University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Chaos

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Chaos

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Content CHAOS
by
Lingxiao Wang
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTS
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF FINE ARTS
(INTERACTIVE MEDIA)
May 2021
Copyright 2021 Lingxiao Wang
ii
Table of Contents
List of Figures .......................................................................................................... iii
Abstract ..................................................................................................................... iv
Artist Statement .......................................................................................................... 1
Experimental Features & Design Goals ..................................................................... 4
Natural User Interface without Buttons ........................................................... 4
Intimate Relation between the Weirdness and the Player ............................... 4
Prior Arts .................................................................................................................... 6
What Remains of Edith Finch ......................................................................... 6
Eraserhead ........................................................................................................ 6
Project Introductions .................................................................................................. 7
Level 1: The Mind ........................................................................................... 7
Level 2: The Doctor’s Interview ..................................................................... 8
Level 3: The Ward of Patients ....................................................................... 10
Level 4: The Conductor ................................................................................. 12
Developing Process .................................................................................................. 14
Pivoting the Project........................................................................................ 14
Obstacles in Production ................................................................................. 20
Comments and Feedback ............................................................................... 22
Reflections & Next Steps ......................................................................................... 24
Conclusions .............................................................................................................. 26
Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 28
iii
List of Figures
Figure 1: The Start State of Level 1 .......................................................................... 7
Figure 2: The End State of Level 1 ............................................................................ 8
Figure 3: The Peaceful State of Level 2 .................................................................... 9
Figure 4: The Tense State of Level 2 ......................................................................... 9
Figure 5: The Chaotic State of Level 3 .................................................................... 11
Figure 6: The Peaceful State of Level 3 .................................................................. 11
Figure 7: The Gradual Environmental Changes of Level 4 ..................................... 13
Figure 8: The Gameplay of Dragging Options to Control the NPC ........................ 15
Figure 9: The Gameplay of Grabbing Objects to Control the NPC ........................ 16
Figure 10: The Gameplay of Finishing Questionnaire to Control the NPC ............ 18
Figure 11: The Mechanic of Mirroring .................................................................... 19
Figure 12: The Combination of the Mirroring and the Questionnaire .................... 20
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Abstract
Chaos is a VR psychological horror game about a person trying to find their way through a
surreal world caused by psychosis. In the game, players grope to learn, get along with and finally
manipulate the weird elements of the horror environment. Taking advantage of the immersive
environment provided by VR devices, the game aims to make players feel a sense of predicting
and controlling. In addition, the game involves several experimental designs, exploring what
novel experience they can bring to players.

1
Artist Statement
When asked about the reasons and motivations for devising Chaos, the honest answer is, “I
would like to reproduce my experience of psychosis”.

It is certain that being haunted by psychosis is not something pleasant, while as an artist I
consider such an imaginative experience as a treasure that I would like to make use of. Though I
would never want to return to that chaotic, uncertain, and out-of-control world caused by
psychosis, I think it would be a unique experience if it happens in a safe environment.

With this idea in mind, I started to make a plan for my game, while the process was harder than I
thought. The experience was too detailed to summarize - I could list all the weird events I have
experienced one by one, but it was impossible for me to reproduce all of them. I need to find a
feature that is able to represent those events as a whole. Therefore, I changed my focus from
specific events to a general feeling, and set up the experience goal of “grope for the rules of the
unknown, surreal world then get a sense of predicting and controlling”. I use the word “grope” to
describe the ambiguous state between certain and uncertain – you know a little about the world,
but do not know exactly. In order to survive, you need to try, get feedback, and use the
information in the feedback to take the next step. It feels like finding the balance of your body –
you have a vague sense of how you should move your limbs to keep the balance, but you do not
know a specific fixed pose that can ensure your balance. The only thing you can do is to move
your body little by little, see if the movements make the situation better or worse, then take the
next steps accordingly. After countless adjustments, you finally approach the right thing.

