Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Great Games And Emotional Investment?
I was listening to an interview the other day with an internationally renown music critic. At least, I understood he was internationally renown. I'd never heard of the guy. Hey, I have a tough enough time keeping track of the handful of respectable game critics.
But he said something that made me ponder. He said that while certain technical aspects might differ in the quality of the recording, or whether or not the artists were using amplified instruments or acoustic, that was largely irrelevant to him. What really mattered in his analysis of music was how the music evoked emotion.
For me, that sounded awfully subjective. I mean, where's the technical breakdown we get for games with sound quality, graphics, interface, and so forth all broken down into a weighted value that designates how well the developers hit their marks? Apparently, to this respected music reviewer, all that stuff that game reviewers get caught up on - very similar to how consumer product reviewers rate things like toasters and automobiles - wasn't nearly as important as how he was moved by the music.
When I think about emotion in games, I typically think story. I think of the little shivers that the haunted hotel sequence in Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines and F.E.A.R. gave me. I think of discovering Alagnar's body in Ultima VII, or Aeris's death in Final Fantasy 7, or GLADoS's increasingly desperate monologue during the climax of Portal. I definitely felt something when I cleared my name in Wing Commander II. And I rescuing a childhood friend from the clutches of the ice queen in Aveyond 2: Ian's Quest.
But music doesn't require story (or even words). And there are other emotions games have evoked from me without any basis in storyline. I've played a few games where I've felt little but frustration at the game and an overwhelming desire to throttle the developers. I've been startled. I've been thrilled. I've felt some really weird primitive pleasure from matching stupid gems or blocks together. Some weird endorphinal rush or something. I've felt a desire to "get back" at my computer opponent.
Am I just strange? Are most players detached and unemotional about their gaming?
Is this a case where we "get out of it what we put into it?" Do we have to invest a little of our emotional selves in order to get an emotional payback? For gamers with zero emotional investment in their games - for whom the gameplay is purely a mechanical exercise - there may not be a perceptible return. That would explain how country music leaves me cold, too.
Maybe that's why its so fun to 'talk trash' when playing competitive games with friends. We raise the emotional stakes?
It would be nice if we could measure the "ROI" (return on investment) in numeric terms for emotional investment as some kind of measure of quality for a game, but alas - such things are going to be left in the world of subjectivity until such time as we can perform tests on brainwave patterns and chemical levels on the body in a laboratory. And I think I'd rather leave it in the realm of "magic" for now, anyway.
So what do you think? Is a measure of the greatness of the game in how it evokes emotion (and the intended ones)? Does that leave the more minimal, non-story-based games in a less powerful position? Am I just talking crap? Was the music critic on drugs, or is it something that just doesn't translate from music to games?
Labels: Game Design
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:16 AM (Permalink)
Comments:
Links to this post:
<< Home
I think the less story-heavy games are not necessarily at a disadvantage, because I'm convinced you can convey emotion in a gameplay sequence. Not that it won't be story-related, but more because of the way the story's told through the game rather than through words. Taking the example of FF7 when I think of Aeris' death in FF7 the image that immediately, inevitably springs to my mind is actually not the death sequence itself, but the ensuing fight against a giant abomination with that sad music. While the death is the trigger for me the emotional payback was during that depressing fight against huge odds while you've actually (temporarily) lost your game purpose. Hmm, that's probably not a good example though, but it's illustrative of how the emotion is heightened by a good of pacing. Games with minimal stories like Portal, or the old Another World (ut of this World in the US) also are good examples, especially that later one since the story is conveyed without words.
But I also think the emotional investment can be built up through a player story of sorts rather than the game's story. Players can invest themselves as long as there's an opposition they're trying to beat. I guess you could think it's some sort of adrenaline rush instead but even in an arcade action game there's something building up as you progress further and further through the stages that just climax into intense satisfaction as you finally blow up that last gigantic boss. It requires a sense of pacing and directing (and in fact escalating) the action that a lot of action games tend to lose by splicing a story in a game that doesn't need it.
It's sort of like climbing a mountain. There's no real story to that but you're gonna become invested into it more and more through the climb, and have a huge emotional payoff at the summit.
And then what a good, uh, mountain designer will do is put a sunset there and bam! The payoff's even better.
So there's no litteral story, but there is still a simple story structure going on that the good designer can manipulate the player with.
But I also think the emotional investment can be built up through a player story of sorts rather than the game's story. Players can invest themselves as long as there's an opposition they're trying to beat. I guess you could think it's some sort of adrenaline rush instead but even in an arcade action game there's something building up as you progress further and further through the stages that just climax into intense satisfaction as you finally blow up that last gigantic boss. It requires a sense of pacing and directing (and in fact escalating) the action that a lot of action games tend to lose by splicing a story in a game that doesn't need it.
It's sort of like climbing a mountain. There's no real story to that but you're gonna become invested into it more and more through the climb, and have a huge emotional payoff at the summit.
And then what a good, uh, mountain designer will do is put a sunset there and bam! The payoff's even better.
