I was doing some thinking the other day whilst watching a movie.. It was one of those feel good films where you really get engrossed in the whole plot and its easy to develop an emotional connection to the characters for the duration of the screenplay.. I found myself smiling at the end of the film as my heart filled with a warm fuzzy feeling due to the relatively satisfying conclusion (happy ending) with tears welling up in my eyes.. Then I began to ask myself why games have never made me feel this way before.. I figured since games are an "interactive" form of media, surely it should be easier to get "immersed" in the experience more than you ever could sitting watching a movie right..? (after all, in a game "you" have a part to play..) After a long period of mind wandering I asked myself the question.. "Can games really create an experience where the player actually develops an emotional bond with the character(s) and storyline and ultimately could such a relationship be used by the developer as the basis for some kind of interesting gameplay dynamics..?" Just wanted to hear everyones thoughts on this.. :)

I think the Zelda games are pretty good at that myself. The Wind Waker, not the best Zelda game by a long way, probably has the best emotional range in it. Lots of funny moments and some touchingly sentimental ones too.

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Original post by ArchangelMorph I figured since games are an "interactive" form of media, surely it should be easier to get "immersed" in the experience more than you ever could sitting watching a movie right..? (after all, in a game "you" have a part to play..)

I don't believe in this idea that games should be better than movies because they have everything movies have and interaction. I actually think, in this case, that the interaction hinders connecting with the characters. My interactions are first and foremost with the gameplay. If you integrate characters with the gameplay you only make things worse. You are now being asked to "game" the characters. You don't "game" people you care about in real life.

Or, in other words, the sort of immersion one has in a game isn't conducive to forming emotional attachments while the immersion one has in a movie is.

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After a long period of mind wandering I asked myself the question.. "Can games really create an experience where the player actually develops an emotional bond with the character(s) and storyline and ultimately could such a relationship be used by the developer as the basis for some kind of interesting gameplay dynamics..?"

The games where I've become most attached to the characters are ones where I had the least influence on the characters (e.g. I'm still quite fond of the FFVI cast). I think this is because it allows them to feel more real. If they become part of the gameplay, I'm now the one pulling the strings. They feel more real, to me at least, if they are a reality I cannot change, like real people.

I think trying to bring the emotional bond with characters in the gameplay dynamics will cheapen the emotional bond by either making it something to be gamed or by making it feel like a cheap justification for a game mechanic.

I used to experience emotions like that after finishing a damn good game. Not too much any more - games have gotten increasingly shallow in recent years. This is due to the fact that games portray the main character as, well, you and has no distinct personality other than, well.. you.

In a game where you are playing as your own character, even customized by you, this severely limits plot and emotional attachment in the sense of what you find in movies and older, more traditional games where the plots are subjected upon you as an 'observer'.

On the other hand.. Today's games have yet to utilize the potential of such a system in the aspect of deeper emotional attachment and a more engrossing plot. As you become the character that you defined yourself, you have the chance to find personal meaning and motivation in solving a plot, personal liking and disliking of characters as to how they interact with you.

To not sway players away though you'd have to give personal freedom - after all, you are the person in the game. In games where you are the main character, we enter the era of personal choice in gaming. Strict linearity in such a perspective only ruins the suspension of disbelief. If you hate the bitch you're traveling with to solve a quest, you shouldn't have to. Normally in an older traditional RPG that bitch would have to stay with you because the actual main character wanted to stay with them - even if you didn't want to.

My 2 Cents:

The first thing a game is going to need in order to spark emotions is realism. If you're running through a game and you're AI team mates start jumping on each other, you're going to laugh, not feel sympathy.

In order to create emotion, the player needs to first gain some liking respect for the charcter he plays, and then go through/witness an emotional trigger. What's that you might ask?

Anything that will trigger an emotion in the human brain. Loosing or gaining something of value, getting out of a hard spot, things that you may encounter in life. You need to trigger some emotion, wether it be anger, hope, hapiness, sadness. Mostly importantly, you need to trigger both, because without conflict, there is no entertainment.

Here's the thing. In order for a story to end sad, you need to have a good moment towards the beginning. If you loose the good emotion, and replaced with the bad/sad emotion, a movie ends on a sad note. Vice versa for a happy moment.

There's more ways to trigger emotions in the player, through character interaction, events, etc... But they're just more complex triggers.

That's all I've got.

I feel its very hard to convey a characters emotions in a video game compared to a movie. Especially a character you control.

