The Help Test

In this test I wanted to see how much the player relied on help. My main focus for this masters is to try and take that away from the game and make the player learn themselves, rather than tell them where to go through hints etc.

This test put the players in a white room to begin with; there was a hole in the ceiling and a button in the room. With this I wanted to 1 - See if the player would realise the objective was to get to the hole in the ceiling, and 2 - see if they would either press the button, or try and figure it out themselves. If they pressed the button, it wouldn’t help them straight away. It had to be pressed a few times before the answer was given, and even then it would only help them with one word; for example the first bit of help was 'Kangaroo', the answer being they had to jump. I thought to give the button a presence similar to that of 'The Stanley parable's' narrator, to see if that changed the outcome or the way the player felt.
The solution for the room was that they had to jump up on invisible platforms to reach the hole in the ceiling. The platform would only react when they landed on it however, meaning they couldn’t run around and bump into invisible scenery to realise something was there.
Almost every player bar one went straight to the button from the beginning, similar to the symbol test button. They then continued to press it to see what it said, and used the help it gave.

The second room was to see if the player would walk across the obviously more secure area that has floor or, would they instantly adventure out into the open space that could lead to their death. Again a button was present to see if they relied on help from it. Some players saw the gap and thought to run straight at it, thinking the other ways were TOO obvious. However, some didn’t jump meaning they did fall and die, at which point they thought to try the other paths. When they realised this didn’t work either they looked to the button for help again which gave the word 'Hopscotch', meaning they had to jump in a hopscotch pattern across the gap. Only a few relied of the button during this room. One of the players that used the button said that it was very patronising when they were reading the comments before it gave them help. This was good feedback as I wanted to see if I could make the player feel differently through just a simple entity.

The third room was a difficult one; most people didn’t complete this one, apart from one player. This room was taking some patterns I noticed from the line of sight test and putting them to practise. One of the things i noticed in the line of site test was that when I re-designed the layout to lead the player back to the main room, I had to add a small hallway. Some of the players that played the re-design thought that the answer was in this hallway, rather than back in the main room.
So I wanted to see how the player reacted to a long hallway which leads to the button, to see if they would think their next objective was there, rather than the room with the button in. There was also a small hint which I didn’t add purposely, but thought would be interesting after I realised it was there. The shadowy bit in the picture above is about where the hidden wall was, so I wondered if players would think to check that part more, instead of the other parts of the walls. All the testers bar one gave up on this one, they all relied on the button for help which gave them 'Quarterback' meaning to go a quarter of the way back down the hall and interact with a wall; but still no-one realised. The one player that didn’t give up, didn’t want to use the button at all and was adamant not to. He hadn't used any of the other buttons beforehand, therefore hadn't had to interact with anything, so not knowing you could possibly interact with the environment. This meant he didn’t really try to interact with any of the walls in the hallway and though he could just 'phase' though a certain wall. However he eventually gave in and used the button. To which he got the comment 'What would you be doing if I didn’t exist?' which then seemed to annoy him as he thought it was going to help him; but again because he hadn't used the others, he didn't know they had to be pressed multiple times. Though, after he used the button, he then started trying to interact with the walls, so maybe the 'Use' action triggered him to then try different things? Eventually after a good while...I think about an hour and a half of him trying, he found the wall and continued.

The forth room was more of a statement rather than a test. Most gamers I have noticed try to complete things as fast as they can. Like with my previous tests for example, if the player couldn't figure out what to do within the first 5 minutes or so, most of them gave up. So with this room, the button told them to 'wait...' (Among other comments) all they had to do was wait 30 seconds for a wall to open and the more they pressed the button to get help, would reset the timer. Even though the players gave up on the 'Quarterback' test some still wanted to carry on. Most of them didn’t understand how this room was completed (at least until after they had completed the level), but all of them...again bar one of them... used the button to get help.

The final room, this room was to see if adding a slight bit of extrusion, hearing that they felt betrayed, by such a simple button was perfect.
and a taller room, would make the player look up. Again during the Line of Sight test a lot of players didn’t look to the higher points of the walls, let alone the ceiling, so this was to try and get them to do that. All the players that got into this room reacted as I had hoped and looked up instantly and all thought their objective was up there. Most of them seemed to think that the extrusion on the ceiling was going to be a lift of some sort to take them out of the room; but all they had to do was look at the extruded area and a 'Gratz =D' would appear indicating the end of the level. One thing about this room was that it had no button, if the players had pressed the button in the previous room it would have mentioned that it isn't going to help them anymore. Two of the testers that entered this room, told me that they felt betrayed now that the button wasn't their anymore. Now if you look back at the post I made about the psychology of games, betrayal through gameplay (not just storyline) was one thing I wanted to try and work on. So

All in all, this test made me realise that they relied on the help from the button too much. Maybe because the other level I had made didn’t help them at all they wanted to get something from it? Or maybe because it was the only thing that was visibly giving them feedback? Either way, I think the previous tests I have done show they player doesn’t need help. This test did help me make the player feel differently when playing, and that was through simple means too. I was also able to fix some of the problems that I noticed in the Line of Sight test.

