Where can a game can have more emotional impact than a similar movie? Games have one primary advantage over movies: interactivity. A majority of games focus on combat or a similar sort of conflict, and I think currently games beat movies hands-down for that adrenaline-pumping, edge of your seat feeling of victory or defeat, because you feel that it's actually YOU in the situation. So, let's not talk too much about action or horror genres. Movies often target lots of different emotional responses in people; I think movies still beat games in the departments of sadness, joy, and more social emotions. I'll admit it, I almost shed a tear or two during some of the sappier moments of the Final Fantasy games, but most of those were during cutscenes, and were due to a largely non-interactive story. Hence, I think the scenes would have had nearly the same impact if they had been a movie and not a game. I think part of the problem is that most human emotions arise from social experiences and human interaction, and game AI has not advanced to the point where interesting human drama can happen procedurally, thus, most of the socially dramatic parts of a game are non-interactive or have a very limited interaction (Choosing A gets you Cutscene #1, but doing B gets you Cutscene #2.) My question is how can games take advantage of their unique advantage over movies (the interactivity) and use it for more than just the visceral, instinctive emotions of fear and adrenaline, and instead utilize that to create an experience greater than that of a drama, romance, comedy, and other movie genres.

makeshiftwings,

Well asked question. I would say that most games today treat their characters like the stand-in house guest who you know is going to get killed in the next scene. In contrast, the final fantasy series (US3 in specific) did a much better job of allowing you to connect with your characters. As a result, you felt joy when someone achieved a goal, and you felt sadness when the twins sacrificed themselves for the good of the team.

Perhaps the best way to achieve more diverse emotions is to allow players to have more opportunity to connect with their characters as "entities," rather than just props or tools to use while playing the game. The characters need to have personalities and desires which players can relate to and sympathize with. If the player is unable to identify with the character, either because they don’t know enough about the character, or because the character doesn’t seem "human" enough, then its highly unlikely an emotional bond or rapport will be established. Instead, the player will treat the character as inanimate or disposable.

I would recommend doing a small study on the primary emotions, what triggers them, and how can they be solicited in every-day development. For example, Attachment Theory might provide insight into how we relate to non-main characters. Do the support characters protect us, or are they unreliable? Have they been with us since the beginning, or do they come and go as necessary. What kind of attachment have I developed with the support characters? If the attachment is not secure, its unlikely I will miss them when they're gone, or be happy for them when they succeed.

My advice is to determine which emotions you want to evoke, find circumstances in our daily life that cause similar emotions, then look for a well researched paradigm that might explain that emotion/behavior. Once you recognize the philosophy, it might be easier to apply its principles.

As a follow-up: The interactivity which we are allowed in video games allows us the ability to change behaviors based on feedback from the users. In this way, the personality of support characters and even our main character can be further advanced or modified as necessary to make them feel more believable. Allowing too much direct control, however, can take away from the sense of realism.

Martha, my character's best friend is sarcastic and witty. I like that about her. If I do something stupid, she's going to let me know in her usual pithy manner. If her behavior is consistent in the face of my interaction, I come to rely on her. If she is suddenly kidnapped, I'll miss the connection that I've come to trust. And hence, I'm more likely to act upon it. If this scenario were just a movie, the interaction between martha and the main character would have been limited to what the script had allowed. In our game, martha can respond in a logical, characteristic fashion to events that may not have been accounted for. And since we can spend more time together then the 2 hour movie, our relationship *should be* stronger. In a movie, I might have just let her get kidnapped.

Cheers!

Interactivity is important, but don't forget customization. Just the fact that you can give the main character your own name increases emotional impact in a way a movie can't. If on top of that you can design the character's appearance and especially if you can also decide the character's morals and goals within the story world, that makes for awesome player-character identification and immersion.

It seems to me that interactivity is an obstacle to drama. Pacing, character development, foreshadowing and all the other little narrative tricks of the trade get traded in on a chance to control the character and inhabit the world.

I recommend making the main character a null character, or an avatar of the player. Have him fall through a time warp with no memory or something, so he's just a physical manifestation of your set of eyes. Let the drama unfold around him, and let him offer commentary on it, preferably the sort of thing that the player is likely to be thinking.

Remember Die Hard 3, with Samuel L. Jackson? He was the audience in that movie. When Bruce willis did something amazing and idiotic and action-hero-esque, Jackson replied by calling him crazy or yelling at him to stop driving a cab through Central Park at 80mph while picnickers flee in all directions. That's how your player character should operate.

As the story unfolds, and the player gets a chance to become invested in teh story, have the avatar do the same, so that you can shift the dramatic weight onto the player character at the climax of the story. You build a proper escalation, using secondary characters that the writer controls to set up the conflict, and then, at the critical moment you place that drama, fully formed, squarely on the shoulders of the player. Bam. Emotional impact.

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As the story unfolds, and the player gets a chance to become invested in teh story, have the avatar do the same, so that you can shift the dramatic weight onto the player character at the climax of the story. You build a proper escalation, using secondary characters that the writer controls to set up the conflict, and then, at the critical moment you place that drama, fully formed, squarely on the shoulders of the player. Bam. Emotional impact.

That's the key. And it's a trick that works very very well in pretty much any genre except hockey MMOs. Probably. Why was the intro to Half Life (1 and 2) so good? Why were those games so immersive? Because you were controlling the avatar as the story starts. Games work best with 'fast plots', ie ones that run start to finish in the length of the game. If a 'slow plot' is in play (the global conspiracy after 500 years of plotting...) a fast conclusion is needed, to keep the player involved in the story.