Getting Emotional…in Games

“Can a game make you cry?”

Trip Hawkins, founder of Electronic Arts, asked that question in 1982. We’ve never found an answer to it. But for the broader question: “Can games invoke emotions in us?”

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Yes…if all you want to experience is frustration, anger and elation. Otherwise…not for complex emotions – longing, despair, empathy, ambivalence, joy, sorrow, care –, and the pickings are as slim as a bone-dry desert.

This is happening despite technological advances, such as 3D and Augmented Reality. Game designers are simply changing the game environment without much thought on how it could create meaningful gameplay.

Take for example, AR Zombies. This shoot-them-up game uses a special viewing device to create the environment, zombies and the gameplay. The novelty fades after a while as we got bored at shooting at Zombies.

So games can’t make us cry?

That’s not right either. Look at the Tamagotchi.

It’s a handheld digital pet where you can feed, play games, clean, and even marry your digital pet to other Tamagotchis. It was a hit when it first appeared in 1996, and it’s still a hit even now (it sold 70,000,000 pieces as of 2008).

Everyone who had a Tamagotchi identified with it! Players would lavish attention, checked on its well-being, and wailed over its demise.

The Tamagotchi was addictive, fun, mobile, and it made game designers realise that games could go beyond “Whoo Hooo!!! and c***!” to invoke the deeper emotions of longing, despair, joy and sorrow.

Moral of this history lesson?

Game designers and storytellers might say that a compelling story within the game invokes deeper emotions.

They’re right. The video below by Lionhead studios talks about how they invoke the emotion of love in players for Fable 2.

The first episode of the Lionhead video diaries. Emotions in Action Games

 

But at the same time, we – as players – can also invoke emotion within games by using innovative game controllers. The Emotiv EPOC is one such controller. It fits onto your head and runs game actions based on the user’s current emotional state.

It’s just a matter of time before technologies that mesh real-life with virtual life (Augmented Reality) or those that make virtual life more real (3D) catch up to the notion of making us feel within a game. 

Perhaps in the (very near) future, we might play games where virtual pleading druglords or bouncy cartoon munsters are superimposed over real-life scenes seen on our cameraphones; or wander through holographic landscapes so alien and barren that we shiver in fear or immerse us weeping into a desolate goodbye at the game’s climax.

By then, Trip Hawkins will have his answer.

What say you on the future of creating emotions in games?

Readings: Emotions in Games | Top 5 Emotional Games | Freeman | Bringing Emotions to Video Games

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