So there's no litteral story, but there is still a simple story structure going on that the good designer can manipulate the player with.
# posted by 
: December 30, 2008 3:29 PM
: December 30, 2008 3:29 PM
I fully agree with the notion of your music critic, and I think that emotional reaction is a great measure of a "good" game. However, you make two assumption to whom I cannot agree:
1. Emotional reaction is strongest when evoked by a story.
One of the most successful computer games of all times is "Solitaire" which is bundled with Windows. Based on your assumption, that game has no emotional weight whatsoever. But Solitaire is one of the most emotional games I know: Anger (at not seeing a solution), Frustration (at recoginzing a unsolvable situation), Joy (at solving the game), recognizion (I know these cards from the real world), and so on.
Which brings me to your second assumption:
2. Only emotions that are planned beforehand by the maker of the game are valid.
I'd argue that, to be an emotion that makes a game more successful, that emotion doesn't even need to be positive. Even negative emotions can increase the success of a game, as the arcades of the eighties have proven quite well with their punitively hard gameplay. All they needed was the metagame of bringing the kids into one place, where they then talked about the games, and formed a kind of community.
1. Emotional reaction is strongest when evoked by a story.
One of the most successful computer games of all times is "Solitaire" which is bundled with Windows. Based on your assumption, that game has no emotional weight whatsoever. But Solitaire is one of the most emotional games I know: Anger (at not seeing a solution), Frustration (at recoginzing a unsolvable situation), Joy (at solving the game), recognizion (I know these cards from the real world), and so on.
Which brings me to your second assumption:
2. Only emotions that are planned beforehand by the maker of the game are valid.
I'd argue that, to be an emotion that makes a game more successful, that emotion doesn't even need to be positive. Even negative emotions can increase the success of a game, as the arcades of the eighties have proven quite well with their punitively hard gameplay. All they needed was the metagame of bringing the kids into one place, where they then talked about the games, and formed a kind of community.
# posted by : December 31, 2008 2:04 AM
: December 31, 2008 2:04 AM
@Chevluh - Agreed. It works best if the "player story" is actually chosen by the player. One of my favorite personal examples of that was when I accidentally left Rise of Nations playing for two days. Somehow, I managed to claw my way back to a win. One of the most satisfying gaming experiences I've enjoyed.
@BvG - While I'm not married to it (and mention some counterexamples in the post), I still am inclined to believe assumption #1, but I definitely don't subscribe to #2. Sometimes a game (or song) can just be blessed by being in the right place at the right time. But I do suspect a good game should be designed so that it has that potential for ... I dunno what to call it... emotional feedback? The Sims is perhaps a quintessential example... the open-ended state behaviors interact in a way that acts more as a mirror to the player than a stand-alone story.
@BvG - While I'm not married to it (and mention some counterexamples in the post), I still am inclined to believe assumption #1, but I definitely don't subscribe to #2. Sometimes a game (or song) can just be blessed by being in the right place at the right time. But I do suspect a good game should be designed so that it has that potential for ... I dunno what to call it... emotional feedback? The Sims is perhaps a quintessential example... the open-ended state behaviors interact in a way that acts more as a mirror to the player than a stand-alone story.
Games aren't music, so I really expected that you'd make a related, but not identical, observation. I was wrong. Are games all about emotion? I don't know. I never thought so. However, there is a similarity here, in that a good game is more than the sum of its parts.
The 'technical breakdown' that you mention for games ("sound quality, graphics, interface, and so forth") includes many important features, but not one of these - or all of them together - makes a good game. What's key to a game is whether or not it is fun to play. Period.
Dwarf Fortress is great fun, despite the ASCII graphics and the horrible interface. Yeah, it would be better if those were improved, but those features aren't critical. I usually turn off the music in a game, first thing, though I enjoy good sound effects. But none of these things do more than to improve a game somewhat.
If I'm buying music, the quality of the recording matters, but it's only peripheral. No recording quality will improve bad music. When I'm buying a game, the technical quality also matters, but not critically - unless it's so buggy that I can't really play the game at all. Yes, the amount of 'fun' in a game is very subjective. But it's still the only thing that really matters.
Post a Comment
The 'technical breakdown' that you mention for games ("sound quality, graphics, interface, and so forth") includes many important features, but not one of these - or all of them together - makes a good game. What's key to a game is whether or not it is fun to play. Period.
Dwarf Fortress is great fun, despite the ASCII graphics and the horrible interface. Yeah, it would be better if those were improved, but those features aren't critical. I usually turn off the music in a game, first thing, though I enjoy good sound effects. But none of these things do more than to improve a game somewhat.
If I'm buying music, the quality of the recording matters, but it's only peripheral. No recording quality will improve bad music. When I'm buying a game, the technical quality also matters, but not critically - unless it's so buggy that I can't really play the game at all. Yes, the amount of 'fun' in a game is very subjective. But it's still the only thing that really matters.
Links to this post:
<< Home