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That is the feeling I want to convey to players, which is identical to demonstrating my
experience of psychosis. However, concretizing an abstract sense to a perceivable experience is
even harder than summarizing my memory. It took a long time and much effort for me to figure
out the appropriate gameplay that can achieve the goal. Regardless of all the difficulties and
problems I encountered in the developing process, finally, I got the not perfect but promising
result, which is the current version of Chaos. Though the game is still rough at this stage, I think
it is competent at representing my memories about psychosis.

Apart from reproducing my unique experience, another goal of the game is to experiment with
novel designs in both mechanics and narrative. With the pursuit of uniqueness, I am always
interested in breaking the rules and frames that people have been used to, aiming to create a
distinctive experience by applying unusual designs to my game. Instead of pondering what
mechanics would work for a specific experience, sometimes I chose to come up with an
uncommon design first, then see what experience it can produce. After checking if the
experience is comfortable and in harmony with the core experience goal, I finally decide whether
to keep or abandon the design. That is the method I use to explore the new possibilities of the
game experience.

Besides, the game includes some designs that contribute little to improving the game experience
but are consistent with my personal aesthetics, such as metaphors and repeated elements in
different levels. Though most players might not be aware of the meaning behind them, I put them
there just because I think they enhance the beauty of the game. This also allows players, once
they have played the game, to continue to think about the experience and ponder the meaning of
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these enigmatic details. It is a way of increasing the poetic impact of the game and enhance
replayability.

As an idealist, actually I feel unsatisfied with almost all the games I make. As for Chaos, I feel it
is a pity that the project remains at a low level of completeness due to the limitation of time and
my health conditions. There is still so much content to add and lots of details to polish. However,
I am quite optimistic about its potential. I think I find the right direction and have set up an
extendable frame for the game, which ensures a practical plan for the next steps. I am not sure if
I have the time and the chance to continue working on Chaos after graduating from USC, but I
believe the project has a bright future.

4
Experimental Features & Design Goals
Natural User Interface without Buttons
Buttons are convenient for executing functions and are widely used in various devices. However,
the button and the function are manually connected, and users need to memorize the artificial
relation, which is not an easy process. In a VR environment, the problem gets worse – if players
forget the layout of the controllers, they need to take off the headset to get clear of it. Moreover,
an interface with buttons is like a wall that separates players and the game. Since the buttons do
not belong to the game world, when using them players are always reminded that they are in the
reality rather than the game world, breaking the immersion.

To solve the problem, I try to design a Natural User Interface, or NUI, in a VR environment. I
avoid involving button pressing in-game interactions and use arm movements instead, attempting
to make the interface invisible. I aim to create a direct, intuitive interface to avoid that players
become aware of the interface and rather relate their actions directly to gestures and actions they
are carrying out in-game. My goal is to provide a deeply immersive experience.

Intimate Relation between the Weirdness and the Player
In horror games, players usually have hostile relationships with the environment. The weird
elements are used for frightening players or giving implications that make players feel unsettled
and uncomfortable. Players are fighting with or defending the unpleasant environment, though
the process might be satisfying. In contrast, Chaos attempts to build a close and friendly
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relationship between the player and the weirdness. Instead of being on guard against the
environment, players learn, communicate, and even control those horrible elements. During the
process, the player’s identity also becomes vague. As the player directly influences the objects
and NPCs in the environment, they sometimes think that they are the thing they control.

With such an intimate relationship, Chaos explores the idea of creating psychological horror by
suggesting to players that the weirdness is caused by their actions. Opposite to the assumption, it
is possible that players get pleasure rather than fear under the given circumstances. This
oscillation between alienation and the pleasure of inhabiting this weird world is central to my
experience goal and resembles the emotional states I am to communicate. The point is to
experiment with such a design and see what novel experience it can bring to players.

