s the kind of thing that’s happened in the games that he
likes playing. The inexperienced players don’t have that that experience
(naturally), and so don’t react. This kind of thing has happened in previous
experiences, such as the ‘Dark and light’ town, where some people didn’t go
down the dark paths out of fear, and one player of the 2nd tunnels level from the previous semester stopped playing half way through because they thought that something was
going to jump out at them.
From this, I would like to say that a players experience of
games informs their behaviour and emotional reaction moreso then their real world
experience. I would like to do more research into this next semester, if I have
time.
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.
This week, I wanted to look into how people are affected by
threatening objects in the environment. I made a level set in a burning
building, where player needs to navigate to the exit. Throughout, there are
different sized fires that damage the player if they move into them, with
larger fires dealing more DPS then smaller fires. There are some fires that are
so small that they don’t deal any damage. At a couple of points, the player
will need to move through fires in order to progress. If they are killed, they respawn at the start of the level.
I wanted to see how players reacted to the different sizes
of fires; whether or not the amount of threat they feel increases with the size
of the fire. I’m also interested in what they would do if they are confronted with
two routes with different sized fires down them. What routes would they choose, or would they try to find a third option?
During testing, I saw that all of the players avoided the fires as much as possible, no
matter what the size was. Even very small fires, the kind of which you could
realistically stamp out, where seen as a threat. When confronted with the ‘2 routes
with different fires’ scenario, most players took a third option and tried to go
in-between the fires in one of the paths.
Something else that was interesting was how players
interacted with the smallest, no damage dealt fires. Only a few players discovered
that these particular fires were safe, but each of them believed that each
example was an isolated incident, like it was a bug. When they went up to
another fire of the same size, they still considered it a threat.
I also had half of the playtesters play the level in an 'over the shoulder' 3rd person view (meaning they had one to one control over what they looked at). The default character in the UDK is a metal
robot, and I wondered if players would notice this and start the level thinking
that they wouldn't be hurt by fires. However, they didn’t. They played in the
same way that the 1st person players did. This reinforces the notion made in the
'Material Semantics' test levels that players don’t seem to think about the properties of certain materials
when playing, unless they are taught it.
Another observation is how the majority of players tackled the
final section:
For this, the player needs to jump through the fires to get
to the exit. There is an additional route that the player can take, but it
leads to a dead end.
All of the players went to the dead end, which is to be expected. The majority
of the players saw the two fires as an impassable barrier, and so back tracked
to find a new solution. What was interesting was that after they came back to
the exit, whether or not they had been killed by another fire and respawned,
they went back to the dead end, even though they knew that there was nothing
there to help them. They likely went there to find if there was anything that
they had missed. One player however said, ‘I don’t know why I keep coming here’,
which could indicate some sort habit or a subliminal, hard wired human behaviour involving retracing step. In the Vine level there were some players, after falling to
their deaths, would retrace the same route that they took previously, even if
it was a difficult one. This is something I'm going to read into more.
After playtesting the 3rd person level with a
controllable camera, the overall by-the-numbers outcome was similar, with about
half and half going towards light and dark. There were a few key differences in
how players acted.
Half of the 6 players missed this cake, running straight past
it at the beginning. This could be for 2 reasons, either they didn’t think
that they could pick up the cakes (something that they do realise when looking
at the second) or they didn’t notice it due to the brightness of the light and
the white texture on the cake, making it blend in.
Players were also more likely to go down this dark alleyway.
5 of the 6 players went down here, as opposed to just 1 player when the camera
was fixed.
When placing the cameras I made a conscience decision to compose
the shot so that the most emphasis was placed on the lit corner to see if it
made any difference when the player could control the camera, and it has. The
fixed camera position looks to have made the dark path less noticeable and thus
a lot less likely for the player to go down. From this it would seem that
visual composition, and how the information is presented to the player has an
extra layer of influence on the players actions then if they were allowed to
control how it was presented.
Something I think I could look into whether or not the
presentation of information has a greater influence then the information itself.
Also, if a designer controlled camera was used to guide the
player, say in a fixed third person view, what would happen if the player was
suddenly given control, maybe from a first person perspective. Would they feel
uncomfortable with this control? Would it be like having the training wheels on
a bike suddenly disappear? Would there be a greater feeling of freedom and
choice?
This week I created and tested a 3rd person
camera level.
The goal of the level is to collect all the cakes and head
to the exit. The players however don’t know this when they start, and work out
the goal at the end when they see a number counter increase when they collect a
last piece.
The level uses the same light vs dark idea from one of the
previous levels, and I wanted to know if I got different results with a new
camera. My hypothesis is that players will feel more detached from the character
on screen, so would fell less danger, and thus will venture into the darkness
more often. There are two different variants; one that uses a fixed camera that
the player can’t control, and another that uses a controllable camera attached
to the character.
The fixed camera lets me look into controlling the image on
screen as a way to influence the players decision. At a few points, I have the
image framed so that the prominent part of the image is a dark or a light path.
I wanted to see if this has an effect.
I only managed to test the fixed camera version this week,
so next week I’ll be testing the controllable camera, along with any other ideas
I have in the meantime.
The level is made up of a few different sections, each with
a dark and a light path they can go down, like in the original. I took note of
each players general action qualitatively, as well as which path they chose the
first time they entered a section as raw numbers.
What I found was similar to the original test, that the
amount of players choosing dark and light paths first is about half and half.
Out of the 6 players who tested it 3 mostly went down dark routes first, and
the other 3 mostly went down the light routes. However, within the players own choices there was a near 50:50 split as well. All of the players who
mostly went down the dark paths had a 3 – 2 split out of the 5 choices they
made. Within the players who mostly went down light paths was an outlier who only took routes that where illuminated.
There were a few notable behaviours. Players didn’t seem hesitant
in going down the dark paths as much as they did with a first person camera.
They would usually go past the entrance to the dark path, and then back up to
see what was down there. Also, there was only one player who went into the
first dark area in the level.
Other players came back to this area either after reaching
the end of the level, as they need to in order to complete it, or after
going into the dark area of this 2nd section.
It would appear that either players didn’t want to go into
the woods, or they didn’t know that they could. It is known that players eyes
are drawn towards areas of contrast, so it could be that in this 3rd
person game, light is more about catching the players eye more than creating an
area of safety that the player feels emotionally.
After having more people play the vine level, it seems that
more people share the same though process as my original tester. Generally
speaking, players recognised that there was a variety of density in the vine
bridges, but when players played the game they ended up being put into 2 mental
boxes, bridges that broke and bridges that didn’t. They didn’t recognise that
there was an analogue. Player still avoided the bridges that looked the
thinnest, but used all the others.
My next step is to take some of my previous maps, and see if
I get the same result if it uses a 3rd person camera.
