My whole take on the situation is that games should put players in situation where they have been programmed to do one thing, but should really do something else. Most games, and game players are all about "winning." Hording the most loot, killing the most dudes, doing things that are ridiculously illegal and dangerous in order to get ahead. Some RPGs put players in interesting moral situations, and in some (the Ultima games for example) you need to be moral to get ahead. I think putting the player in interesting moral situations is one way to invoke an emotional response.

quote: Original post by MSW
In the first area of the game Max Payne...the player comes home to find his family dead, and a few thugs waiting for him...the story is set up imeadiantly...yet another tale of revenge.

I was not impressed with the storyline of this game, either, and IMHO therein lies the key to emotional attachment.

Referring to some previous posts, if games will be considered "high" art (like film, literature, poetry), then they will need some relevance to the examination of the human condition. I personally don''t consider all expressions of creativity (in any medium) art by definition.

So, games need characters with problems in situations that are somehow universal-- and the way to show the power of games is when you allow the player to explore the realm of these problems interactively. No movie can (or should) allow you to toy with the outcomes, but a game is a perfect place to do just that. Blowing stuff up is fun, but there''s so much more to Fun than just blowing stuff up.

If you can''t identify with the characters, no matter what the ending of the story, you won''t care what happens.

quote:
Story wise, what is more interesting?

1) Max Payne, a cop, comes home to find his family dead. He then sets out for revenge.

2)Max Payne, a cop, with a loveing family. Finds that his latest investigation has illicit links to his imeadiant boss. In order to serve justice, Max puts his family in the line of fire.

I think this is a brilliant idea. If the player has to balance his interaction with his family versus the office, that is a chance to explore those kinds of human interactions that are universal while giving the player room to explore his/her approaches to dealing with the problems that would arise. I''ve always thought that a social simulator (beyond Sims) would be a fascinating game.. and as a cop, you''d get to blow stuff up while you try to salvage your family life.

And imagine the impact that the death of one (or all) of these secondary characters would have on the player after a few hours of interacting with them as realistic humans. Talk about lust for revenge!

Someone expressed concern that there''s not enough gameplay in that scenario, but I beg to differ. Maybe it''s just not obvious what the mechanics would be (and, no, I don''t have an answer since I''ve not spent any time with it). Furthermore, maybe it''s a direction that games could go that has yet to be defined.

At minimum, keeping your family satisfied through certain quantifiable means would be a condition of winning (or continuing, if the game went beyond that introductory "family vs. job" segment). And to some degree, it could also double as a way to define characteristics of the player avatar since how you treat your family and your work could affect RPG-style attributes for the next part of the game (ie, compassion/intuition vs brawn/reflex).

Well, I''m sort of rambling here, but it was compelling enough that I wanted to put my $.02 in there. Thanks for listening.

--Ten Tons of Screaming Jesus

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
Someone expressed concern that there''s not enough gameplay in that scenario, but I beg to differ. Maybe it''s just not obvious what the mechanics would be (and, no, I don''t have an answer since I''ve not spent any time with it). Furthermore, maybe it''s a direction that games could go that has yet to be defined.

I didn''t exactly say there''s not enough gameplay there. You _could_ make it very deep gameplay-wise. But my point was that if you make it deep enough to matter, you''d have this game where half the time you''re playing an FPS and then the other half you''re playing a management sim/social interaction sim. I''m not sure that you should have "two games in one" like that. How many action game fans will suddenly want to be playing a management game after a hard day of shooting criminals?