6
Prior Art
What Remains of Edith Finch
Similar to What Remains of Edith Finch, my game was an anthology of different mini
experiences. And the most inspiring aspect of this game is that the unique experiences of
different gameplays come from the various control schemes instead of visual or audio
performance. I think it is a direction that is worth exploring. The controllers used in VR
environment are quite different from the ones that people have been familiar with, such as mouse
and keyboard, which provides more possibilities for devising new control schemes, while at the
same time the design of the scheme requires careful considerations in order to avoid players from
getting overwhelmed with using controllers that they are not familiar with.

Eraserhead
The film presents several ordinary-looked people but with abnormal behaviors and weird facial
expressions. It inspired me to create psychological horror by using uncanny valley theory. Also, I
learned how to make scary faces from the film – it exaggerates the common expressions such as
smile and keeps the state for a long time. Though my models are in a non-realistic style, the
method still works well. In addition, the film has a low-cost narration - the dialogues are tense
and short, and express clear meaning in the specific situation. While if the audience tries to
understand sentences with context, attempting to figure out the whole story, they cannot get a
clear answer, but the vagueness leaves them space for imagination. Since my game does not
emphasize narrative, the film is a good reference to learn from. Compared to the film, my game
has the advantages of interactivity, which keeps players engaged and focused even when they are
confused about the story.
7
Project Introductions
The game consists of four levels, presenting the process of “entering a strange world – getting to
know about the rules of the world – following and utilizing the rules to control the world – freely
directing the world after having the rules in hand”. Each level has different gameplay.

Level 1: The Mind
The first level is about the protagonist being on the way to the hospital with little consciousness.
It is a completely black scene with a messy colorful web consisting of countless dots and lines.
Players can influence the positions of the dots by moving their controllers and finally untwist the
web. During the process, players hear dialogues that indicate the protagonist is sent to the
hospital. Players finish the level when they manage to transform the web into an ordered grid.

Figure 1: The Start State of Level 1
8

Figure 2: The End State of Level 1
This level reflects the protagonist’s state of getting lost in the storm in their chaotic mind.
Locked in their mental world, the protagonist is separate from reality, sensing nothing of the
outer world. Players’ actions in this level represent the process of the protagonist sorting their
thoughts. As the protagonist’s inner world gets more and more ordered, they gradually hear
voices from the outer world again, reconnect to reality and wake up.

Level2: The Doctor’s Interview
The second level is about the protagonist answering some questions before they enter the ward.
In a small room, there is a doctor asking players to finish a questionnaire, while it is so close to
the doctor and far from the player that they cannot reach it. When players wave the controllers,
they find the doctor is mirroring their movements. In this way, players can control the doctor to
finish the questionnaire. Players cannot figure out whether an option is right or wrong since the
questions and answers seem to be so arbitrary, but different sound effects are played after players
making a choice, which indicates the results. Also, the clock in the room goes clockwise or
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anticlockwise according to whether the answer is right. The scene becomes peaceful if players
make the right choices – for example, the lights get brighter, and the wall gradually becomes
white. Otherwise, the scene becomes scary and chaotic, which involves the changes of lighting
and ambient sound. Players finish the level when they get all the answers right.

Figure 3: The Peaceful State of Level 2

Figure 4: The Tense State of Level 2
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This level reflects the protagonist’s entering a surreal world, with some wrong beliefs in their
mind. Different from the previous mental world that feels distant from the real world, this one is
like a mixture of hallucinations and reality, with most things normal but also something wrong.

The gameplay in this level introduces the basic “rule” of this world – you can control other
people in a certain way, and the world goes calm or chaotic depending on whether your actions
are appropriate or not. However, you cannot determine what is appropriate by common sense,
and that is what you need to learn from the world, according to the world’s feedback to your
actions. It represents the “communication” between the player, and the world – the changes of
the environment deliver the message of whether the world approves the player’s behaviors, and
the player can decide whether they would like to go against the world’s will.

Another “rule” introduced in this level is time: the clock indicates the direction of the time – time
moves forward or backward according to whether the answer is right. The forward leads to a
static, peaceful state, and time freezes at the end of the level; while the backward results in a
chaotic world that are full of unpleasant noises and never stops moving, which is out of control.

