So I'm all done. I've come to the conclusion through and research and development of my final outcome that my method of guidance through aesthetic is viable in a game level. I feel that the outcomes of my test suggest that an abundance of tutorials is not needed to help a player progress through a level successfully.
My feedback from my research and ideas from professional and the public suggests that it would be a marketable idea and unique to the industry. The added extra of a big brand game company creating a game with a similar guidance method also strengthens this idea being marketable in the industry.
Below is my Degree Show banner and outcome video explaining my final product. Enjoy!
SO. Over the past weeks myself and Jay have been working on the Level/Game in which we will use our methods of guidance, basically to confirming (or disproving) that they are viable ways of guiding/teaching a player without extensive tutorials etc. Over the past couple of weeks we have been testing this level to prove our theory as well as fine tuning to help it work better.
Below are my findings as well some of the videos of the play tests that we have done. I will also post some of the individual testers attempts.
My whole thing is guidance within Aesthetics. A player being able to figure out what to do by looking at their surrounds for guidance rather than an abundance of tutorials or little fairy holding the hands. And finding out if this is a viable method of doing so and proving that gamer's (and humans) can think for themselves.
The silly thing is, the majority of these elements are extremely simple. Yet companies sway to the tutorial route for guidance. So let me go through some of the elements we are using within the game to allow this.
Leading Lines
This method is used in a lot of different media from Photography to Architecture. It's most commonly used to guide the viewers eyes to look at a place of importance for instance in photography to the subject or in architecture to entrances or even something as small as where to push a door to open it.
In NOVA, we are using it do a similar thing. Them main leading lines in are.... you guessing it lines. Well. Chevrons. Throughout the level these chevrons are placed at intervals to tell the play there is a point of significance in that direct. Another leading line which is a little more subtle is the main rooms octagonal shape. When stood in this room the walls act as leading lines to the center of the room due to the sloping effect of the walls at certain angles. This guides the players eyes to the PC which is a major part for completing the game.
This element is hard to assess due to the nature of it. The majority of process of this method is done subconsciously upon viewing. Though with the vast amount of testers, the feed back has been that it they understood that the chevrons where an indication of a place of importance within the NOVA Facility.
Colour Association
Once again, this method is extremely simple and used amongst many platforms. The most known form of colour association is 'Right and Wrong', red for wrong green for right. In early tests within my MA research and practice I found that this can be a confusing method of guidance, as meanings of colours can be skewed dependent on the person observing them. Race, age, as well as many other factors can change the perception of each one. Luckily, the way of association we have used with NOVA is easy to grasp through exploration.
Within NOVA, the association are to create connection between rooms and symbols. The first place the average player will find these colours will be on the PC upon pressing on a symbol on the keypad. Once they get to exploring the facility they will come across the chevrons mentioned in the above method (leading lines). These Chevrons have a colours which is associated with the place of importance that it points towards. This use of colour to tie symbol and room together helps the player to determine where they must travel, and to which puzzle they are traveling to.
This element has been the strangest of the ones we have used within NOVA. This is because it hasn't quite lived up to expectation. While playing the most of the player do not seem to fully recognise the link for the colours. However, upon questioning their play through they mention that they are aware of some of the association but choose not to follow. Adam one of the first testers mentioned that he used them at the start of playing before he memorised the layout and location. This showed that it works as a starting point of guidance and awareness of the environment.
Landmarks
Landmarks are a significant part of guidance around us in the real world so it's no surprise that they are in games also. Landmarks in the real and virtual world give a memorable placement in the viewers mind that resides to help navigation in their surroundings.
In NOVA, there are a couple of things used as landmarks. For instance, scribbles around the base on the walls with seemingly no usefulness (I'll get to that soon) give these memorable locations. Upon coming across one the player can figure out their whereabouts and continue on a path with more ease. Chevrons also come into play as landmarks within the base also.
From our tests, we found that this was the biggest focus for the players in finding their way around the base. However, it was my feeling that we need a little more mainly when the darkness came. Similar scribbles as in the light have now been placed in the facility to allow better navigation when the alarms go off. Crates have also been added to the environment to achieve the same effect.
