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Sony's Phil Harrison Talks Emotion in Games

Posted by Zonk on from the games-are-for-adults-apparently dept.

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.'"

2 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. No flash! by wongn · · Score: 4, Informative

    The sane amongst you might prefer the plain HTML version: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1548258/20061218/ id_0.jhtml

  2. Emotions in Gaming by Atrox666 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Emotion in media does not have much to do with screen resolution in fact surprisingly the opposite is true.

    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 /. is so much more fun than the newspaper.

    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.