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On Provoking Emotions Via Games
N'Gai Croal, poster at the Newsweek LevelUp blog, moonlights today in a column for Next Geneartion discussing the success games have had in provoking emotional responses. More specifically, he talks about the fact that mostly games are fairly bad at this. Citing a few notable exceptions (Final Fantasy VII, BioShock), he raises again the notion of 'games as art' as they relate to emotion: "Shadow Of The Colossus wasn't a blockbuster, but the frequency with which it's cited in 'are games art?' debates indicates both a medium still in its aesthetic infancy and a videogame that punched above its weight. BioShock won't sell like Gears Of War, but it already feels as though it's going to be one of this generation's most influential games. And if Mass Effect can deliver on its early promise of confronting players with thorny moral choices and the consequences of their actions, perhaps other creators will see that making the player feel bad can be a good thing after all. "
When I first beat Shadow of the Colossus, I'm sure i'm not the only one who thought, "My god, what have I done?" I've never had another game make me questions my actions within the game before. It was wonderful.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
"Although the incineration process is extremely painful, eight out of ten Aperture Science engineers believe your companion cube probably can't feel pain."
If there's been one game that evoked emotion in me this year, it was Portal. From dread and fear when discovering the ratman's nest, to shock when I saw the fire pit open up, and consistent joy in solving the puzzles or hearing GLaDOS speaking. Portal's minimalist beauty, awesome execution, and wonderful writing puts it at the top of my "games are art" arguments list.
Demented But Determined.
... are emotions too. Emotions often provoked by games. But usually when people start to talk about emotion and games it's about emotional attachment to characters (love/hate stuff). But come on... it's virtual reality, it's entertainment, why should I feel anything about those characters, they're not real (just like the characters in books and movies).
I think that's part of the problem we have in communicating games as art. We look at a picture on the wall and easily think "that's art." But we look at a game and we either think "it's a good game, but its not art" or "its very artistic, but what kind of a game is it." Art and games are not mutually exclusive in my opinion. To me, at least, art is a personal experience the artist is trying to impose on the user/viewer. That's really a very big part of gaming; immersion. I'm not talking immersion in the sense of realism or perception of the environment, but personal involvement. Even "simple games" like Pac-Man, or Puzzles have an immersive quality that draws you into them and makes you think about what they present you with; its what makes art and games. What makes good art, or a good game is usually a quality of uniqueness or differentiation that sets it apart from the rest. The Arts don't belong in stuffy museums or to the stiff dialog intellectuals, they belong in the experiences of all people; games seem like the ideal vector to achieve this.
Demented But Determined.
Call me a pussy but I have cried 4 of 6 hours I played this game. And I couldn't sleep properly for a week, feeling too much grief (tried to be the perfect brother and got one of the intellectual endings).
Read this review, the guy felt the same.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I find my emotions being toyed with via the music more often then anything else. As well crafted as the plot is in planescape, Deionarra Theme did more then any words. FF6 may have had a nice interesting story but it would not have been ass successful with a lesser sound track. I find thats what fails about other games for me. Oblivion never moved me at all because of it's rather generic sound track. ditto for the fallout games.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Like the game says: What if you could live your life over again?
;-)
If you make it all the way to the end of this game and you don't feel anything, you're not really a human being.
(Full disclaimer: I ported AE to the web from the Commodore 64.)
When I moderate, I only use "-1, Overrated". That way, I never get meta-moderated!