Level 3: The Ward of Patients
The third level is about the protagonist wandering in the ward and interacting with several
patients. When the player gets close to one patient, they can control the patient’s arms, legs, or
head by moving the controllers. In this way, they can guide patients to do something, such as
eating food. The patients react differently according to whether they feel happy with their
actions. For example, if the player guides a patient’s head to eat the food she does not like, she
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moans painfully. It depends on players to choose whether they want to make the patients happy,
and the environment becomes peaceful or chaotic accordingly, similar to the second level.
Players finish the level when they maximize all the patients’ happiness.

Figure 5: The Chaotic State of Level 3

Figure 6: The Peaceful State of Level 3
The principle of this level is that, if you are kind to the patients, the world will be kind to you;
otherwise if you make the patients suffer, the world will show its malice. Players have more
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freedom in this level – instead of sitting in a chair and finishing the questionnaire according to
the doctor’s instructions, players can walk around, control different patients, and make their own
decisions of what to do. The story of this level is that as the protagonist gradually gets more
familiar with the world, they get more control of it, while the increasing surrealness in the
environment implies that the mental state of the protagonist is getting more abnormal.
There is also a clock standing in the ward, going clockwise or anticlockwise according to
players’ behaviors. However, since the player gets more control in this level, the clock is like
something that the player can control, instead of an indicator of right or wrong. And the process
of controlling the clock is also a process of controlling time. When the time finally freezes at the
end, everything in the room stops moving, it symbolizes that the protagonist manages to calm
down all the elements in the world.

Level4: The Conductor
The final level starts in a white room full of patients. Players are standing on a stage, and all of
the patients gather around the stage. The patients always look at players’ controllers. As players
moving their controllers, colorful strokes appear on the wall, and also music notes are played. In
the beginning, there are restrictions that players need to follow in order to play the note (e.g.
move the controller to a certain position), while later as long as players keep moving, the music
keeps playing. Also, the music changes from a piano solo to a symphony. Finally, the music
plays automatically, and players’ movements influence different instruments. In this process, the
environment also changes gradually – at the beginning, it is a white room, then it becomes kind
of messy as the walls get painted with colorful strokes. After that, all the walls gradually fade
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out, and players find they are in a galaxy, and the stars follow their movements. Finally, a
supernova explodes, and the level ends with white and silence.

Figure 7: The Gradual Environmental Changes of Level 4
The previous levels are all about making the world peaceful and ordered, while the final level is
the opposite – the initial state is static and clean, and the players’ goal is to create disturbances,
making the chaotic elements that they calmed down in the previous level move again. The whole
game is like a process of cleaning up a messy, dark room – in the first three levels, players get
familiar with the unknown room and collect all the objects; then in the final level, players put all
the objects to the right places. As players gradually have the rules of the world well in hand, they
can direct the world freely without constraints - any decisions they make for the world lead to
harmony. However, the disappearance of the room, which represents reality, indicates the
protagonist’s completely getting lost in the mental world.
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Developing Process
Pivoting the Project
Though having finished a design document that contains the game walkthrough as well as some
devised mechanics in my previous writing class, pivoting the project in the right direction still
takes a long time. Since the experience of psychosis is vague and complex, it is hard to grasp the
essence and transform it into gameplay. Therefore, the main mechanic of the game has gone
through several iterations.

Initially, I identified the core experience as “not knowing what is right at first, but gradually
getting to understand the rules through the feedback”. The two points that I wanted to emphasize
about the experience were:
1) A sense of predicting and controlling. When I was haunted by psychosis, I had a
presentiment of what was likely to happen, and I believed I could influence
whether it would happen by taking certain actions. In the game, I planned to give
continuous feedback to continuous input to concretize the sense of presentiment:
when something changed little by little, players could see a trend of the change so
that they could predict what happened next. Then players could control the results
by taking different actions.
2) Fun and satisfaction. In addition to self-expression, I also wanted the game to be
entertaining. Limited by the genre, the game lacked challenges, so it was important
to add something else as a source of pleasure. To achieve this goal, I planned to
give rich feedback to players’ input.`

15
Then I came up with the first draft of the gameplay: the player drag different options to
themselves to answer the doctor’s question, and their movements affect the doctor’s body.
For example, if the player drags a wrong answer, the doctor’s head will get bigger as the
option gets farther and farther from its original position. Players can figure out whether an
option is right or wrong according to whether the doctor’s body becomes normal.