At the moment I’m focusing on creating the level layouts for our actual game so we can have something in 3D to mess around with. I've currently laid out the first 'dome' and am working on the layouts of some of the ally and enemy camps in this area. So while i work on these I'll also be thinking of some more tests to conduct!

So until next time
Laters taters!

The LoS Test!

So, after a few weeks iv finally decided to add the results of the new level to my blog! 

This was the LoS test (Line of Sight) meaning the player had to look at something to make something happen. Basically I wanted to see if the player figured out what how things were appearing e.g looking at a trigger 3 times, then a word would appear and a door would open. I wanted to see if they would start scouring the walls or looking at them three times, most of the players did do that... but unfortunately a lot of them didn't complete the level as they didn't realise they had to look at the specific places three times. The words that appeared were 'Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain' And were each colloured as the different colour of the rainbow, to see if people understood what they were looking for, before they were looking for it.

  

Below are the notes I made after each player had tested the level.

Tommy – Gave up after about 3 minutes as he didn’t understand what was happening. He seemed to think it had something to do with Richard rather than the door that opened when Richard appeared. Would also seem if you give a player a gun, they will automatically think the game has something to do with the gun…

Monteeeee - Took about 30 minutes and got very frustrated while he was playing it. He spent about 13 -14 minutes looking around until he eventually spotted the ‘Of’. Once the ‘Of’ appeared everyone who was watching realised it must have something to do with looking at certain areas, but because he looked around so erratically it made it difficult for him to find the final words. Plus an error on my part made it so he spotted the last word too soon… =(. All in all he didn’t understand the purpose of the test until I explained it to him but also mainly due to the fact he moved so quickly and didn’t take his time to look around the environment. 

Hoeeeyyyy – Managed to figure out what was going on with the line of sight triggers, however gave up after finding ‘Gave’ as a door didn’t open after that word appeared like with the others. Like with Montee and everyone’s involvement, people thought that the there was a certain point to look at for the word to appear rather than looking in area 3 times. 

Adam – Couldn’t complete the level at the same point as Hoey. It seems people get confused as soon as I switch the mechanic of the LOS trigger to be closer to the floor; rather than in the middle or at a higher point of the wall. Another thing Adam thought was that he had to look at a certain point, and then look away at a certain point for the word to appear and a door to open.

So far testers haven’t managed to get passed the ‘gave’ and in some cases not even make it to ‘gave. Perhaps it is because I have set the rule that the word will be somewhere on the wall, so when adding it closer to the ground players will not look there. Also after hitting the word ‘gave’, looking around after that seems to also confuse the player. This seems to be because I have removed the fact a door will open when the word is looked at, so they don’t take their time to look around the other rooms to make the other words appear.

Beckie – Ended up giving up after finding Richard. Mainly because she didn’t know how she found Richard so she didn’t know what she was looking for to find the next word. Maybe certain players need the rule to be set from the start of the puzzle before they are able to figure out the rest of it? Or would they stick at it to try and figure out themselves? From the previous testers, most persevered and didn’t want to let the game beat them… so maybe using this as a mechanic itself would be a good idea?

Taime – Again gave up on ‘gave’ to begin with he thought the solution was to interact with part of the wall, which only appeared to work as he had looked at the ‘Richard’ trigger 2 times already then decided to interact. This made him think the rule was to interact with random parts of the environment (which might be an interesting test). However after he thought he triggered ‘york’ from clicking the door frame, he thought it was too random and then saw that gave appeared view looking at it (however this was done very quickly so he thought it was again looking at a certain point) he couldn’t figure out what to do next and gave up. Though when the solution was told to him he thought it was an interesting idea.

The Change – Adding the link between rooms.

The main issue with the tests above i noticed was the layout of the level itself. This was because I changed the mechanics, meaning a door didnt open but the palyer had to go back to the main room to look for the next word in the sequence. This meant they had to go back on themselves, as there was no lead or way to know that they were supposed to look in the main room.

when I noticed this I decided to change the layout a little, so when the player got to the word 'Gave' another door would open and lead them to the main room. This seemed to improve the results.

Noah – Noah was the first to test the updated version of my level. The level now instead of leading down to the word gave, leads to another room, which then links back to the main room with ‘Richard’ once the word ‘gave’ has been found. Interestingly though Noah seemed to think each word had a different solution, the first being walking backwards into a wall, the second was waiting, the third was clicking on the previous two and the fourth was looking at it. All were of course wrong as all they require is to look at that area three times. However, with the new link to the main room he though the next word was in the small hallway that links the two rooms, even though two doors open instead of one.

