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Sony's Phil Harrison Talks Emotion in Games
The increasingly enjoyable games coverage continues on the MTV site, despite the horrible flash interface. Stephen Totitilo sat down for a chat with Sony's Phil Harrison, and comes away with some interesting perspectives on the year. Mr. Harrison discusses Sony's outlook on their launch, the overall role of games in world culture, and the topic of game content as it relates to 'appropriateness'. Specifically, he dealt with the 'controversy' over Rockstar's well-received title Bully. From the article: "Harrison called it a 'storm in a teacup' stirred by politicians and media, embarking on a familiar argument that games aren't really just for kids. In this case, movies and books had delved into similar subject matter and seldom faced such protest. Did that give Harrison, someone with nearly unparalleled power to greenlight video games, any pause about the material he thinks he can offer gamers? 'It has absolutely not changed my approach,' he said. 'I fervently believe that the biggest challenge we face is that our industry is referred to as video games, and games are supposed to be fun,' he said, adding that games shouldn't have to only focus on light topics. 'Games should deal with fear, should deal with comedy and with death. They should deal with peril, with drug offenses.'"
"Shit. I paid 60 bucks for THIS ?"
The sane amongst you might prefer the plain HTML version: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1548258/20061218/ id_0.jhtml
Anyone remember that episode of MST3K where they're making fun of one of the Gamera movies, and there's a little kid that's obsessed with the horrendous evil of traffic accidents? I was reminded of that when I read that list of primal emotions and concepts followed by "drug offenses." Didn't finish your point very well, Phil.
Rob
Emotions are evolution's guide for us through situations that bear on our future well-being or survival.
Games are ways of doing things that would, in the same real world situation, evoke very strong emotions. But you don't feel the same emotions in a game because the game is safe. You don't even feel the same emotions to a lesser degree; instead you feel emotions limited to your success or failure in the game: anxiety, frustration and happiness.
What makes a game less emotionally immersive than a book or movie is that games reward emotional discipline. Strong emotional states interfere with absorbing and reacting to new information. In a game, strong emotion like panic leads to "choking", the failure to perform a task that you have perfected.
Maybe you cried when ET died. The only way you could feel the same way in a game is if you had nothing to do. Perhaps there will be hybrid entertainment forms in the future having emotionally immersive and task immersive components.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
In this case, movies and books had delved into similar subject matter and seldom faced such protest.
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One thing that heartens me is that movies, books, and music have covered these subjects and have been protested for it. In many cases, we're now on the other side of that: dealing with (some) tricky subject matter has become acceptable. We can use those mediums to talk about topics that are taboo.
If that can happen for traditional media, it can happen for video games, and that's a Good Thing(tm). I'm optimistic.
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Dejobaan Games - Bringing you quality video games for over 75 years.
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Sony, stop letting Phil Harrison talk! He takes something based in some truth (PS3 launch titles don't use the systems full potential), then states it in a way that makes him look ignorant. When your represenative looks like an idiot, so do you!
Caffeine is my anti-drug!
Duranin - A NWN2 Roleplaying Persistent World
So that's what they were trying to do with the Emotion Engine.
Seriously, though. To make a game as emotionally moving as a movie or book, there's needs to be a well-developed plot and rich characters that the player(s) can identify with and/or fall in love with. A lot of games lack one or both of those. Also, few games tell much of a story other than having you complete objective A, B, and C to fight Boss 4B and see the next cutscene. Until a higher level of depth is achieved, video games will not evoke much in the way of emotions. All the fancy graphics and great gameplay in the world will not evoke as much emotion as well-written plots and characters.
Everything I say is a lie. Except that... and that... and that, and that, and that, and that... and that.
Unless the story contains characters you *care* about in some way, the story will fall flat. It's best to have someone the audience can identify with (why do you think so many games have child superheros?), although a whiny or annoying character can be good fodder for the bad guys to kill off (good: the guy who gets eaten by the T-Rex while on the toilet in Jurassic Park, bad: Jar-Jar who *should* have gotten eaten by something big & mean).
The quality of the story helps, too. If you're watching GI Joe, the war where absolutely no one ever dies (although tons of equipment gets destroyed), you're simply NOT going to ever believe that they're in mortal peril. Nobody dies, ever, for any reason. This is not true in better shows, although killing someone off for no good reason is stupid (e.g. Tasha Yar's first death was so bad, they had to revive her and give her a better send-off).
Ultimately, I think that the quality of the writers shows through no matter how much you spend on the art department. Seinfeld was good, even though it was truly "about nothing", because of the quality of the writing. Babylon 5 was good because it had well-planned story arcs. However, X-Files pretty much fell apart when they tried to turn an unplanned mess full of holes into a story arc (although the earlier seasons were great, before you knew for certain that there was no big conspiracy in the backdrop, just lots of unrelated episodes with unrelated teasers).
