On learning to walk in 3D

[beefpelican]

I recently got my mother to try out Portal. She liked the concept and was okay at the puzzles, but the biggest issue was figuring out how to walk through doors. She could handle the spatial reasoning, but she didn't have an intuitive understanding of how wide her character was. This got me thinking about when I first figured out movement. I think it was in Quake, before there were mouse controls, and the pitch had to be adjusted with the keyboard. I also remember being really bad at it, and alternating between moving around and aiming. It took a while for aiming while moving to make any sense at all. Any similar stories out there?

 

[Weaver]

Once I was really really drunk and trying to play oblivion. It was almost impossible to figure out how to leave the mages guild and I couldn't get through any doors so I just quit the game.

This is honestly a true story.

 

[SimuLord]

I don't really have a story about "learning" 3D spatial reasoning in games...for some reason it just always feels intuitive to me, probably because I've been gaming for so long.

Didn't Shamus Young write a column about how games have a lot of things in them that seem really natural to us gamers but might as well be from Alpha Centauri to non-gamers?

 

[Jim From Accounting]

Once I was really really drunk and trying to play oblivion. It was almost impossible to figure out how to leave the mages guild and I couldn't get through any doors so I just quit the game.

This is honestly a true story.

We have all be there mine was COD4 multy freaked the shit out of me

 

[CuddlyCombine]

My ex-girlfriend couldn't figure out dual thumbsticks. I tried to teach her how to play Modern Warfare and it was an absolute disaster; moving on two planes at once just blew her mind, for some reason.

 

[Doctor VonSexMachine]

I have problem with the thumb sticks too, it's honestly why I play PC. It helps a bit to invert them, but if it's anything more complicated than FFX, I just can't do it.

 

[Zechnophobe]

I think Halflife 1 was my first real 3-D game. I remember getting a little woozy about it until I'd gotten a couple hours under my belt, and only really confident probably around the time I finished it. Now... its amazing how effortlessly I can 'understand' the layout of the faux worlds that I play games in. Watching my girlfriends play, and having a hard time moving through doors, or being unable to use both mouse and keyboard at the same time...

... it really makes me think how much of this is learned behavior.

 

[Jamieson 90]

I have been gaming since I was 3 and it never really bothered me or if it did I can't remember so I think it didn't.

I tried to get my mum to play portal, she loves watching me play it and liked to help with the puzzles but she just can't move right, Same happened with my dad and goldeneye got stuck on a wall.

I wish my parents were gamers but there in their 50's now so little chance of them learning. just not of the gaming generation I suppose.

 

[QueenWren]

OMG! My mum trying to play Lego Star Wars on my Xbox, she just couldn't get the depth thing and gave up after about 5 minutes.

 

[ParkourMcGhee]

As for portal my ex GF figured out how to do it almost instantly as soon as she got to grips with moving a mouse and keyboard at the same time...

Then again I still get peed off sometimes in the COD4/6 when I get stuck on drainpipes in a small hallway or whatnot then gunned down - you could possibly twist couldn't you? Then again COD6 is a console game anyway where you can't even LEAN around a corner V_V.

 

[Daedalus1942]

I recently got my mother to try out Portal. She liked the concept and was okay at the puzzles, but the biggest issue was figuring out how to walk through doors. She could handle the spatial reasoning, but she didn't have an intuitive understanding of how wide her character was. This got me thinking about when I first figured out movement. I think it was in Quake, before there were mouse controls, and the pitch had to be adjusted with the keyboard. I also remember being really bad at it, and alternating between moving around and aiming. It took a while for aiming while moving to make any sense at all. Any similar stories out there?

Quake was always able to adjust the pitch in game using a mouse, you just had to enable it. I started using the up and down keys and hated it, hoping you could use the mouse. I went into settings and discovered you could use the mouse, you just had to adjust it which from memory took a while.

 

[Jofrak]

As for portal my ex GF figured out how to do it almost instantly as soon as she got to grips with moving a mouse and keyboard at the same time...

Then again I still get peed off sometimes in the COD4/6 when I get stuck on drainpipes in a small hallway or whatnot then gunned down - you could possibly twist couldn't you? Then again COD6 is a console game anyway where you can't even LEAN around a corner V_V.

Honestly I think the whole 'getting stuck on drainpipes' is more of a game design thing, I can't count the number of time's I have looked at a gap and thought, 'yeh that's human sized, I'll get through that easily' only to find it blocked off by an invisible wall.

With people unable to grasp the movement and dimensions of the character it may be possible that they don't see the game as playing through the eyes of someone else and instead see it as something completely different. I know any time I go FPS'ing I'm always measuring things to human size.

 

[Scobie]

DELETED

 

[Angerwing]

I honestly don't remember having any trouble with 3D movement. I may have, I just don't recall. It seems outrageously obvious to me, but I can understand how someone could be confused by it.

As SimuLord said, Shamus Young wrote an article about how games now-a-days are made for gamers, and if you're not a somewhat experienced gamer, you're out of the loop. I agree.

 

[TheNamlessGuy]

DELETED

 

[Meggiepants]

My soon to be sister-in-law came over and we taught her to play L4D. She plays kind of weird.

She'll only put her finger on the left stick to point her camera forward at the beginning of a level or when we remind her to do it. She inevitably ends up looking at the sky or the floor and can't figure out where she is. We have to remind her to point the camera forward.

It doesn't help when we play on splitscreen. I think she keeps looking at the wrong side. She plays sidescrollers fine or games that are third person, but she does have issues with the first person thing. She is getting better at it though!

 

[Carnagath]

I've never had any problems with it myself, but a female friend of mine just can't figure out how to coordinate the two thumbsticks, or even just one thumbstick. She tried many times, but never managed to do it. It takes her 45 seconds to aim the camera straight in any first person game, one moment she's looking at the floor, then at the ceiling, then she's like "ok, what the hell is going on?". That's just inexplicable to me, I don't know what's going on in her head Not even the camera! Moving while looking? Impossible. That's why the only games she can play are Little Big Planet and God Of War 3, where the camera is fixed. I was recently playing Bioshock 2, which confused even me sometimes, having to switch from the camera weapon to your normal weapon while using plasmids and also the D-pad for healthpacks, all that at the same time as aiming and strafing, I was thinking of her while I was playing it, maybe I need to pop it in with her present sometime and look at her reaction

 

[ParkourMcGhee]

As for portal my ex GF figured out how to do it almost instantly as soon as she got to grips with moving a mouse and keyboard at the same time...

Then again I still get peed off sometimes in the COD4/6 when I get stuck on drainpipes in a small hallway or whatnot then gunned down - you could possibly twist couldn't you? Then again COD6 is a console game anyway where you can't even LEAN around a corner V_V.

Honestly I think the whole 'getting stuck on drainpipes' is more of a game design thing, I can't count the number of time's I have looked at a gap and thought, 'yeh that's human sized, I'll get through that easily' only to find it blocked off by an invisible wall.

With people unable to grasp the movement and dimensions of the character it may be possible that they don't see the game as playing through the eyes of someone else and instead see it as something completely different. I know any time I go FPS'ing I'm always measuring things to human size.

See I never thought about it before but if you do that surely you could strafe through thin alleyways that you wouldn't be able to get through normally? I bet you that you can't find any game that does this even though intuitively in the real world it should work.