November - December 2010 (UDK Game Level Design - "Lost Civilization")

This level was created as part of the last assessment in the Game Level Design class at Qantm, Brisbane. The purpose was to design a level which would convey different emotions such as fear, anticipation, joy etc. We were given 7 weeks to create a level which would achieve this goal. This level in particular gives the emotions of tension, action, relief and fear. As well as emotions, the level also had to convey some type of progression in terms of layout and element usage.

July - August 2011 (UDK Level - "SciTech Lockdown")

This project took roughly 5 weeks to complete from design to implementation. I chose to create a UDK level for my last piece of assessment in my Advanced Level Design class and came up with the idea of a first person obstacle based level. This level includes four different stages which tests the different mechanics of a standard first person shooter, including shooting, jumping and basic maneuvering skills. The idea was to make this a time based level in that the player must pass all stages as fast as they could in order to achieve the best possible time.

October 2010 (Bust-A-Companion - Prototype Game)

This prototype was the third prototype that we made with a group of 3 people. I was responsible for the artwork, sounds, music and creating the ship asset, as well some design elements. The task was to create a prototype game that focused on the use of a companion (second controllable entity) and was restricted in using geometry for everything other than the player's character which also had a restricted poly count.

November 2010 (Bioshock Methodological Analysis)

There are an increasing number of young people who play computer games because it gives them feelings of empowerment and freedom for making their own choices, often not possible for them in their real life. According to Skinner (1991), freedom is “a possession”. “A person’s desire is to destroy the power of a controller in order to feel free and do what he/she desires.” In this essay the process of immersion and empowerment will be discussed with references to the features of the game Bioshock, together with an analysis and applications of methodologies of behavioral psychology using the theories of Freud and Skinner.

Structuralism and post-structuralism are two different theoretical frameworks. Structuralism is where the meaning of an object is a reflection of the particular person’s instinctual beliefs. Whereas post-structuralism is a very broad movement, which opposes this idea.

There are many definitions of immersions, for example, Murray states that immersion is where “the brain is programmed to tune into stories with an intensity that can obliterate the world around us” (Wolf, M.J.P. Perron, B., 2003). This represents a structuralists’ view of immersion. On the other hand, Wirth has a different view of immersion which contains the same sense of repressed reality.

He stated “Spatial presence is a binary experience, during which perceived self location and, in most cases, perceived action possibilities are connected to a mediated spatial environment, and mental capacities are bound by the mediated environment instead of reality.”(Wirth, W. Hartmann,T. Böcking, S. Vorderer, P. Klimmt, C., 2007, p. 493–525)

These perspectives portray immersion in different ways where Murray states immersion is an existent property of the brain while Wirth’s perspective is that the brain must gradually accept the virtual world as reality. Both perspectives share a similar understanding that immersion is a unique experience of the brain where the person’s mind is disconnected from the real world.

 (Adams, E. 2010) According to Ernest, players become immersed in games in several ways:   

Tactical immersion – this is when the player is challenged frequently with minor tasks. In the Bioshock, the tactical immersion is created by including a variety of challenges from boss fights, hacking puzzles, big daddy encounters and group battles which increase in difficulty and if the player succeeds, he/she is reworded with new abilities and items.

 Strategic immersion – this is when the player clearly understands the rules and strategically plans actions in order to win the game. Strategic immersion is evident in Bioshock, with frequent strategic tasks which require the player to set up traps and to use the environment to tackle oncoming threats.         

 Narrative immersion – this is where the players’ minds are captivated by the story, so that they believe it is reality. Presence of this in Bioshock is demonstrated by its heavily driven storyline, where the main character is constantly put in dangerous scenarios and must focus on different tasks given to the character in order to survive throughout the game.

The work of Werner Wirth and a team of other researchers had led to a model of a spatial immersion, which can be represented by a diagram featuring two critical steps towards total spatial presence (see figure 1.). The first step is a process, in which the player constructs a mental model of the space in their minds where they believe that the virtual world has become a reality. The second step is when the player prefers the media based space by the use of cues which directly contact the player’s experiences and beliefs which further reinforces the virtual world as becoming a closer representation of reality.

