Lighting Decisions

So i have now finished the environment and created 4 different corridors in which the player must make a decision where they can only choose one door to go through. Each of the different corridors will have two doors and the aim is to see how the lighting around the doors will affect the players decisions. I have also created blueprints for the doors which will open by themselves and allow the player to move through once they have made a decision.

The first decision the player must make is either the light doorway or the dark doorway, i think this will be the most obvious one as a lot of players in the previous test i did with light and dark chose the dark pathway because they were curious, even though in real life we would generally chose the light pathway as we fear what we cannot see.

Next is a colour decision, the player has to make a choice between green or red which will be interesting to see what people decide on as we generally associate green with safety and red with danger. But i think the results could vary for this one depending on the participant.

You can't see it in this screenshot but the light on the right side is flickering, the purpose of this decision is to see if Dynamic lighting (a moving or in this case flickering light) will affect the players choice.I think most people will go for the flickering light because it stands out and is most importantly interesting and eye catching.

The last decision is similar to the first except this time the light side will only have light coming from underneath one of the doors and the other will be completely dark, i think this will be an interesting one because i believe players will always go for the light coming under the door as curiosity takes over.

I will get around 20 people to play through the environment from different age groups and levels of experience with games. Then i'll take notes as they play through the level and then at the end get them to fill in a questionnaire. Before they play through i will explain that they can only chose one door at each decision and each play through will take place in a quiet dimly lit or dark room so that there is nothing disturbing or influencing the player choices. What i hope to gain from this is a better understanding of how lighting affects player decisions in games and how i can use lighting to my advantage in a game environment.