Guided Exploration and Subtleties
These methods are weird ones. Exploration is the main factor here as it leads to the subtleties within the aesthetics. Exploration is a bigger factor in the eventual understanding of the players surroundings. Within games this tends to be used in huge free-roaming games across gigantically expansive worlds; and it's up to the player to explore and get their bearings.
For NOVA we have implemented a process of guided exploration. What we mean by this is that upon inspecting the environment the player will find clues to the workings of the facility and where they could go next. This allows the player to think they are exploring the based and going to where they want to by themselves. In actuality, we have designed the level in a way that the aesthetics hints to where to go first. This is mainly to teach them. For instance in the central room of the facility there is a couple of things for the player to take notice of. The PC, the map and the lights. These give the player an idea of things of importance in the base as well as teaching them mechanics. Upon using the PC they see a keypad and type in whatever they want to. "Access Denied". This instigates they need to find something. They explore. See the map. Inspect it. On the map they will see a couple more clues. The location of the only 2 rooms open to them straight away, the Main Code (the most important) Code, and the location of another code. They now have the code to unlock the facility and turn on the lights. They now have 3 places in which we have 'guided' them to explore through their own 'exploration'. And so on. This carries on through out the base giving the player a sense of achievement for their actions and finding something 'by themselves'.
Once tests were completed, the majority of the players said they felt rewarded when they found codes and rooms from this exploration. They also said this gave them more incentive to 'explore' and find more. This method helped with the level a lot making it fun for the players (those that it didn't torture too much) because of that sense of achievement by finding something 'by yourself'.
Symbols
Here we have another simple method of guidance. As mentioned above (Colour association) we have used a range of symbols around the base to tie sections of the game together. We have two sets of symbols; The puzzle symbols and the botanical symbols. Each are separate from each other. The puzzle symbols are symbols used for association with rooms around the base and the code that unlock them. The botanical symbols are use as hints to placements of the 'Vapor Pods' in the Botanical Puzzle room.
THE TESTS
Below are a few of the videos we did of the tests we carried out. The show the process of our develop and tweaking of the mechanic to make it work better.
So a few months ago we created a poster for a display of all the outcomes throughout all of the MA courses. I'm going to post it here for anyone to read instead of writing it all out and stuff.
Recently I seen a lot of hype about the "game" PT by the creators of the Silent Hill series. It's basically a playable trailer. Get it?!. Playable trailer. PT. Ahh.
Well I've been watching some of the playthroughs of this game over the a few days (I don't have much time to play games these days :'( ), and I'm excited. You know why? Because it uses a similar method of guidance to that that I've been experimenting with. Take a look:
The culmination of my work over the past 13 months to come up with this method and implement it myself as well as have a big games company to use a similar method in a teaser for a Triple A game at the same time is magical to me. To me it show that the industry is thinking in a similar manner about how the state of current guidance methods work and are challenging the norm. Not only that but PT has also had a big presence in games media and public. This shows that this kind of guidance can work in the industry and that I'm on to something.
Over the past months I've been observing everyday humans running around there tasks for the afternoon. I want to to observe what people did in the real world when moving around their surroundings.
Amongst the things I noticed was that humans struggled to find signs. Signs that were huge. Gigantic signs at eye level and with huge lettering. And using colour bright enough to catch attention but not flamboyant enough to make it hard to read. For whatever reason the humans didn't pay attention. They resorted to the interrogation of any human in sight most often the ones wearing the brightest clothing. This got me thinking of my play tests and what happened if people got stuck. I found that in the real and game world humans will look for help in another human rather than investigate their surrounds. Often in play-tests the humans would turn round and ask "am I doing something wrong?" Or "is this for this?".
Another observation I had was that the places with the most instruction and guidance failed to guide. I was observing customers in an Ikea restaurant queuing for their daily meals and caffeine. I noticed that the humans would get confused at the line for the picking of food which was one of the places in store that huge amount of guidance; signs, leading lines, arrows and even the movement of the human horde picking their food. In other places I observed the same thing but not in the same mass collection.
