it's possible a game that make you cry?

Galapagos: Mendel''s Escape had me close to tears at times. It was an ''exciting puzzle game set in a true 3D world'', and after the hundredth time of being killed by a scripted enemy, while the autonomous 3rd-person camera decided that a closeup of that wall over there was a really good idea, I decided that I wasn''t quite ready for that much emotional involvement in a game. Haven''t played it since 1998, and it put me off automatic cameras for life.

Eliciting tears isn''t a great objective. After all, there are some people who won''t cry even when presented with the most powerfully tear-jerking artistic works of all times. I''m sure that someone choked back tears for Aeris, and I''m sure that there''s some incredible sissy out there who shed a tear for Jehuty at the end of Zone of the Enders. I had a strong emotional response to the death of Dogmeat in Fallout, but that was rage and vengeance, not sadness or grief. Damn super-mutants picking on my dog...

I''d say that if you''re willing to not hold back at all, you can acheive a pretty strong response in a serious player.

If you can grip the player with a good storyline and make him or her attached to your character(s), you will definitely cause a strong reaction if you decide to have something really bad happen to one of the characters the player is attached to.

Everyone reacts differently though. Maybe the player''ll shrug and move on. Maybe he''ll be pissed off and will just stop playing. Maybe he''ll be struck by grief and anger. I know I felt pissed at Sephiroth in FF7 for the Aeris death scene; I felt like I had a reason to play this game after it happened. At least, until I tired of 3D games and stopped finding them fun.

A game either pulls off sad scenes well or it doesn''t. Most of the time, your target audience will either be indifferent (especially if they don''t grow attached) or be frustrated, though.

So what would be your answer to the following question:

**It is easier to get someone to cry watching a movie than it is playing a game**

A) Yes
B) No

Some people are easier to make cry than others. For example, it''s much easier to make a six year old girl cry* than a twenty-six year old guy.

Now consider the demographics of gameplayers. I suspect that the vast majority of your target audience will be pretty resistant to bursting out into tears mid game.


*Not that I''d know or anything...

metal gear solid made me cry

MindEngine Development
http://medev.sourceforge.net

I like games that play with your emotions. Dreamweb was cool ... the end especially.
And Final Fantasy Adventure ... beginning and end especially

A good idea is using contrasts. A sad event after something happy/funny for example.
Buffy/Angel fans know what I''m talking about.

But I also read or saw an interview where a game designer said that a game needs a happy end (as a reward).

boolean,

RPGs are great for instilling emotion in a player. I''ll agree it is easier to make someone cry in a movie.
However, now that games are getting so realistic including the drama created by story lines and depth of character( eg espically in RPGS such as the Final Fantasy series ) it feels like you are playing/watching a drama movie anyway.

You have to keep in mind you can''t compare games and movies directly. Movies are scripted with specific depth of character and back story built in. The only games which compare so far are RPG''s with deep character profiles and involving story lines.

Games with great graphics and sound make you go ''wow'' look at that, isn''t it great. This however doesn''t compare to a game which has, effectivly, the equivalent of a movie script backing it up.

So cesc,
if you want a good way to instill emotion in the player in a game, think movies. Think of the clever tricks the movies use to get the viewer trapped in. Spooky music and lighting in a horror for example( think resident evil ). Camera angles.( wide shots, close ups, etc etc ). Setting( setting including acsents of chaarcters speech, location, atmosphere etc ). Plot twists( eg death of a favorite and/or main character ). You should look at how all these things are bleneded together in a movie and try to do the same in your games.

This is the wave of the future. Big companies are starting to take these techniques seriously already. Part of the reason games now cost so much to develop.

Anyway, thats all I''ve got to say.
Hope I gave some good insight.

Pete

I cried after i bought Phantasmagoria 2, that game was so unbelievably awful.

quote:

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Original post by _Idan_
I cried after i bought Phantasmagoria 2, that game was so unbelievably awful.

---

The original one scared me (I was 7)

MindEngine Development
http://medev.sourceforge.net

I can only remember one game that made me cry. That was that old adventure game called "Prisoner Of Ice", the end was absolutely fantastic. Best storyline ever.

Y.

Well, there''s one game that actually made me cry: Max Payne. Such an awfully good story dragging you through....

Well Fallout 1/2 intros ALMOST made me cry...

ahh emotion - the window to the soul....or something like that.

so far i have only experienced-

• excitement/adrenalin


• laughter


• scaryness

while playing a game. Never sorrow.

