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!