Chris – Chris was the first tester to complete the level! This is with the updated version however, with the linking rooms. He was also the first person to realise that the interaction was to look at the walls however again thought you had to look at a certain point for the word to appear. He reacted exactly how I wanted the player to react, scouring the walls for the word to appear. He also though that the small hallway linking the ‘gave’ room to the main room had the next piece of the puzzle in it, but when nothing happened he soon moved to the main area.

Rob –Unfortunately he didn’t complete it and ended up giving up on gave like most others; however some of the things he did during the test were interesting. Similar to Noah he seemed to think that each word had a different rule, and so tried different things every time. The first he thought he walked through a trigger, and the second he thought was timed. However on ‘york’ he realised it must be something to do with looking at things. He also seemed to start trying to find patterns that weren’t actually there, the main one being that a word wouldn’t appear on a wall that a door has already opened on therefore dismissed those walls entirely; meaning he didn’t ever look at the ‘Battle’ trigger.

Christoph – So Christoph is the second person to actually complete this level. Though while he was playing through he felt there was no logic to the mechanic or the placement of the words. However once I mentioned the mechanic and the reasons of placement he realised the process; but still didn’t quite get that I placed some higher to make people think to look at the ceiling. He also figure out after the third word appeared, the words would appeared when the trigger was looked at. Another thing is, he didn’t understand that the colour of the words corresponded to the rainbow until the last two and also didn’t know the rhyme for ‘Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain’ Due to him being from Germany.

A few things that arose during this test were, that I noticed that a few players are very erratic with their mouse movement and were trying to complete the test as quickly as possible; meaning a lot of the time they missed the triggers. Second, when put in a white room, a lot of people instantly go for the walls and hug them, either running around looking for a secret door, or pressing the action button to see if something will happen. This in turn made me notice something else, the player will try to create rules for the game themselves if they dont know the rules of play already. With a test like this where the player has to look at a specific area, a lot of players thought it was happening randomly, or because they were pressing something they couldnt see. Finally, when I created a link between the 'Gave' room and the main starting room, because there was a small hallway between them, they thought the next word was in there instead.

Next im going to be doing a test to see how much the player relies on help to figure out a puzzle, but also test some of the things I found in this test and previous tests. 
Results will be up sooner than these!

Laters taters! =D

The Non-Gamer!

Today I tested with a further 6 people, out of which 1 failed the test again. The one that failed didnt manage to figure out that the symbols were actually able to be activated and was confused about the whole endeavour. Whereas everyone else who comepleted it managed to all complete it within a 5-10 minute margin this time round.

Out of the other 5 people that tested it all reacted as I had hoped, not knowing what to do for the first few minutes then eventually testing out things e.g. seeing if the symbols can be interacted with, then realising the walls moved. Once they realised that the walls moved they generally figured out the puzzle shortly after. Everytime they sat down to play, they always asked me what they had to do, but when I wasnt going to say anything they then started to explore for themselves. Every one of them again went to the switch from the start to which they all answered 'It was the only thing that seemed to be interactable' which was the reason they tried to press it.

I got a 7th and final player to test it today also, a player that doesn't play games atall! And to my amazement, she completed it! The test took her 30 minutes, so a while longer than some of the more hard-core testers, but still learnt exactly the same way as they did. One very interesting point was, where the ones that failed it were frustrated or confused, this tester was very relaxed while trying to figure out the puzzle. The only things I had to tell her (due to her not being a PC gamer) was that 'E' was interact 'WASD' was move and the mouse was to look around. Once this was understood she then explored the level and managed to match all the symbols, and even realised that some had to be added together. The walls that threw a few players, were thought about a lot differently also. This player at first thought that if she went to the smaller symbols above the walls, that maybe something would happen that would harm her so was hesitant at first; but after realising they didnt tried to see if something else happened even if something opened somewhere else. Finally as every player has done thus far, even this player went straight to the switch...because it looked like a button...

Next I have an idea that is going to use line of sight triggers in a level to see how players react to that, but so far these tests are a great help!

The Stanley Parable

Moving onto a little bit more research, I have recently bought and compelted a game called 'The Stanley Parable'. This is a brilliant game for me to look at as it breaks almost everything we know about the narrative of a game. The Stanley Parable  'looks at those parts of first-person gaming that are least easy to design for – exploration and messing with the game’s engine – and foregrounds them. It takes the very limitations of traditional gaming narratives and uses them to ruthlessly expose their own flaws' (Hiller, Brenna, 2013, www.vg247.com) Having palyed this myself this is exactly what it does - alongside being absolutley hilarious. One thing that got me, and made me feel like id properly beat the system was - If i dfied the storyline to a point where I was faced with a phone the narrator told me to answer...but I didnt want to answer it to see what happened. I then noticed that the phone was plugged in and I thought wouldnt it be cool if i could unplug the phone! And to my suprise, I could and I ended up getting a different ending - This made me feel like id accomplished something that the game didnt intend for me to accomplish, but ofcourse design wise it was doable.