To be fair, it's damn hard to write anything interesting. But when people do it well, it really shows through, no matter whether it's episodic, character driven, story driven, or if the media happens to be a game, a TV show, a movie, a short story or a book.
I still remember how Ultima VII made me feel 15 years ago, or Planetfall before that. Baldur's Gate and KOTOR1 also did a good job in more recent history. It appears to be a waning art, however.
On his particular quote in the summary, I definitely agree. 'Video games' has the same stigma that 'comic books' have languished under for many years, and perhaps gives us a hint as to how much hope we can have of altering that. It is interesting to observe, for instance, that most people seem have no idea that the video game industry has been generating more cash than the movie industry for several years now. That is but one metric, but the Jack Thompsons of the world would have you believe that this new interactive medium is somehow corrosive to one's personality - I would think that this argument had been beaten to death back when RPGs were supposed to be making teens kill themselves, etc.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
COPYRIGHTS RESTRICT US FROM PLAYING THIS VIDEO OUTSIDE THE U.S.
Note to MTV: my personal Emotion Engine is registering MILD ANNOYANCE
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Silent Hill. Half the people who play Silent Hill 1 or 2 end up crying, either by the scene where Lisa turns or James watches the video. It's depressing as all hell.
"The increasingly enjoyable games coverage continues on the MTV site, despite the horrible flash interface. Stephen Totitilo sat down for a chat with Sony's Phil Harrison, and comes away with some interesting perspectives on the year."
An interview with an executive from a game company that hardly focuses on playing games any more on a music channel that hardly focuess on playing music any more. Perfect!
Why don't they support Opera?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I am completely outraged at how my kids are playing a game where the only way to lvl is to smoke pot in the back room, Yell profranities at teachers and break school property!
Emotion in media does not have much to do with screen resolution in fact surprisingly the opposite is true.
/. is so much more fun than the newspaper.
It seems that media (called cool media) where the consumer's brain can fill in the blanks is more emotionally immersive. Interactivity also cools the media which is why
If you're interested in that sort of stuff then there is simply no better book than Marshall McLuhan's "Understanding Media:The Extensions of Man".
Here's the Wiki page on McLuhan for those who don't read dead trees http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan
Something like the Wii invokes emotion by an inductive process of using physical sympathy with the character to create immersion and emotional empathy. This is why HD graphics were not a priority on the Wii.
I've actually designed and done proof of concept on a system where a galvanic skin response meter is used along with a coil for breath rate and a pulse monitor to determine changes in stress levels.
This is great for horror games.
By exposing the user to a calibration sequence of stimuli like spiders, rats, simulated falling etc you can fairly accurately determine what really freaks people out and use that against them.
The effect is that if rats scare them then rats will scurry out of every corner. If spiders make their blood run cold then the place will crawl with them.
It's kind of like dynamically generating their own personalized nightmare.
It's a simple database selection to change one type of monster to another and if I ever get funding for it then you'll see just how emotionally interactive a video game can be.
Here's a link to the affective computing project at MIT http://affect.media.mit.edu/index.php
They've done some great lab/theory work but failed to put it to any good use as is typical of academia.
-GiH
He was just describing a typical day on the job at Sony, begining with fear, and ending with death or drug use.
-GiH
Perhaps there can be a break in the action.. a cut away from control.. in which you would passively watch the action like in a play or movie.. hmm.. but what shall we call my mad idea?
:).
-GiH
Don't get angry, I'm just joshin ya
Look at me.. I've been playing for years and I'm bleeding out right now.
-GiH
The death of Aeris in FF VII is far from melodramatic - a notable feature of the game is that the protagonist, Cloud, is generally understated in his response to the situations he finds himself in.
I was thinking less along the lines of payoffs (positive or negative), and more along the line of motivation
I recommend Shadow of the Colossus as an example of a game where emotional motivation is central.
I wouldn't say it impairs the player's performance, but then it shouldn't, IMO. It's not in the player's interest to have a conflict between playing the game to its fullest, and playing it well.
pe'i le cinmo po'e le skami kelci cu banli
Much of the stigma to games as far as their art design and story telling is fairly justified. Like all new media, games are desperate to keep the public buying. The result is that games often feature 'stories' which are gratuitious, cliche or even all together incongruous.
Many people have compared games to another 'young media' called comics. Comics and games share an audience, one that generally abhors the mainstream media. There's no reason that a comic can't be about true crime [too many to list], just like you can make a game about Desperate Housewives.
Games and Comics don't want to be ligitimate. A fairly big chunk of their appeal comes from an appeal to misfits, and as long as that's where they aim the money beam they have a guaranteed income. This quote from Phil is just a knowing wink, "Hey. We get you..."
The exception? Games without stories like Madden, Gran Turismo and The Sims. It's these games that have people buying entire systems just to play them. Eventually, they pick up something like Soul Calibur or Halo and the next thing you know there are more gamers.
Ironically, it's these-- the least emotional --games that are legitimizing the industry.