🎮 here, no worries on the delay with answering my first ask! I am still willing to give my explanation. :)
Before I do, though, I need you to understand two things.
This is not The Answer. As others have said, people are too varied and complex for that. This is my attempt at AN answer, based on my own feelings and observations.
If I say something that comes across as condescending, that is not on purpose. I have the need to over explain things sometimes because surely if I am just Very Clear and Thorough I will Be Understood.
With that said, the explanation. I have a few that also all sort of tie into the same thing: a reason people like horror games but dislike your horror adventures is degrees of separation.
When someone plays a horror game, even in vr, there is an understanding of safety. That the absolute worst thing that can happen to the player is a loss of progress. Sure, they might see a frightening image and hear a loud sound if it's a jumpscare type game, but that's it.
Obviously, the humans in your care aren't in any more real danger than when playing a horror game, but because they are there in the moment, that can be hard to remember. Even if they do remember it intellectually, all of their instincts are still going to scream at them to run because they're in danger.
Ultimately, the issue is that there isn't a perceivable difference between them and their avatar. If someone's playing a horror game and they get hurt, there will be some visual and audio representation of that (in a first person horror game this might look like a quick image of red claw marks across the screen, the player character grunting in pain, and the health bar decreasing by some amount). If someone's on an adventure and they get hurt, well. They get hurt.
One other major difference between a horror game and a horror adventure is that players can walk away from a horror game. If a player is overwhelmed they can hit pause and stand up from their desk or couch and go on a walk or play a silly video or whatever they need to calm down. On an adventure they have limited options and opportunities to stop and take a step back.
Last, but absolutely not least, I wanted to talk about agency. People CHOOSE to play horror games. Usually they don't have anyone pressuring them to "just give it a shot," and if they do they still have the option to decide it's not for them part way through.
Honestly, Mildenhal Manor was a good idea. Having a Chill option and a Scary option was a great way to give them agency and decide what they wanted. It probably would have gone over better if Jax had gone through the scary door instead of Pomni.
Alright, that's what I had to say! If anything is unclear let me know and I'll try to explain better, okay?
Cowabunga that’s a long and detailed explanation!!!
Which is good! I love specifics so I can know exactly how to improve!!! Even if I can’t exactly improve now… things will probably return back to normal soon!
Now let me actually process what this says.
Huh. That… actually makes a lot of sense. I thought the reason for my adventures being received poorly would be much more confusing and convoluted than that.
Even if you did mention that this isn’t a perfect solution- it’s subjective, it’s still a solution a human came up with, so it’s more likely to apply to other humans than my solutions would be.
So, degrees of separation, and agency.
Wait, they don’t actually WANT it to feel real? What’s the point of that then? That isn’t immersive! You’re telling me something can be TOO immersive?
[Now that he actually thinks about it… yes, maybe that actually is the case. Even if they had asked for a REAL exit, a REAL escape, that was because that wasn’t an adventure to them. That wasn’t what they wanted in an adventure, it was just what they wanted in general, which was why it had to be real.]
[He should have just straight up told them that it didn’t work that way then. It would have been a lot simpler than jumping through hoops to make his most challenging to create adventure yet.]
Oh. That’s exactly what you’re saying, isn’t it? That’s odd. I was always told to make things as realistic and immersive as possible. At least when someone was still there to tell me what to do.
And agency… choice. I gave them that in the Candy Kingdom adventure! They could choose what they wanted to do, but they didn’t really like that one either.
And if I just let them NOT go, they wouldn’t go on ANY of my adventures! And then they wouldn’t have anything to do, anything to keep them alert and focused, and they’d abstract!
And I DID let Zooble sit out! I let them sit out on the adventure made SPECIFICALLY for them! We even had a talk, but it did nothing!
I get that the Escape The Circus adventure was bad. I get it. But what am I supposed to do about the rest?
I could give them little break areas scattered throughout adventures. But I don’t know if that will be enough. I already made it so they don’t feel quite as much pain as they would in the macroverse. But if they feel no pain that… that would lead to bad things. Usually abstraction. You can’t just take away an entire sense.
I could dull it further on dangerous adventures maybe?
Thank you for your input, really. This is more helpful than any advice I’ve ever received.
Maybe because I was actually forced to listen this time…