Figure 1.  Visualization of two-level model of Spatial Presence.

      

Strong feeling of immersion is created in Bioshock with means of a first person perspective view, where the character has only it’s hands shown, creating a sensation in the player as if they are in the body of the character. The player is actively engaging with the virtual environment through his hands. “The players immerse themselves into the game via the medium of fantasy but with the added pleasure of personalization through interactivity.” (Crawford, C. 1997)

To increase the process of immersion, work of a psychologist Skinner, has been largely applied in the computer games. According to Skinner’s theory, “People learn to behave the way that they do because a certain kind of behavior has been rewarded in the past.” (Salen and Zimmerman, 2004)  Skinner discovered that the behavior can be controlled by training subjects with simple stimulus and rewards. He had invented the “Skinner box”, a cage containing a small animal that presses a lever in order to receive food pellets. There can be positive reinforcements, negative reinforcements and punishment.  “More than just shaping good and bad behavior, reward and punishment shape a player’s sense of pleasure and overall player’s experience.” (Salen and Zimmerman, 2004) 

 In Bioshock, the reward system represents a whole new level, offering moral choices to the players, represented in figure 2. The player has the choice to consume possessed girls (little sisters) in order to gain more power, or to set them free to achieve enlightenment and positive feedback. Depending on what the player has chosen, the rewards will be different, reflecting the moral values of the player. If the choices are right morally, the player is rewarded by positive feedback, increasing the player’s enjoyment of the game. A sense of immersion takes part afterwards, as the player is rewarded with positive feedbacks and suspense builds up in expectation of what the player will received as gifts if moral acts are continuously occurring. These choices also help to shape the story line and outcome of the character’s development until the end of the game has been reached.

Figure 2. Example of the moral choice in Bioshock, to harvest or rescue

If players play against their moral beliefs, then they will be rewarded instantly and without positive feedbacks. The player is given a dose of empowerment merely achieved by an unmoral act and so this impacts overall the challenges the player will face, as the sense of achievement will slightly be diminished. This is a close representation of Freud’s theories of the Ego, Super ego and the Id, where the mind can be divided into these three structures (Freud, 1989).

The right moral choices are reflecting the super ego’s expectations and the unmoral choices represent the greediness of the Id. The process of making decision in the game gets the player immersed more deeply into the game, because their conscience is involved.

Through experimenting, Skinner had discovered that the frequency of the rewards is very important for achieving the expected results. Player motivations appear to be heavily influenced by the variable – ratio or fixed – interval reward delivery system in video games. (Daniel King & Paul Delfabbor, 2009)

 “Rewards and punishment are two sides of a coin, both of them necessary to craft the structure of meaningful experience for players. Finding the elusive balance between positive and negative experience – between anxiety and pleasure, is one of the deepest challenges of game design.” (Salen and Zimmerman, 2004) 

Bioshock is a first-person horror shooter game. As this game is set in a first person perspective, the player instantly becomes immersed because of two underlining factors. One is that a limited range of visibility is offered to the player, forcing the player to constantly move around to overcome anxiety. The second factor is that this becomes more of a simulator for reality - we also view the world in this perspective, and so this increases the chances of being immersed in the game and accepting it as reality.

While this game largely focuses on the notion of fear, there are other elements which are involved that contain a use of different psychological methods. Initially the player is placed in the abyss of an unfamiliar underwater dystopian city and so by human nature, the player fears the unknown. The player is vulnerable and has no choice other than to follow the instructions given by a mysterious aid. Both, the environment and sounds help to create anxiety in the player. The player uses imagination to draw a mental picture of what is to be expected and is usually alert most of the time during the game. Luu , Tucker, and Derryberry are suggesting that “Because of its widespread influence on many aspects of thought and behaviour, anxiety must be appreciated as a general motivational control, associated with general motivational mechanisms of the brain.” (Luu, P. Tucker, D.M. and Derryberry, D., 1998, p. 578)

“Empowerment refers to a heightened sense of power of authority”. (Rappaport, 1987, p. 121-148)

In Bioshock, the empowerment of a player is achieved by reaching particular milestones which grant the player access to more abilities, equipment and greater health/ability capacities. The element of saving sisters is also a part of empowerment as the player can choose their own path in the game.