I came to the conclusion that areas with huge amounts of instruction and guidance confused. I have seen this in games also. When you play a game and there is huge amounts of text that's needed to be read it can negate from its intended purpose, pushing the viewing away. This often meant they wouldn't read it and wouldn't receive the guidance that was intended.
One of the things that helped in the observation areas for guidance was the subtle or instinctive clues that were in the environment. The one that seemed to be the best instruction was leading lines. You will see leading lines in around you everyday but not notice that they are there. Car parks, supermarkets, advertisements all use this method of guidance. Architects, designers and artists all use leading lines to direct the viewers eyes to places of interest or importance. You eyes will instinctively move along them. I have looked into leading line main times in my studies in Art and Design and they are a very good way of combining both aesthetics and guidance subtly guide without the viewer really noticing.
In conclusion, I thing I have witness similar traits in both real world and the virtual. In both, intense guidance can be too heavy for the viewer and can do the opposite function. On the other hand, subtle and instinctive clues like leading lines can guidance without the over concentration of tutorials. It has confirmed for me that traits in the real world could be used in the virtual, allowing the creation of much less intrusive guidance or tutorail type experience.
So for quite a few months now, I had been reading up on the Psychology and Science of design. I have read through a few of the journals by Donald Norman and Herbert Simon on the subject and it has sparked me with intrigued.
In 'The Design of Everyday Things' Donald talked a lot about how we use objects in certain ways that are instinctive to us. We as humans use objects in ways because of what we see, for instance if there was a door that was just a blank slab how would you know how to open it? without an indication of how it works you will find it difficult to open it. This, in Donald's opinion, shows bad design. He believes that good design should be able to be understood by simple observation.
This reading got me thinking a little bit more into how some objects are designed. However, it also got me thinking, is a hard puzzle bad design? Sometimes there is a small boundary for what is good design of a complicated puzzle and a bad design of a simple puzzle. I big problem with this might be because of how we all perceive our environment; as unique individuals we all create a different understanding of the visual world.
This research gave me more thought paths into the psychology of perception and how I could create my technique of guide easier to understand in a game world.
Below are some of the journals for anyone interested in knowledge:
Donald Norman - The Design of Everyday Things:
Herbert Simon - The Sciences of the Artificial:
https://www.scribd.com/doc/133153238/Herbert-Simon-1996-The-Sciences-of-the-Artificial
So in my last post I was talking about the game idea I came up. At that time, together with a Jay and Hoey from the MA course and a team we put together, we were entering the idea into the Dare To Be Digital Games Competition. Unfortunately we were not successful in getting through the first stages of the competition. However we did get some great feedback for the idea.
In the feedback, the biggest criticism was that they thought it was too big for the competition and most judges were not convinced it could be done in the allocated time given to the entrants. We understood this would be a concern when entering as it was an ambitious project idea using techniques myself and Jay had been researching and it was aimed at confirming this research. Other than that though, the feedback was positive. All judges said they thought the idea was interesting and different to what they had seen before. They also said that there was market potential in idea which shows that the idea could work in the industry.
As well as feedback from the judges at Dare, we had industry feedback from Arthur Parsons of TT Games. He said that the idea was really quite unique and has the potential to do well as a game if we managed to grab the players attention and iron out anything that may confuse too much.
I think this feedback from professionals in the industry suggests that the ideas that the game is based of would work well in the industry. On top of this we had some fantastic feedback from the public on the idea which suggest that there is space in the market for the processes that we have come up with to use the environment and guide players.
So for some bad news.
After the news about Dare we spoke about shifting the idea more into our MA and creating a prototype as the outcome of our research. This was coming along really nicely at first and start to take a little more shape. However, recently we have had to halt our work on the prototype due to an unforeseen issue with the programming side of the project. :(
So now we are looking to switch motion on to another project that will be our outcome to show that our methods work within a game scenario.