I think you can combine social interaction and more action oriented\fps style gameplay as long as the action isn''t too heavy. You''d basically have a social interaction or management game where you occasionally need to kill someone. This is a lot more realistic or "movie like" because unless you''re watching commando or a John Woo movie, one guy usually doesn''t take on 1000 without a scratch. I''m thinking something along the lines of the Sopranos, the Godfather where you have scenes with killing and action, but most of the time is spent interacting with characters, making deals, etc. So in the Max Payne example, you would have to deal with various family problems at home, solve cases at work, and kill a few guys every once in a while. Notice that I said deal with family problems. If you have a something like the Sims, where there is potentially no conflict at home, I personally think you''ll end up with a boring game. In most dramas and movies, the main characters have a lot of personal problems they need to deal with along with any job related challenges. Having to deal with stuff like your wife cheating on you (do you file for divorce, or go out and find the guy and scare him or kill him), a daughter with drug problems, or dying\sick relatives would be pretty interesting (and potentially trigger strong emotional responses.)

/*don't bother if you don't agree, it's all IMHO*/

It's interesting how this thread somewhat evolved from "How to invoke feelings in games?" to "Should games be movies?".

Anyway, I'm going to answer both those questions in a simple way.

First. "Should games be movies?" (I know this isn't quite the issue, but I can give a (IMHO) good answer to it). How about people stop considering whetever game should be artfull, fun, enjoyable, gory, emotianlly and so on and instead focusing on doing _something_? I mean, take an idea and do something with it, if it then turns out to become informational software, an arcade game, emotianally, RPG, fun, whatever, it doesn't matter because in the end we will see if it people likes it. Of course it's impossible to create commercial products like that since companies don't want to loose a lot of invested money in a project that won't be sold. But it's te way of thinking I would like people to consider. My point is, stop thinking in set ways, "We're going to create a game in genre X and it should focus on the technique Y" and instead "We're going to create a game that people likes", then it could be fun, enjoyable, artfull, maybe it's not even a game in the end, but maybe a good product.

Secondly, "How to get emotions in games". One (note "one", not "the") way of doing it is to let the player interact with a character so he/she feels that they get to _know_ the character, then the player (maybe?) would feel emotionally if "the bad guy" is about to do something terrible to it. I think Max Payne failed here. They (maybe, I don't work there so I don't know) tried to get the player to feel emotional and want revenge when Max comes home and sees his family dead. But then again, they maybe just wanted a reason for the player to wreck havoc, e.g. compare Max Payne with Quake (Reason to wreck havoc vs. havoc without reason) (Don't get me wrong, Max Payne was a great game, I didn't find it emotionally though). FFVII (I feel a little guilty for bringing FF up for the x-th millionth time, but it _is_ a great game) let the player get involved with Aerie and then killed her, and we really did feel upset after that.

As I'm writing this, my cd just ebgun to play Mortiis, "Everyone leaves" and another way of inflicting emotions occurs to me. This song affects me emotionally because of a number of reasons (which you have nothing to do with so go peep at someone elses feeling will ya? ). One can get the player to feel emotions because he associates the events of the game with something emotionally IRL. This might now work very well though since it would only be emotionally to a very limited group...


[edited by - Luctus on October 31, 2002 9:51:12 AM]

quote: Original post by beantas
I didn''t exactly say there''s not enough gameplay there. You _could_ make it very deep gameplay-wise. But my point was that if you make it deep enough to matter, you''d have this game where half the time you''re playing an FPS and then the other half you''re playing a management sim/social interaction sim.

I agree with that, in general. Although, I think that sort of contrast (ie, difference in the interaction, not necessarily trying to marry two disparate types of gameplay) might actually work well. Of course, everything depends on how it''s executed.

What really intrigues me here is that though we just scratch the surface of possibility with this conversation, hopefully it''s clear that there''s SO much more that games could be doing in terms of pushing the "socially relevant" envelope. And I don''t mean in a pretentious, preachy way. But why shouldn''t games try to have a message or an observation about life? It has a mass audience, and maybe it will change someone''s perception of how they view a certain aspect of being human. That''s the core of what excites me.