Figure 8: The Gameplay of Dragging Options to Control the NPC
However, it did not work well as I expected. In playtests, though players did have fun dragging
the options and seeing the doctor change, they did not get a sense of control. Besides, the design
of the options was against my design goal of Natural User Interface – now they felt like an
interface for players to connect to the game, rather than something embedded in the virtual
world. Another issue was that it was hard to tell whether the doctor’s body was normal or not:
There were several factors that influence the doctor’s body, and they all had “the weirdest state”
and “the least weird state”. Ideally, when all the factors reach the “the weirdest state”, the doctor
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looks the weirdest. However, since the factors had influences on each other, sometimes the
middle state looked weirder than the weirdest state.

Taking all of the problems into consideration, I threw away the mechanic and devised my second
version of the gameplay: players grab an object to control the character's body in a certain way.
As is shown in the image below, the player moves the spoon to move the woman’s head and
stretch her neck, guiding the woman’s head to different food. If the woman is approaching the
food she likes, the walls of the room gradually turn white, while if the woman is getting close to
the food she dislikes, the walls gradually change into a dark, dynamic, and twisted texture.
Players do not know the woman’s preference at the beginning, but they can get a sense of it by
making attempts.

Figure 9: The Gameplay of Grabbing Objects to Control the NPC
This gameplay made the game more integrated, and players get more sense of control than in the
previous version. However, there were still lots of practical problems. Firstly, when players
grabbed an object in VR, what actually happened was that the object was attached to a fixed
point on the hand model. Therefore, sometimes there was a short distance between the object and
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the hand model, which looked weird. Another problem was about the objects themselves – they
were necessary for passing the level, but it is possible for the player to throw them to somewhere
they could not find them. As a result, a refreshing mechanic was needed in order to make the
game continue. However, that would cause the sudden change of the object’s position and led to
the sudden environmental changes, breaking the continuity.

Those problems were not unsolvable, but they involved plenty of tweaking, which I could not
afford without falling behind my schedule a lot. Therefore, I decided to put away my
experiments about continuous input, and focused more on “try, then on understanding the rules
by getting piecemeal feedback”. Then came the third version of the gameplay – finishing the
questionnaire. Each time players select an option, there would be sound effects, the doctor’s
facial changes, and environmental changes (such as lighting) indicated whether it was right. The
facial changes were gradual – every wrong answer would make the doctor a little more scared,
and every right one would make him a little calmer. In addition, I tried to create horror by
making the questions abnormal (such as weird answers, obvious spelling errors, and garbled
characters).

Besides, I added some gameplay elements that demonstrate the idea of “feedback to
unintentional input”. One was about the photo frame – if players stared at the photo, there would
be a black hand gradually appearing, and finally, the whole photo turned into an x-ray of a
skeleton hand. Another gameplay was about the eyeballs and jars on the shelf – if players looked
at the jars, the eyeballs would look at them.

18

Figure 10: The Gameplay of Finishing Questionnaire to Control the NPC
The third version got quite positive feedback, and the experience reaches my expectation of
“weird but not too scary”. The only thing that did not work well was the abnormal questions –
some people felt confused rather than afraid when they saw the text that was against common
sense.

Nevertheless, problems still existed. Since there were too many elements in this version, it was
difficult to determine which one to extend in the next steps. Also, all the elements were not
connected, which is against integrity. Moreover, the main gameplay of finishing the
questionnaire was short and a little bit dull. The other two interactions would make the
experience more interesting, while if players only triggered the main gameplay, the experience
would not be so fun.