A character you control you are more apt to superimpose your own feelings on the character rather then be receptive to the "characters emotions". Any character you control becomes an extension of yourself, unlike a movie character who you are viewing there experience.

Nothing has ever filled me with tears of joy as thoroughly as Mechwarrior 2: Ghost Bear's Legacy.

As far as getting the blood going through my emotions, nothing gets me more hyped up emotionally than the Ace Combat series. You are your own person, an Ace of the Skies. You never talk vocally but through your actions and decisions in combat. Everyone fears or admires you as you become the "Ace" in Ace Combat. In Ace Combat 4 the thing that got me going is the realistic yet science-fiction role that technology played throughout the game, and the Triple A voice acting that tells you when your doing something worthwhile with your Allies or if your enemies are totally ticked by you winning each time.

Also the soundtrack in 4 and 5 helps sprout up the nerves in your body and get the emotional mood down. Also Ace Combat 5 you interacted with your fellow squadron mates and enemies through both cutscenes and gameplay, just enough to feel you are making a difference and yet not tampering with the progress of the characters around you. Also usually when the game draws to the close, the music and sounds get more intense and you just start getting anxiety and sweat in your hands to finally end the war as a "Ace", and usually to top that the ending is usually very dramatic and the final music is usually very emotional and intense.

So have games denied emotion? Play Final Fantasy 10 and Ace Combat 5 to see for yourself.

I'll throw another 2 cents into this thread

Think about that feel good film or book, and the emotional atachment you had to the character(s) in the film. Think about when you could identify with the character, when he/she is with there family, the meeting with girl, it's these times, when we can feel the same as the character that creates the emotional atachments. It's highly unlikley that any of us will ever have to go and blow up an alien mothership in real life, but when the character is saying good bye to his family, or thinking about them we can relate to that and thus relate to the character.

Games don't have this aspect to them, because making a minigame called hug the characters daughter does not convey the same effect as watching it knowing that it might be the last time.

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Games don't have this aspect to them, because making a minigame called hug the characters daughter does not convey the same effect as watching it knowing that it might be the last time.

But how do we know that?

Has any of us ever played a game where a character has displayed some kind of relational emotion towards another in that way..?

The best attempts at emotion i've seen so far are in games like final fantasy and the metal gear solid series but the biggest problems i have with how such emotional aspects are portrayed reside in the fact that these games communicate the characters in a very japanese way..
I can see how a japanese gamer could get very emotionally involved in the narratives of these games as they are told in a way which reflects japanese media cultures like japanese film, anime etc.. Although these styles of "storytelling" work well in entertaining us westerners, they tend to miss the ball when it comes to creating emotional ties between the player and the game/characters/story as the way we recieve it is different (not to mention the added layer of localisation often ruins the key aspect of creating an emotional plot; the dialogues..)

I would love to see how a game could fair that isn't all about action and "gameplay".. A game that can tell a story in such a way that the player is able to get deeply rooted into understanding the characters involved where the designers really take the time to not only flesh out the history of such characters, but also use the game experience to express the personalities of such characters in a way that the player can relate to them directly through the kind of emotional experiences they are going through during the game..

This is something I think games nowadays fail to do..

I mean lets look at Halo for example.. You have a supersoldier fighting through an army of aliens on a quest to save the world.. But what's his motivation..? why does masterchief continue to fight..? Not only does the game not give the player any indication of this but it also doesn't allow the player to relate to the character in any way.. All dialogue throughout the game is focused soley on the mission.. never at any point does masterchief show human characteristics.. He never gets tired.. He never has doubts about his abilities or his orders.. He never portrays any kind of consideration for the sentient life forms he continuously guns down, he never worries about the futility of his fight even though he's been doing it for so long..

Either masterchief (and so many other game protagonists, if not all of them) is a robot or the games designers failed him in a really big way.. they failed to create a character that was both courageous and powerful, and also human.. As a result the player goes through the game treating the whole experience as if nothing matters.. without caring about the character you don't care about the world.. without caring about the world you don't care about the plot.. without caring about the plot what do u have left..?

"sandbox" (aka the hollow gameplay experience which leaves the player to experiment and explore a presumed inumerous degree of gameplay possibilities in a constrained and well defined world, leading only to the player generating "fun" from a select few methods of play before ultimately becoming bored with the entire lack of "direction" or "purpose" towards the whole gameplay experience..)