For the record, all the Final Fantasies I''ve played (6, 7, 8) just didn''t have stories or characters that interested me enough to invest emotion into them. They were decent attempts, but IMHO the stories are weak and cliched. I love the games, but it''s a lot like how everyone said Half-Life had such a great story. I was going, "What?!" There''s very little to it, and certainly nothing ground breaking. But that''s just my opinion, nothing I care to argue about.

I don''t feel that games and movies have much in common, aside from similar presentaion (ie, a screen you watch). I also don''t think that they should try to be equivalent. As I said before, games allow the potential to let the participant(s) explore the realms of "morality" or whatever subject the game tackles in a way that movies never can. And, possibly, in ways that are much more personal to each participant.

I don''t want to start a flame war here, but why shouldn''t some games be violent? To me, it''s an opportunity to allow people to explore that side of themselves in a contained, controlled, and safe environment. Doesn''t everyone wonder what it''s like to kill? It''s instictual, after all... so why not allow people to explore that and see how it makes them feel? Maybe the game will pass judgement (you win/lose) or maybe the game will just let you judge yourself (more open ended).

My real point is that with a tool this powerful, we should try to use it to explore who we are and why we do the things we do (those are the domains of true art, to me). Put the player in a situation where it all seems the most logical way to deal with something, and then give them perspective to prove that it''s completely insane from the outside. Most "evil" is never seen as evil from those perpetrating it, so what''s it like in their world looking out? You can read about it, talk about it, watch a movie about it, but none of those (IMHO) come close to what''s possible when you can experience it in the safety of an interactive environment like a game.

This is stuff I''ve wanted to achieve, but so far haven''t had the opportunity to do it on the scale I desire. It''s just a shame to see so much money pumped into yet another 3d platformer or yet another banal FPS with absolutely no point. Venting is fine, sure, but there''s certainly room for more intellectual gaming, isn''t there?

--Ten Tons of Screaming Jesus

Some great ideas coming up here, really an interesting thread.
To answer the original question can games be emotional? Absolutely.
How do you do it? Obviously there are many story-driven ways and making the player feel for the main character and supporting characters is important but so far nobody has mentioned music. I find music is far too often overlooked in games and it is such a powerful emotional tool. Part of what makes the C&C series so good is the great music tracks that when turned up can make battles much more emotional than they would otherwise be. I think of particular interest could be dynamic music that responds to the situations that the player is in to evoke the emotions needed at that point. Certainly music should not be used by itself but it can be used to greatly enhance other emotion-evoking parts of games.
Far too many games leave the player feeling detached from the game (and character if applicable). This is ok for some games that are very gameplay/strategy driven such as SimCity but many games could benefit from eliciting a greater emotional response from the player because it will leave the player more satisfied. Absolutely neccessary is avoiding repetition (which is hard to do because you have a game-engine for one task and you want to market the game under a particular genre) but I think what lets many games down is repetiveness. eg Max Payne. The game is fun and interesting for the first few chapters and its a great game but after a while you notice that all you ever do is walk around and shoot people (and after killing 200 or so Mafia people you wonder where they all come from and how the heck you are getting away with it). While this is largely a gameplay issue it affects the emotional side of things as well. As a player I might feel some hate/anger at the beginning of Max Payne after seeing what was done to his family (although this impact could have been greater by delaying it and having interaction first as some people have already stated) but after killing a bunch of bad guys the effect wears off and you are left just running around killing without much caring. You keep going because you want to know how it finishes but you aren''t emotional about it, you don''t lust for revenge. This could partially be addressed by adding more re-enforcing story elements (more things to upset the player and continue to want revenge) but the repetetiveness will dull the effect greatly.
Not all games need to be emotional but many would benefit greatly from focusing more on emotions than they do today and my two suggestions are: good, emotional music and avoid repetetive gameplay.
I think talking about what story elements are likely to be emotional is mostly irrelevant because it is so specific to each game. Storylines need to have emotional points them, but how to do that is traditional story telling and not unique to games.
My 2c on the movie/game debate: games (obviously some games not all) can benefit greatly from looking at the way things are done in movies and learning from that knowledge that has been developed over many years but games are not movies and have their own considerations that are important. The real problem is that there are many types of games that can be radically different from one another, more than different movie genres (IMHO). Some games have strong movie elements while others don''t and some games benefit from creating strong emotions while others don''t. Some games need happy endings while others benefit from more emotionally intensive sad endings. An RTS where you go about to conquer the world only to find it destoryed by a big nuke after then final mission where you captured the last hostile territory would just be dissapointing for example, while some RPGs might make the player feel that what they played is more real because there was no fairytale ending.


