Reason: we already have emotions in games! Lots of them.
You just have to know where to look!
But first: stop crying! (a necessary rant)
To be brutally honest with you: I feel like I’m going to slap the next person in the face asking for games to be more emotional. Just to make him or her cry, since that seems to be the experience they crave for. It’s an argument I’ve heard many times over. And if a game makes you cry that’s the ultimate testament for a game with emotions.
I call that bullshit!
First of all, would you really want to play a game that makes you cry? Would it really be such an outstanding, revolutionary experience? How many “touching” movies have you seen that left you cold-hearted? What about the movies that touched you in ways you’d never expected from a movie like that? Why did you even go see that movie in the first place? Was it because you wanted to cry?
Of course not.
Or what about affection … there are people who want to have more emotions in games because they want to feel affection for a character, feel empathetic towards a virtual character’s plight. If it fits the game, why the hell not? But we all know that games are badly scripted, often have terrible voice acting and the dynamics of a game make it very hard to create the exciting moment that will make you feel involved, will make you feel empathy for your virtual world posse.
Interestingly enough, the games that are actually able to pull this of usually present those events as cutscenes.
So there, you were just watching another movie. It didn’t have anything to do with the game. You had no control over it. Unless you call “Press X at the right microsecond in time or else you’ll lose and have to do it all over again” control.
If you do: screw you!
Emotions in games are aplenty!
Maybe you don’t realize that. Or you dismiss certain emotions as not being emotions. As humans, we have a tendency to only recognize emotions if we have them towards other human beings. But there are plenty of emotions you can have without some other human being being involved. I think games are actually doing a very great job to bring out those emotions!
Here are some of my favorite examples of emotions in video games:
Sports games
My favorite sports game is FIFA. That’s football for you. For you americans, yes, that is still football. Your football is called American Football. I refuse to call our football soccer just because I refuse to accept that you (referring to the americans here) created a sport and called it football even though actually kicking the ball is an utterly under-represented part of the game.
So there, emotions in football. You know the situation, it’s like in real life. Your team wins in the last second: happy feelings. Your team didn’t qualify for the tournament by one goal? Just plain devastating.
But it can be much more intricate than that. How about the situation where you play against a terrible team not giving any resistance but you just can’t get to score that one goal to win. It’s like everything is against you. You hit the post, you miss the shot by an inch, you get a penalty but the keeper saves it. You name it. Eventually, you do score the goal. Relief (yup, that’s an emotion).
Next thing you know, the team you’ve had under control for the entire match is suddenly outwitting you. Everything seems to go perfect for them. You can’t tackle the ball away, instead they play tricks on your defenders. You push and pull the one with the ball but he won’t give it away. They pass through your players as if they weren’t there. Suddenly, a through pass opens up a hole in your team’s defense, the striker moves towards the goal, avoids three defender’s tackles in succession, then shoots from way far out and … goal! The equalizer. WTF?!?!??
That game was cheating on you (yes, I call you: FIFA 2011). You feel frustration, anger, disappointment, and you cry injustice!
Personally – but that is just me – at such an occasion I vividly imagine punching the person responsible for programming the game’s AI in the face real hard. Because that’s what I feel that person deserves for giving the losing team an unrealistic motivational push. Lucky for the poor fellow that feeling doesn’t last long. But just as a precaution, you might not want to sit next to me while I’m playing your game. Just so you know.
The horror, the horror!
Ok, so that’s sports. What else is there? Ah, of course: intense horror games. How about Dead Space?
So, here’s how I play games like Dead Space, ever since I’ve really enjoyed playing Doom 3 so much better because I properly prepped my environment.
My environmental setup for horror games:
- Pitch black darkness. Never play horror games in bright daylight. Even the gloomy light penetrating the shades, or your Xbox’s green power light can be a turn-off. So I put all that aside or cover it somehow. But nothing beats playing horror games at night.