I play most games almost mechanically now, with ritual saving and completion of goals until I have completed it. Most games lack the plot or character development needed to get emotionally attached. Just like you would never cry during an Action movie, you would never cry when mowing down Allied forces with an emplaced MG.

Maybe if there was a game where you spent the entire game talking and whining and then you have a virtual divorce and your virtual baby gets killed, then you would cry ... but so far I haven''t seen any games like that. Only in my dreams...

If Thief 3 is as bad as people are expecting it to be, then I''ll cry.

Seriously though, emotional response is all about attachment to the characters and empathy. You create the first, and hope the player can provide the second.

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I see no reason to believe it is easier to make someone cry in a movie. Often in a film the best way to evoke an emotion is to make the audience associate with the characters so that they feel the same emotion. Needless to say, association is much easier in a game for a fairly obvious reason: You ARE the character.

I''m a huge fan of the Max Payne games, and I think they make great examples. One of the most important scenes in Max Payne 2 is the murder of Detective Winterson. (Spoiler Warning) In this scene, Detective Winterson appears and pulls a gun on Mona Sax. Mona reaches for her gun and Max, in love with Mona, shoots Winterson before she has a chance to shoot Mona. This is a very emotional scene because Max, a fellow Detective is now "A murderer. A cop-killer" as he puts it.

In the next scene Max is coming to terms with his guilt over the death of Winterson. I say this in third person because Max feels it, not me (the player). The murder scene was presented in non-interactive comic book mode. This means that I had no choice and no part in the murder. I believe the guilt could have been much better expressed if it had been me that pulled the trigger. Then, when Max talks of himself as a "cop-killer", I too will feel some of that emotion, after all it was me that did it.

If movies are currently better at expressing emotion then games its because they have had more practice and more time to perfect the techniques. In the future, designers will find new and better ways of expressing emotion in games. I feel that games are already better in certain emotions: excitement, fear, surprise, shock etc. Playing games like half-life (in the dark, speakers up) scares me a lot more than any horror movie I''ve seen in a long time.

In Final Fantasy 8, Rinoa is shot across the blackness of outerspace. She just floats there, side to side, for 2 or 3 scenes in complete silence (no background music, nothing). I was brought to tears, because I love Rinoa =(

Eliciting emotion is a difficult thing to achomplish in game due to its interactive nature. Generally they leave it upto cut scenes to create the emotion but even then, in order for it be effective it has to tie in with game play. In my opinion there is nothing worse then when an rpg character is killed off by a gun shot or being stabed. Considering for the majority of the game all the character in your party have suffered far worse, and then it leaves the question how come I can''t they use the revive item or spell, like I can do any other time a character dies in battle?

If you want to illicite strong emotion that emotion has to come from the content and context of the gameplay, it difficult for a player empathies with the death of a character if they never use that character.

Also the two most effective way to achive an emotional response are with audio and visual stimulation.

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Current Design project: Ambitions Slave

Okay, I think my two cents carry some worth, so here goes:

Cent #1) Sound is VERY imperative if you're trying to invoke emotion. Mostly we're talking about music, but mixing sound effects in different ways can also add to a scene. (watch the scene in Lord of the Rings 2 where they're all holed up in the Keep; when the elf leader dies, it goes into slow motion. They add a lot of reverb, etc, to the sound fx)
Anybody who has played Aidyn Chronicles knows what I'm talking about. This game had almost no background music, and it almost seemed like there was no atmosphere. It was boring...

Cent #2) Some posts have played on the difference between games and movies. In a movie, you're watching what happens. In a game, you're effecting what happens. Often times, in a movie, you watch someone 'die', and it hurts, maybe because it was unjust, maybe because they had an unfinished task that was very sentimentally important to them. Either way, THE AUDIENCE CAN'T CHANGE THAT. It's a movie. There is no 'A' button to jump out of the way of that train, and you can't go back and load a previous save to reverse that tragedy. That's one possible way to have the same effect in games; move the game in a general direction and give the player enough freedom in the game that they feel like they have a say in things, but have drastic events--life changing ones--that the player couldn't have stopped if they tried. This is why RPG's--which often include what I just was talking about--are the genre most famous for invoking emotions



[edited by - bombario on April 7, 2004 12:02:04 AM]

[edited by - bombario on April 7, 2004 12:03:54 AM]