To solve the problems, I decided to add feedback on something players could not miss – the
doctor - then all my efforts could contribute to players’ experience. Using the IK system of
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Unity, I managed to make the doctor’s head and arms mirror players’ movements. I tried to make
the player trigger something using this mechanic, such as controlling the doctor to cover his ears
to play an audio clip. However, players did not know what to do without guidance, so I removed
the interaction of playing audio and only kept the mirroring mechanic.

Figure 11: The Mechanic of Mirroring
I also tried threading everything by making up a story of the dog, the doctor, and the death: After
the dog, Rina, died, the doctor misses it so much, so he preserves its eyes and teeth to watch it
every day. I made the doctor repeat telling the story as well as put the dog’s name into the
questionnaire. However, players reported the audio was a little annoying after it played too many
times. Besides, I felt this design introduced a new monologue system into the game, making it
even harder to manage all the systems. Also, a story did not make the game more fun, so the
problem of dullness had not been solved.

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Then I realized that I should prune instead of adding more. When I looked back at all the
elements I had, I came up with the idea of combining the mirroring mechanic with the
questionnaire – to make players control the doctor’s arms and hands to finish the questionnaire.

Figure 12: The Combination of the Mirroring and the Questionnaire
That was when I felt I found the right direction of the project. Moving controllers without
pressing any buttons and triggers was quite a natural interaction. In addition, controlling
something else rather than the player’s own avatar was a unique and fun experience. And the two
features together provide a strong sense of control.

Therefore, I decided on “moving arms to control NPCs and other elements” as the main
mechanic. In order to prepare for the formal production, I wrote a new game walkthrough and
defined the scope of the project – there would be four levels that included six mini-experiences.

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Obstacles in Production
In the production phase, I met three main challenges: difficulties in implementing the mechanics,
the limitation of time, and the unavailability of playtesting.

The difficulties in implementing the mechanics came from the vagueness of my descriptions of
gameplay. For example, when I implemented “moving arms to control the NPC’s head”, I found
the rules of the interactions were too detailed and required much consideration. Should I use the
controller’s relative position or the relative rotation as a variable to influence the head? There
were two controllers, how should I map their movements to the position and rotation changes of
one head?

It took a longer time than I estimated to adjust the interaction rules of the “controlling head”
gameplay (in the third level) and the ones of “conducting” gameplay (in the fourth level) in order
to make them acceptable, and it was still not satisfying. The process was also frustrating since I
could not foresee how long it would take, and I could not afford the time cost. Therefore, for the
next two gameplays (the patient sitting in a chair, and the patient watching TV) in the third level,
I used similar interaction rules as the “controlling doctor” one – players moving arms to control
the NPC’s limbs - which had been proven to work well in the second level. Instead of coming up
with new ways of how to map controllers’ movements to the NPC’s movements, I focused on
relating different other feedback to the NPC’s movements, such as an NPC would stroke himself
if the player rotated his thighs to certain rotations. In this way, I tried to avoid players from
feeling it repetitive even though they controlled the NPCs in the same way.

22
Another challenge was the limitation of the time. Because I spent too much time pivoting the
project, I had not started my formal production until the beginning of the final semester. As a
result, I only had about four months to finish the game. In addition, I did not have other team
members except for a composer. There were some advantages of the independent development,
such as flexibility, no time spent on communication. However, at the same time I need to do all
the work by myself, not only the coding but also the art designing that I was not so good at. In
order to reduce the workload, I chose to simplify the art. Instead of making a detailed, realistic-
styled scene, I removed the elements that were not relevant to the gameplay, and only left a few
objects that were enough for players to understand the settings (e.g. the IV stand in the third level
implicated the setting of the hospital), then used the lighting and shadows to avoid the scene
from looking dull.