- Surround sound. Preferably using surround sound headphones. The sound volume should be slightly above comfortable levels. Any external noise should be cancelled out as much as possible.
- Lying down. I want to be totally relaxed playing horror games. That way it feels more intense because your muscles don’t have to work, they just do when your body tells them to. Also, much less likely to hurt yourself in a sudden shock reaction event.
If the conditions aren’t perfect, I don’t play the game. If it’s bright outside, if there’s loud noise outside (or inside), or if I can’t play in a very relaxed body position I don’t play horror games.
That’s because if I don’t do that, the experience becomes more like an awful, gory splatterfest that you rush through and you care more about your character’s health than you do about your own mental state. You’re not in the game, you’re somehow just rushing through it, killing waves of monsters.
No wonder so many people dismissed Doom 3 as a stupid, boring shooter game.
Why am I telling you this? Because horror games are the most emotional games I’ve ever witnessed. I don’t cry over the loss of a companion in Dragon Age, I drop my controller in terror and shiver as I try to recover from a sudden and unexpected appearance of the most scary and dangerous creature imaginable. Oh, and I’m almost out of ammo and I can’t run very fast.
The only thing I haven’t done yet is to pee in my pants. But I’m sure eventually horror games will get there, too! I can’t wait.
The moral of the story
If you actually allow yourself to experience emotions in games, you will experience them. I think the state of emotions in games is merely a matter of your state of mind while playing a particular game. If you don’t get mentally involved and allow yourself to be sucked into the virtual world, you’ll wait forever for the game that makes you cry. No game will make you cry unless you allow it to happen. And once you do, you’ll realize not only is crying over a loss of a companion’s life possible, there is actually a great variety of emotions in games other than that.
Here and today, with the games you know and love.
You might not find much emotions in the way of desire, attraction, love, and loss. But you can if you really want to. Players have cried over many RPGs and I understand why. On the other hand, I don’t play Fallout because it might make me cry, and I don’t play it because I might feel attracted to that cute Brotherhood girl because she’s voiced by gorgeous The Guild actress Felicia Day.
In fact, at one time I enjoyed killing her. That was comical relief. We just were not meant to level-up together, I was sick of her buggy behavior.
What I really want to say
I think it’s time we cut the crap and stop talking about emotions in games. Games are already capable to deliver a great variety of emotions to players. But they’re just better suited to a certain kinds of emotions that are not related to deep human or social interactions. Why?
Because games don’t have fucking real humans in them! Or, in other words, if you had the choice between watching a low quality amateur porn and one that was entirely rendered in high-definition on today’s supercomputers using 3D models – which would you find more … ahem, pleasing? Of course, the one that has real humans in it.
So, emotions arising from human interactions, emotions that require social context, that’s for books and movies. Games are much better at presenting emotions not involving the human factor, and they may even be much better in that regard than books and movies due to the interactive involvement of the player.
Especially if you consider multiplayer games – you still won’t find that $$$N00bSh00t3r89%%% in Call of Duty has an enjoyably cute way to knife-kill you up-close while everyone else gets a bullet, then fall in love and be happily married ever after or so. Well, that does happen sometime, but that is because of real human interaction with the game only giving the context. And within that context, you won’t get more human reaction than those in sports games. You win, you lose. You hate, you fear. Games do get pretty emotional, as everyone who has ever played online knows:
“You suck … AAAAghhh
..ill you, I’LL KILL YOU!!! MOTHERFUCKER!!!”
Her words, not mine.
If it comes down to western RPGs over the last couple years, there are only two companies providing us with high quality titles: Bethesda with Oblivion and Fallout 3 and Bioware with Mass Effect 1 & 2 and Dragon Age.
