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Principles of Virtual Sensation

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5. Context – Giving a mechanic meaning by providing the rules and spatial context in which it operates

In Super Mario 64, there are many possible moves. Using chording and state switching, it’s possible to have Mario triple jump, long jump, wall jump, or do a high back flip (among other things.) Now imagine Mario standing in a field of blank whiteness, with no objects around him.

If Mario has nothing to interact with, the fact that he has these acrobatic abilities is meaningless. Without a wall, there can be no wall jump. This illustrates the important role context plays in creating virtual sensation: providing meaning to the motion. Context affects virtual sensation in three major ways: through spacing, perception, and improvisation.

Spacing refers to the distance between objects in the game’s environment. For every virtual sensation, there is a range of spatial contexts that provides the best feel. For example, racing games typically have obstacles in the road to avoid. How many objects there are and how far apart they are spaced has a huge effect on virtual sensation. If obstacles are so far apart that the player rarely encounters them, the player has nothing against which to measure their skills and no way to feel out the virtual sensation.

Like Mario in a field of blankness, the turning radius of a car in a racing game needs context to have meaning. In the Cube Movement 3 demo, the controls have been tuned similarly to a racing game; the S and F buttons now correspond to rotation instead of moving left and right. Select the “Context Empty” option and follow the course. There’s not much to interact with, not much to steer around, so virtual sensation is mostly absent.

Cube Movement 3

On the other hand, if the objects are spaced in such a way they are constantly assailing the player, the player will become overwhelmed and frustrated, feeling as though they are unable to control what is happening. An example of this can be found using the ‘context full’ controls in the Cube Movement 3 demo. There are too many objects too close together to effectively steer around, and the result is frustration. Comparing forward speed to the amount and spacing of objects, we can get a rough ratio of objects encountered per second. If this ratio is too high, the player will feel overwhelmed and out of control. If it’s too low, they’ll be bored.

Another thing that affects this bored/overwhelmed tradeoff is perception. If the player can see something in the road five or ten seconds ahead of when they need to steer around it, steering is easy. If the object is outside their perception until they have only milliseconds to react, steering is extremely difficult. If the camera is zoomed in or angled such that the player can’t see what’s in the road ahead, the spacing of objects becomes somewhat irrelevant: even if there are very few obstacles in the road, the player will still be unable to effectively steer around them if they can’t see far enough ahead to react in time.

Returning to Cube Movement 3, using the ‘zoomed’ controls makes it extremely difficult to steer because there is so little time to react after an object appears. Notice, though, that the impression of speed is increased; by moving the camera closer to the objects, they appear to move more quickly. By contrast, using the “Angled” controls makes steering around the obstacles is extremely easy; however, at this angle the impression of speed is very slight. In this way, virtual sensation is a function of player perception as much as it is of reaction or input sensitivity.

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