Excellent article on games and emotion

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2. This was an interesting read (although I seem to remember this from the March-April time frame (you must also, Raph, since you call it a “reblog”). Maybe NextGen is late to the party?

   Anyway, some of my favorite games have been short on gameplay but still quite entertaining because they somehow manage to grab you in an emotional way.

   My most recent experience (self-pimping alert) with that was the “Longest Journey”/”Dreamfall” saga.

   Say what you will, the story sucked me in deep.

3. Probably the best emotional “hook” I have come across in a video game was in Planescape: Torment, when the Nameless One realizes that his floating-skull sidekick, Morte (y’all remember him?), hasn’t quite been completely honest with him about the message tattooed on his back. (Morte had left out a rather significant addendum: “PS: Don’t trust the skull.”) I coulda sworn that Morte’s world-weary “How’s it going, Chief?” greeting acquired a hint of wariness at that point.

   And then, there’s the unforgettable Zerg Queen from StarCraft: Brood War! They let her live just long enough as Raynor’s human love interest to get you hooked on her personality, and then those diabolical devs let her get captured and mutated by the Zerg! And throughout her transformation process, rescue always seemed right at the very edge of your fingertips… but no…. And then she gleefully manipulates all sides in the battle, at one point feigning regret with Raynor for her murderous rampages, only to set him up for yet another betrayal in the end… good stuff. Good stuff….

4. The last emotional experience I had with a video game was in Final Fantasy VII. I don’t want to spoil the game for anyone, so I’ll just say that the experience was an event that involved the characters Cloud, Aeris, and Sephiroth — who is also the most realistically evil character I’ve ever encountered in fifteen years of playing nearly every computer and video role-playing game. In my opinion, Squaresoft (now Square Enix) is the undisputed champion of powerful storytelling and character development.

   Aren’t anger and frustration emotions too? What is the emotional role of interactive entertainment?

5. I am SO tired of the “can games make you cry” question, which makes me glad that this article is — in spite of its title — sort of answering a different question. 🙂

6. RPGs and most “adventure” games are and should be a medium for telling a story – just like a book or a movie. A powerful story is going to elicit an emotional response. If I play a game where I find myself getting choked up when a character dies, or angry at the bad guys, then in my opinion the writers of that game did their job well.

   Other types of games that don’t really try to tell a story, so the emotional response in those games come from a different splace – usually from players being competitive and striving to outdo themselves or each other, or simply the joy/frustration of trying to overcome a difficult challenge.

   At any rate, I think one of the thing that game developers should be aiming for is to make their games an emotional experience of some sort. It’s part of what makes a good game.

7. Emotions require downtime.

   If you have to be paying attention to hacking up the orcs that are overwhelming your position, getting a new tank on that bossmob, or desparately keeping the current tank alive, you’re not going to be feeling deep sadness.

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9. What I ask from games is that they make me care. If I don’t care what happens next, I’m not going to keep playing. I think there are lots of different ways for games to make people care, but the emotional aspect that this article touches on is one of the most effective for me.

   One of my favorite emotional moment in a game happened in Wing Commander III. Actually, there were two emotional moments created by the same event. This event (as the article discussed) was completely out of my control, and it evoked sadness, loss, and anger. However that event set up an opportunity for revenge later in which I had to make a choice. So, even though creating some emotions may require moving away from interaction and control (and, because of this, could be said to be outside the formal game), in my estimation, these events can help provide needed context to the rest of the experience.

   And make care about what happens next.

   –Phin

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