Looking into this game though, seeing how it breaks everything and gives the player that choice to break everything through their own exploration is a great help, especially for the small test im going to be creating next. As it also plays on the players sense of noticing things e.g 'something was there before' or 'that wasnt there when I came through here last'

Laters taters!

The symbol Test!

Upon completing the Symbol test level I had 6 people test out the level to see how they played it. The results were interesting with only 1 person not completing it again, but everyone took between 5-20 minutes to figure out how to complete the puzzle.

The centre symbols

The puzzle itself was pretty simple, however was made difficult due to the fact of the player getting little feedback, and also being thrown into an environment without knowing what to do. There were 4 doors (which were not shown as doors, the only thing showing something was there was a symbol above them) Three symbols on in the centre of the starting room (which could be activated to open some of the doors in this area) and a switch again with a symbol below it which activated a lift down to more symbols (The switch was activated by one of the three symbols in the centre). The main objective was to climb the tower, which I had made tall and looming, to see if players thought it was their objective.

The 'Looming' Objective

The Solution: Activating one one of the symbols in the centre would then allow the player to activate the lifts switch, this would then take them down to more symbols. If the player ventured behind the symbol they are confronted with in this area they will notice another, if this is activated it will stay activated (unlike the three in the centre, as only one of these at a time could be activated) If they also activate the symbol they see at the base of the lift this will then allow them to access the corresponding door in the main area. When entering this door, they will then see two dots which are used together with the other symbol that was activated below, this will then allow them to access another door in the main area. Should the player then activate the symbol through that door and add it with the symbolthrough the Square symbols door, they will then create the grid symbol which allowed them to climb the tower.

The lift switch

Most of the testers managed to figure this out, however observing them play I noticed certain patterns most of the players took. For the start, they instantly went straight to the switch for the lift, but then realised it did nothing however they still persisted as they didnt know that the symbols in the centre could be activated; however once they noticed the symbols could be activated they then understood that they had to match the symbols together. The thing that threw most of players was when I decided to change the mechanics part of the way through, which was to add the symbols together to access different doors. My initial idea for this was for players to wonder why one sybol didnt turn off but other did, and then hopefully piece together that the ones that didnt turn off had to be added together. eventually the players did realise this which was great! Also another thing that confused them was the fact that the walls were actually doors. This was interesting to see as because there was no indication that underneath the symbols above the walls that a door was there, players seemed to not approach them. Though when they did approach them and realised they opened they then understood the level that bit more.

An example of a symbol that is activated

Two testers got confused at the begining of the level due to not knowing what the controls were, I made an effort to not tell them the controls due to this being a test, however i gave them 5 minutes to see if they figured them out. I only had to tell one of them that 'E' was interact which them allowed them to continue. The other tester ended up quitting after 10 minutes, due to no hints being shown and them not realising that the walls were doors.

My tutor seemed to like the fact that I changed up the rules part of the way through as it toally threw him and caused him to re-think the level, at which point he then thought one of the symbols was actually a map. He wasn’t sure however if it was a good or bad idea. Mainly because some people might find it frustrating, as I have told them symbols can be pressed, but then suddenly two can be added together; whereas some might think ‘YES! I beat the system.

Below are two videos that I took of two very different testers, one that quiteand one that completed it pretty quickly:

 
Hoey! - Ended up quitting after 10 minutes, I also asked some questions about the level towards the end of the video.

Tommy! -  Completed it after about 5 minutes, unfortunately my phone decided it didnt have enough space to film more so this cuts short and I didnt get to have to questions on film!

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly how a player is going to think when creating a puzzle like this, one might get it straight away, and another might take their time. Maybe adding such an obvious objective, E.G a giant lift, will make the player figure things out too easily? due to the fact they know exactly what they have to work towards expecially when posed with buttons like this level. The door test seemed to be a bit more confusing for people which made them take a while to realise what was going on; whereas this one might have seemed a bit too straight forward? - I asked myself this question after only two people had tested the level, but upon observing other testers I think I managed to do things quite right. Either way, my views on adding an eyesore may change as I test a bit more, I think having to explore for the eyesore may add a little more to the gameplay E.G. the player will be running through the jungle then suddenly be posed with a cliff face, and on the horizon they can see a giant structure in the middle of a lake. Once they see that they may think that that is where they have to go and will then try to find their way there. 

Laters taters!