http://www.steveswink.com/posts/a-professional-gaff/ Sun, 20 Mar 2011 11:52:03 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1 http://www.steveswink.com/posts/a-professional-gaff/comment-page-1/#comment-3314 Prodighoul Mon, 28 May 2007 10:11:48 +0000 http://www.steveswink.com/posts/a-professional-gaff/#comment-3314 I’ve been hearing about the so-called “emotions in games” for a long time. Claims have been made that with advances in graphics and AI, our ability to draw an emotional response from our audience will become easier. Ftahgn! No matter how simple or complex, videogames are comprised of numerical systems which we overlay with graphics and UI. To me, the quantifiable nature of videogames (especially single player videogames) is almost the antithesis of the deeper sentimental emotions. The trick is to get a player to invest themselves in the numbers during gameplay without realizing it. From your game proposal, I’m assuming that you want to invoke the emotions of care or love from a player for their avatar/ward. I think that this has been accomplished by a select few RPGs via good writing or a player’s time investment, but the player only cares about them during scripted sequences. During battles, characters are simply a collection of statistics to be thrown against the enemy until the desired result is reached. Having a player invest their emotions as they actually play the game (not passively reading a paragraph and tapping the Next button) is sticky, because players seek the perceived optimal choices simply because it’s the “right way” to play. Does the player care about the small creature’s well-being or do they care about the score they’ll achieve before it dies? Even if obvious number values (scoring, life points, bars showing emotion) were removed from the UI, some sort of accomplishment is going to have to be tracked for the player to feel like they’ve made progress during play. Perhaps the creature grows up and reproduces. Perhaps it learns to not fear the rain. Maybe it even gets the ability to partially protect those who raised it. However, these are all quantifiable goals that the player will seek to accomplish; mathematic properties that divorce themselves from emotion. How can we change the line of thinking from “My creature died, but at least I was able to get it to reproduce first” to “My creature died, and I feel sorry for the little ones who it left behind”? I’ve been hearing about the so-called “emotions in games” for a long time. Claims have been made that with advances in graphics and AI, our ability to draw an emotional response from our audience will become easier. Ftahgn!
No matter how simple or complex, videogames are comprised of numerical systems which we overlay with graphics and UI. To me, the quantifiable nature of videogames (especially single player videogames) is almost the antithesis of the deeper sentimental emotions. The trick is to get a player to invest themselves in the numbers during gameplay without realizing it.
From your game proposal, I’m assuming that you want to invoke the emotions of care or love from a player for their avatar/ward. I think that this has been accomplished by a select few RPGs via good writing or a player’s time investment, but the player only cares about them during scripted sequences. During battles, characters are simply a collection of statistics to be thrown against the enemy until the desired result is reached.
Having a player invest their emotions as they actually play the game (not passively reading a paragraph and tapping the Next button) is sticky, because players seek the perceived optimal choices simply because it’s the “right way” to play. Does the player care about the small creature’s well-being or do they care about the score they’ll achieve before it dies?
Even if obvious number values (scoring, life points, bars showing emotion) were removed from the UI, some sort of accomplishment is going to have to be tracked for the player to feel like they’ve made progress during play. Perhaps the creature grows up and reproduces. Perhaps it learns to not fear the rain. Maybe it even gets the ability to partially protect those who raised it. However, these are all quantifiable goals that the player will seek to accomplish; mathematic properties that divorce themselves from emotion. How can we change the line of thinking from “My creature died, but at least I was able to get it to reproduce first” to “My creature died, and I feel sorry for the little ones who it left behind”?

]]> http://www.steveswink.com/posts/a-professional-gaff/comment-page-1/#comment-1906 Callipygian Sun, 15 Apr 2007 17:53:44 +0000 http://www.steveswink.com/posts/a-professional-gaff/#comment-1906 Wouldn't the soft pink shape have her own large pink shapes protecting her the same way that the small white shape does, so that they don't meet unless both are venturing into the storm at the same time? Wouldn’t the soft pink shape have her own large pink shapes protecting her the same way that the small white shape does, so that they don’t meet unless both are venturing into the storm at the same time?

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