I cried after i bought Phantasmagoria 2, that game was so unbelievably awful.

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Original post by _Idan_
I cried after i bought Phantasmagoria 2, that game was so unbelievably awful.

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The original one scared me (I was 7)

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I can only remember one game that made me cry. That was that old adventure game called "Prisoner Of Ice", the end was absolutely fantastic. Best storyline ever.

Y.

Well, there''s one game that actually made me cry: Max Payne. Such an awfully good story dragging you through....

Well Fallout 1/2 intros ALMOST made me cry...

ahh emotion - the window to the soul....or something like that.

so far i have only experienced-

• excitement/adrenalin


• laughter


• scaryness

while playing a game. Never sorrow.

I play most games almost mechanically now, with ritual saving and completion of goals until I have completed it. Most games lack the plot or character development needed to get emotionally attached. Just like you would never cry during an Action movie, you would never cry when mowing down Allied forces with an emplaced MG.

Maybe if there was a game where you spent the entire game talking and whining and then you have a virtual divorce and your virtual baby gets killed, then you would cry ... but so far I haven''t seen any games like that. Only in my dreams...

If Thief 3 is as bad as people are expecting it to be, then I''ll cry.

Seriously though, emotional response is all about attachment to the characters and empathy. You create the first, and hope the player can provide the second.

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I see no reason to believe it is easier to make someone cry in a movie. Often in a film the best way to evoke an emotion is to make the audience associate with the characters so that they feel the same emotion. Needless to say, association is much easier in a game for a fairly obvious reason: You ARE the character.

I''m a huge fan of the Max Payne games, and I think they make great examples. One of the most important scenes in Max Payne 2 is the murder of Detective Winterson. (Spoiler Warning) In this scene, Detective Winterson appears and pulls a gun on Mona Sax. Mona reaches for her gun and Max, in love with Mona, shoots Winterson before she has a chance to shoot Mona. This is a very emotional scene because Max, a fellow Detective is now "A murderer. A cop-killer" as he puts it.

In the next scene Max is coming to terms with his guilt over the death of Winterson. I say this in third person because Max feels it, not me (the player). The murder scene was presented in non-interactive comic book mode. This means that I had no choice and no part in the murder. I believe the guilt could have been much better expressed if it had been me that pulled the trigger. Then, when Max talks of himself as a "cop-killer", I too will feel some of that emotion, after all it was me that did it.

If movies are currently better at expressing emotion then games its because they have had more practice and more time to perfect the techniques. In the future, designers will find new and better ways of expressing emotion in games. I feel that games are already better in certain emotions: excitement, fear, surprise, shock etc. Playing games like half-life (in the dark, speakers up) scares me a lot more than any horror movie I''ve seen in a long time.

In Final Fantasy 8, Rinoa is shot across the blackness of outerspace. She just floats there, side to side, for 2 or 3 scenes in complete silence (no background music, nothing). I was brought to tears, because I love Rinoa =(

Eliciting emotion is a difficult thing to achomplish in game due to its interactive nature. Generally they leave it upto cut scenes to create the emotion but even then, in order for it be effective it has to tie in with game play. In my opinion there is nothing worse then when an rpg character is killed off by a gun shot or being stabed. Considering for the majority of the game all the character in your party have suffered far worse, and then it leaves the question how come I can''t they use the revive item or spell, like I can do any other time a character dies in battle?

If you want to illicite strong emotion that emotion has to come from the content and context of the gameplay, it difficult for a player empathies with the death of a character if they never use that character.

Also the two most effective way to achive an emotional response are with audio and visual stimulation.

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