Background: When you play a video game, how do you decide where to go next? Which door to go through, or which staircase to go up. Which path to take out in the open? Does this depend on the type of the game, does it depend on your gaming experience or of your native culture? For example, previous research I have conducted shows that players when they come to a T-Junction prefer to turn left if they are UK players, but US players tend to turn right. So can we find some fundamental factors which influence how players make real-time in-game full-on choices?
Aims: (i) To create one or more levels using Unreal 4 which contain specific features to elicit a player response. (ii) To evaluate player response to the features you have created.
Objectives: for you to decide
Lit. Review: (i) In the academic year 2021-22 a number of students chose this topic as their Computing Project. It is imperative that you review their work and results. (ii) Review some technical reports from Dr.C (iii) You can get an enormous amount of information from the GDCs, and this has at least equivalent status to ‘journal articles’ for this project.
Secondary Data: This comes from published work which addresses this topic. Again, I refer you to the 2021-22 computing projects.
Primary Data: You must decide how to collect player movement. This can be done in a number of ways, e.g. (i) you could create Blueprints to log player choices, (ii) you could use the built-in feature of Unreal-4 to create movies of player actions.
Research Questions: for you to decide but must be linked to your primary data collection.
Technology: Unreal-4
Ethical Approval: You will need to complete an enhanced Ethical Approval submission, since this research involves people. A template will be provided.