As the player progresses through the game, the notion of empowerment grows stronger as the players gains new tools and becomes a stronger entity in the game. Players must transcend in order to achieve this empowerment and so with this, players are immersed in a world where they can use their achieved power to tackle challenges.

In the game of Bioshock, the player may receive new abilities at the cost of being put in a position where they are immediately challenged, and must use this new ability to escape and proceed through the game.

Bioshock has received very good reviews, however there could be done some improvements in order to immerse a much larger target audience. One option would be to include an element which will attract more females. The main protagonist in the game is a male, and so the actions taken in these events are relatively seen as actions which would be performed by the male gender. This may be altered if a secondary storyline is introduced in which the player has the choice to control a female protagonist in Bioshock. Another improvement in this aspect would be to include a variety of choices in dialogue, in order to be more interactive with the character in the game. Hartman & Klimmt conducted experiments where the results showed, that females were interested in games with more social content. This will also create more immersion for players of both genders, as the player will be in a closer connection with the virtual character (Hartman & Klimmt, 2006). The storyline will also be a reflection of the players personalities based on the choices they have made when speaking to characters and through saving or harvesting girls.

From the analysis of Bioshock, where a number of different methodologies have been used, especially Skinner’s reward system, it can be seen that the immersion of players, plays an important role in the design of computer games. To understand how these methods are employed to evoke different emotions in the players is a very important part of game design. Games are offering players an escape from reality. It is an obvious fact that people are constrained to practice free will in a real society due to moral beliefs and the rules of society; however, when playing in a virtual world such as Bioshock, players can experience the feelings of empowerment and freedom that can be enjoyable for them.

References

Adams, E. (2010). Fundamentals of game design, USA: Pearson Education.

Crawford, C. (1997). The Art of Game Design - Why do people play games? Washington State University.

Freud, S. (2001). Five lectures on psycho-analysis. London: The Hogarth Press

Hartman, T. and Klimmt, C. (2006). Gender and Computer Games: Exploring females’ dislikes. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.

 King, D. (2009). Understanding and Assisting Excessive Players of Video  Games: A Community Psychology Perspective. South Australia: University of  Adelaide.

Luu, P. Tucker, D.M. and Derryberry, D. (1998). Anxiety and the Motivational Basis of Working Memory: Cognitive Therapy and Research.

Rappaport, J. (1987). Terms of Empowerment, exemplars prevention: Towards a theory for community psychology. American Journal of community Psychology.

Salen, K. Zimmerman, E. (2004). Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. USA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Skinner, B.F. (1971). Selection from Beyond and Dignity. New York: Knopf.

Wirth, W. Hartmann,T. Böcking, S. Vorderer, P. Klimmt, C. (2007). A Process Model of the Formation of Spatial Presence Experiences: Media psychology. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Wolf, M.J.P. Perron, B. (2003). The Video Game Theory Reader. New York: Routledge.

July - August 2010 (Video Game Asset)

These assets were created with 3ds Max in 3 weeks for a 3D Modelling class at Qantm, Brisbane. I had used Zelda as my reference and created Link's Master Sword and Hylian Shield.

April - May 2011 (UT3 Editor - HL2 Level)

This level was as an assessment for Authorship at Qantm College. The level was created entirely from UT3 Editor and was made over the course of 5 weeks. The idea was to choose a game and design a level for that game that could be created in any 3D engine. A level was then built from this design using the Unreal Engine 3.