The unavailability of playtesting was also a challenge. It was already hard to playtest a VR game,
and it became even harder when Covid-19 made it impossible to have an off-line playtest.
Therefore, I recorded videos of the gameplay and showed them to others in order to get
comments. I got some quite helpful feedback about the narrative, the general atmosphere, and
where their attention went when watching the video. However, it was kind of awkward to
“playtest” the gameplay in this way, since people had to imagine how the game worked in their
minds without trying it in person. I also did some playtests with classmates who had VR devices,
which revealed considerable problems of my project, such as the difficulty of the first level was
too high. Nevertheless, I thought the feedback was not enough for really honing the user
experience. That was something I did not do well in the current stage, and it was certain that
more playtests were needed in the next steps
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Comments and Feedback
After showing videos or finishing playtest, I used qualitative questions instead of quantitative to
collect feedback, for my project was still like a sketch, so it was more important to ask people
about the general feeling rather than how satisfied they felt with certain aspects of the
experience. It worked quite well and gave me lots of inspiration.

The narrative of the project was largely influenced by the feedback I received. Initially, I planned
to add monologues to all the levels in order to tell a clearer story and build the protagonist’s
emotional arc. When I started developing the game, however, I did not have enough time for
narrative, so I just simply set up the art resources according to the story settings – an office and a
doctor. Then I found people had different interpretations of the identity of the player, and the
relation between the doctor and the player. Though some of the guesses were contradictory to my
actual story settings, I found they were more interesting than my ideas. Also, I thought in their
stories the identity of the player was blurred, making it easier for players to feel empathy, which
was important for a first-person VR game. Therefore, I abandoned the monologues in my script
and also reduce the total amount of dialogues in order to give players more freedom to imagine,
but still kept them clear enough for players to understand the background.

Due to the game genre and the vagueness, the comments I got varied. Instead of evaluating and
discussing specific issues, the process of getting feedback for this game was more about learning
and getting unexpected ideas.

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Reflections & Next Steps
The current version of the game has set up a frame with appropriate gameplays that not only
manage to demonstrate the idea of “transforming an abstract sense of control into a perceivable
experience”, but also is fun and engaging. Also, the four levels form an arc of “getting familiar
with the unknown world – calming down all the chaotic elements – reordering the elements in
hand and making them move again”, telling a vague but complete story. Besides, the general
atmosphere of the game reaches the expectation of “weird, creepy but not too scary”.

However, the game is still at the early stage with lots of problems to solve, much content to add,
and numerous details to adjust. The first priority is to deal with the usability issues of the control
schemes. They are in the right direction of natural user interface and representing the delusion,
but the feedback is not clear enough for players to see a trend whether they are doing something
right, which causes players to get stuck in some gameplay. Therefore, more playtests should be
on schedule in order to enhance the user experience. Another high-priority task is replacing the
low-quality art resources as well as adding more details. Now the visual and audio elements are
so primitive that the problems like clipping sometimes break the immersion, making it feel like a
game still in development. In order to provide a more impressive experience, it is necessary to
fix those bugs and improve the quality of the models, textures, and animations.

Some next steps are: 1) Changing the gameplay of the conducting from reaching a specific point
to reaching a given height; implementing the new mechanic of making players move according
to the rhythm and then see if it works. 2) Tweaking the win conditions of the first level to
reduce the difficulty. 3) Replacing the models and animations in the eating-woman gameplay in
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the third level. 4) Adding more dynamic environmental elements connected to the questionnaire
in the second level.

In the long term, I will add other new gameplays to emphasize the idea of giving feedback to
unintentional input. One gameplay that I have designed(but not implemented and tested) for the
second level is that, if players stare at the door in the second level for a long time, blood text will
appear on the door saying, “Do not look right”. If players do look right and see the eyeballs and
teeth on the shelf, when they look back to the door there will be text like, “You did not follow
what I said. Be careful when you watch the clock.” Then when players watch the clock, there
will be a human shadow crane its neck from the back of the clock. Using such gameplays, I
would like to try to make players feel they are observed by the world. Nevertheless, it will not
influence the main game walk-through, and will not be implemented until I finish polishing the
current content I have.