I just can’t seem to warm up to Bioware titles. After giving it some thought, i figured it all boils down to this: Open-World atmosphere and “feeling in control” (aka having many choices). While Bethesda titles throw me into a big world with a main quest guiding me through the game and dozens of side-quests plus the first-person view which just makes it easier to draw players into the gameworld because “you’re in it” and not just watching your player move through the world, the Bioware titles are inherently linear with the side-quests merely trying to give me the impression of a big world. In case of Mass Effect, this failed misably with their empty-world planetary side Mako-missions. That was a terrible and inexcusable drop in quality which led to me not doing any side quests at all because they felt so out-of-place.
As for choices, it seems to me that choice in Bioware titles boils down to just dialogue options whereas in Bethesda titles, you also get to make choices in the world. How you approach your goal, how you decide to finish a quest. Admittedly that is also possible in Bioware games but somehow it doesn’t have the same emotional impact, largely because those choices seem superficial when most of the game is obviously scripted. For example, in Dragon Age when i approach a group of people standing right in the middle of a crossway, i know that there will be a cutscene forced upon me and i have to get into this conversation. In Oblivion and Fallout 3 this rarely happens and when it does, it is scripted as part of the quest. I leave the house, and someone talks me up. He doesn’t stand there waiting for me to approach him, he (or she) approaches me from seemingly out of nowhere. Much more believable.
Speaking of which, suspension of disbelief. Bioware repeatedly kills it for me. One thing that stood out was the blood in Dragon Age. After a measly fight with a few rats, me and my companion are strewn with blood splatters. Way over the top. The conversation after that already fight felt a little bit out of place but when i went on and met my dear mummy, she was so worried about me even expressing i had the desire to follow my father into battle. There i stood, bloody as hell already, and mummy didn’t want to let me go to war. Plus i should really go see my brother and wife and son. So they were also very happy to see me, never mind i had blood all over me. Just great. I think this is one of the out-of-place ideas that Bioware allows because they don’t have a director who says no to these things. Or maybe it was marketing because blood & violence sells? Or maybe it was a programming geek who said we can do it and then he did and everyone saw there was blood and it was cool and everyone would love it. Right. But don’t get me wrong: i love blood & guts in games! In Fallout 3 it’s way over the top as well but somehow, it just fits into this grimy, ruthless world. It does not stand out as odd, in that case it just is cool! Maybe that’s because the characters have the common courtesy to clean themselves up when they go into dialogue.
And then, Bethesda titles do a great job of having both an open-world and relatively but not completely linear quest-dungeons. Bioware in turn is basing their world on top of linear quest-dungeons, so naturally places more often than not seem a little crammed while the parts in between can be awfully empty and usually are. This discrepancy adds to me sensing that this isn’t really a world i’m exploring, i’m merely moving from point A to B without any choice whatsoever.
What about eastern RPGs then? I must admit that i very much enjoyed playing Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. They have been my first exposure to eastern RPGs ever and i loved it. Are they linear in nature? Mostly, yes. But they do two things much better than Bioware RPGs: they have a really compelling story to tell which is often tied into the action, this has really drawn me into the games in the first place. And then they try not to hide the fact that moving about the world vs. fighting are two different modes of gameplay, while Bioware, for whatever reason, choose to keep the dice-throwing mechanics in it’s combat system. Which makes it perfectly awkward to shoot at an enemy, seeing the crosshair over his body, yet missing every second bullet because you’re not well-trained with that particular weapon. Fallout and Oblivion instead rely on tried & true FPS combat mechanics and that just fits right in just like the turn-based combat of eastern RPGs is a welcome refresher because i can really make useful decisions during combat.
Overall, Bioware RPGs to me are combining the wrong elements to create their games and game worlds. It seems like a compromise in so many aspects, i’d rather choose the action-oriented open-world playstyle of Bethesda RPGs or the eastern RPGs with their impressive story-telling and turn-based combat. Not something that’s in-between and trying hard to stay true to the core of older Bioware RPGs like Baldur’s Gate. I’m sure, had i played this game back then, i would have loved it. But as a matter of fact, once i got a Bioware collection of old RPGs, the only RPG from them i really, really enjoyed was Planescape Torment. And that wasn’t even made by them.
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