I Forgot the Trampoline!

I Forgot To Add the Trampoline!

My Attempts at Anticipating Player Reactions

By Zane Wetzel

Have you ever felt like you completley missed the point of something that you had to do, and then mentally facepalm yourself afterwords? That is me; that is how I feel right now after reflecting on my attempts at creating a room for my video game class

For our assignment for class this week, we were asked to create a room; we weren't told why we had to create said room, or what had to be in it, just to create it. Once I sat down to do it, my mind suddenly dug up an old memory from middle school: a memory of me being tasked to make a model of a room out of clay and of me using it to create my ultimate video game room. So I decided to give it a shot and see if I could improve upon it.

My "Ultimate Game Room 2.0" ended up being placed in a bunker underneath my basement that could be accessed via elevator using a fingerprint scanning device, and would contain all of the amenities that I thought a gamer would need access to. I made sure that there was ample room for multiple TV's, each of which could be hooked up to several of the latest consoles (as well some retro ones), with the best seating arrangements that a gamer could want: couches and bean bags. I also added a multi-monitor PC for hardcore PC gamers with a library of popular Steam games as well as a cabinet for all of the console games. The whole room would be powered by a miniature sun (because why not) and the walls would be decorated with characters from Red Vs Blue. Aside from video games, I also threw in a kitchen with a fully stocked fridge, snack drawer, and cabinet for dishes. To stave off fat, I added in a treadmill as well. Altogether, the whole room would be overseen by an AI whose voice pattern would be modeled after Burnie Burns from Rooster Teeth (who played an AI in Red Vs Blue).

The first thing that I honestly thought people would want to do first in my room was "jump on the trampoline"; I thought I had added a trampoline into the room when I didn't. Instead, the answers were all over the place, ranging from "playing games" to "check out the kitchen" to "mess around with the scanner and the AI". Most of their actions made me ask myself why are they wasting time looking around instead of playing video games? Worse still, I failed to anticipate any of their actions at all. In the world of game design, that's not a good thing if this were to be made into a level.

If I were to actually make this into part of an actual video game, I think that I would want it to be a 3D Point and Click level, and make the following changes:

• Have it focused on a central theme or idea. For example, keep the secret bunker concept along with the means of entering, but instead of a game room, make it more a secret lair, like the Batcave or a safe room in an action game.
• I could keep the computers, but to make sure players use them, I could give them access to a database of everything that they have gathered and learned about the world of the game (an encyclopedia of locations, formulas, characters, enemies, etc.)
• Kitchen could be replaced with something else. A crafting table, maybe?
• Keep the Sun generator.

In linear-based story video games, the best way to keep players from doing something they shouldn't or have not gotten to in the story yet is to simply state that access is denied. Perhaps I could have the AI program state something such as "sorry, but that is off limits. Access denied"; and if they are messing around, a friendly reminder is always helpful.

Despite failing to initally understand what I was doing with the concept of the room that I was creating, I feel as though I learned a valuable lesson about the importance of maintaining player focus inside a video game. If players are not focused on the task at hand, then they will eventually be unable to complete the game, and will have wasted their valuable time.

Here's the description of my room:

Ultimate Game Room

Location: Inside a secret bunker underneath my basement that can only be accessed via an elevator that requires a hand scan recognition so that no one I don’t want in can get in. Friends are allowed in though once they have scanned themselves, as the AI saves their hand prints in its database

Dimensions: The entire room is about 25x25 feet and is designed for one thing and one thing only: to be the place where I can play video games by myself or with my friends without anyone having to tell me to “keep it down” or “be quiet”. The room is this big so that it can handle all the electronics in it

What it looks like: the floor itself will be covered by a soft carpet that will cover 75% of the floor, with the other 25% being made of a type of wood and meant to serve as the refreshments and eating area . The walls will be painted in bright and energetic colors, such as different shades of red and blue (which is not just for color sake, but also a reference to the popular web series Red Vs Blue). The elevator door will open in the center of the right wall

Objects in the room: In the far left corner, we will have the room’s power source: a miniature sun that can generate electricity indefinitely (because why not?) that will be sealed behind a radiation proof wall of lead, zirconium and plexiglass that will let us look inside of it.

In the far rigtht corner of the room, where the wooden part of the floor will be, we will have a mini kitchen that will be with a refrigerator filled with snacks such as fruits, vegetables, chips, cookies, and drinks that range from milk, orange juice, soda, etc. there will be some cabinets hanging from the walls that will be used for storing plates, glasses and silverware, along with bar stools to sit at the countertop and eat and drink. Oh, and a dishwasher will there.

On the far left wall, we will have a treadmill that we can run on and some weights to lift (because we don’t want to get out of shape, do we?)

The remaining space will be reserved for what the room is meant to be for: gaming. The far right corner of the room will house several plasma screen tvs, each of them connected to at least two different game consoles: An Xbox One X, A Nintendo Switch, a Wii U, A PS4, and Possibly an Atari Classic or NES Mini (retro games, you know). For seating, people can either sit on the couch a few feet away from the TV’s or on bean bags on the floor.

What space has not been used up will be reserved for a High-end PC with Three Monitors, a webcam, and a connection to video streaming platforms and Steam with a full library of the best games out there. The rest of it will be reserved for furniture and a cabinet where we can keep our games when we are not using them