26
Conclusions
In the aspect of self-expression, I think I find the right direction of concretizing an abstract
feeling of controlling and predicting, using the mechanic of continuous feedback to continuous
input. Nevertheless, that is only the first step. What I have done now is reproducing my own
experience, like a painter finishing depicting what they see. While different from painting, a
game is an interactive art form, so its audience, players, are actually part of the artwork. In
addition to considering how to best express my feelings, it is also important to do more playtests
and tweak the game to make sure that other players get a similar experience.

As for experimenting with novel interactive mechanics in VR, the control scheme of moving
controllers without pressing any buttons has lots of potentials: for one thing, it is easy to learn
and natural to use, reducing the distance between the player and the game world and making the
game more immersive and intimate. For another, it eases the problem of model clipping when
players grab the objects – the traditional way of pressing the trigger to grab an object usually
causes unavoidable model overlapping, while in Chaos the scheme of mapping the player’s
movements to the object’s movements provides developers with possibilities to restrict the
object’s positions and rotations. However, it also has limitations: how to design the rules of
movement mapping requires careful consideration, otherwise, it is very likely to be anti-intuitive,
making players feel hard to control what they do in the game. In Chaos, the character mirroring
mechanic is an example of good mapping, but other attempts of devising mappings such as the
head controlling and the conducting do not get satisfying results, which reflects the difficulty of
designing such mapping. Besides, if the scene is large with several controllable objects, it is
necessary to add mechanics of activating and deactivating objects in order to avoid players from
27
influencing all the objects at the same time. The current solution in Chaos is that players can
control an NPC or an object only when they are close enough to and looking at them, while the
rule is not ideal since it is a little awkward for players to activate or deactivate an object. To put
it in a nutshell, the prospect of the scheme of no buttons is broad, but more explorations and
experiments are needed to improve the experience and make it more user-friendly.

About the genre, Chaos focuses on creating a VR experience based on the fun from various
interactions rather than complex mechanics and challenges. Like What Remains of Edith Finch
on PC/consoles and Florence on mobile devices, Chaos tries to use different mini-games to
simulate not only the protagonist’s behaviors, but also their feeling and emotions in the situation,
providing an engaging, immersive, and unique game experience benefitting from the advantages
of VR features.

28
Bibliography
“Natural User Interface”, Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 15 April 2020,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_user_interface.
Cube Escape Series, Rusty Lake, 2015 - 2018.
Eraserhead, Directed by David Lynch, AFI Center for Advanced Studies, 1977.
Florence, Mountains, 2011.
Mulholland Drive, Directed by David Lynch, Universal Pictures, 2001.
Superhot VR, Superhot Team, 2016.
The Stanley Parable, Galactic Cafe, 2011.
Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog), Directed by Luis Buñ uel, Classiques, 1929.
Virginia, Variable State, 2016.
What Remains of Edith Finch, Giant Sparrow, 2017.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Chaos is a VR psychological horror game about a person trying to find their way through a surreal world in a surreal world caused by psychosis. In the game, players grope to learn, get along with and finally manipulate the weird elements of the horror environment. Taking advantage of the immersive environment provided by VR devices, the game aims to make players feel a sense of predicting and controlling. In addition, the game involves several experimental designs, exploring what novel experience they can bring to players.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Wang, Lingxiao (author)

Core Title Chaos

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Interactive Media

Publication Date 04/06/2021

Defense Date 05/15/2021

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag game,natural user interface,OAI-PMH Harvest,psychological horror,Surrealism,virtual reality

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Gotsis, Marientina (committee chair), Bilson, Danny (committee member), Fullerton, Tracy (committee member), Kratky, Andreas (committee member), Lemarchand, Richard (committee member), Reynolds, Erin (committee member)

Creator Email lingxiaw@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-440254

Unique identifier UC11668769

Identifier etd-WangLingxi-9395.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-440254 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-WangLingxi-9395.pdf

Dmrecord 440254

Document Type Thesis

Rights Wang, Lingxiao

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA