Player learning skills

For the player to realise once the game finishes that they are being manipulated, they need to be doing something throughout the game they are not aware of that is more than just finding out that the character wanted to be guided to the puzzles completion. The puzzles within the puzzle world could themselves have meaning to what it is the character is really doing.

An idea was to have the player taught useful skills from completing the puzzle that can later have use outside of the game. This is similar to America's Army, designed to give future soldiers training and motivated to join the real army. The problem with this for me is the character having no purpose to giving the player training or skills unless the player was forced to reuse these skills in some other way for the character. Looking at code cracking training could be beneficial anyway for me to create puzzle constructions and is something I am to research over the next few weeks.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c3/America%27s_Army1.jpg/220px-America%27s_Army1.jpg

As I continue to read my book Controlling Uncertainty I start to think about the gameplay elements that can contribute to the puzzle work and part of the absurd nature of the character is from its function in movement. Most game characters stick to the basic style of movement and are not expected to change. This is to give the player an understanding of how to control the character so they can focus on what needs to be pressed at what time and for how long. But for the player to be or feel like the puppet master they need to understand the unpredictability the puppet can have and when the mechanisms of the puppet are to be of the player's nature or the puppet's.

References

America’s Army Official Website. (n.d.). Retrieved September 1, 2012, from http://www.americasarmy.com/

Controlling Uncertainty: Learning and Decision Making in complex worlds. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://qmul.academia.edu/MagdaOsman/Books/425419/Controlling_Uncertainty_Learning_and_Decision_Making_in_complex_worlds