"Crack a government encryption code on my laptop? Easy as really difficult pie." - Willow.

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
I agree with that, in general. Although, I think that sort of contrast (ie, difference in the interaction, not necessarily trying to marry two disparate types of gameplay) might actually work well. Of course, everything depends on how it''s executed.

I guess if you pulled it off well, it would be similar to the survival horror games, which have very shallow action gameplay mixed with deeper puzzle elements.

quote:
But why shouldn''t games try to have a message or an observation about life? It has a mass audience, and maybe it will change someone''s perception of how they view a certain aspect of being human. That''s the core of what excites me.

I totally agree and it''s totally possible for anyone to create a story-based single-player mod to achieve this. Anyone. Even you or me. No budget required. There''s no reason why a mod couldn''t be as polished as a retail game. And you''d have an audience waiting to play your game. So get cracking!

quote: Original post by Impossible
My whole take on the situation is that games should put players in situation where they have been programmed to do one thing, but should really do something else.

Chronotrigger did this really beautifully. It's an RPG so you go around doing RPG stuff to gain more power or items, then somewhere in the middle of the game you are taken to court and accused of kidnapping the princess, and to prove thier case the prosecution calls character witnesses . As I watched these people give evidence against me I didn't now whether to feel impresseed with the designers or sorry for my own depravity . The interesting thing is that the game expects you to be guilty, and I don't know anyone who wasn't, If you turn out to be innocent you actually lose a whole chunk of gameplay!!

Of course this is was more or less a joke by the programmers on all gamers, but I think it shows just a tiny bit of the tip of the iceberg of how far this can be taken.

quote:
how everyone said Half-Life had such a great story. I was going, "What?!" There's very little to it, and certainly nothing ground breaking.

This scares me. My country produces tons of sub-standard films. And everybody loves them! thier expectation has been dumbed down so much that they totaly ignore all sorts of obvious plot inconsistencies, cheesy effects, bland acting etc. etc.

Is it possible that the same thing has happened to us gamers? Do we see a game that pays slightly more than lip service to a story and go around adoring the 'engrossing' story? Have we lowered our standards becuase we expect them never to be met?

Well, in that case it is up to the game designers to do something about it, wow us, and prove to us that it is actually possible to have a game with a really wonderful and moving story.


P/s
Game designers are the people who read game design forum posts on a game development site


[edited by - thelurch on November 1, 2002 6:25:59 PM]

quote: Original post by Dauntless
Indeed, I wince at the word "game" and instead think "interactive experience".

Ok, so use that term. Because what you talk about are not ''games'' and will largely frustrate those who are in search of a game-like experience.

quote: But as time wore on, writers realized that comics could be more than mere adolescent entertainment and they strove to wrote stories with some pretty powerful messages and meaning.

This is another reason why a lot of people called their comics ''graphic novels'', even if they were short. You talk about giving people an enjoyable experience, but an important part of that is letting people make an informed decision on what they''re getting. And that largely comes down to nomenclature.

quote: And besides, how will we know what people truly want unless we try? Indeed the most succesful games are ones that many "gamers" would balk at (Myst, any "Hunter" game, any "Barbie" game, etc etc.)

Myst and Deer Hunter are certainly games though. What you''re talking about are things that use game technology but aren''t necessarily games at all.

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