{"id":164,"date":"2016-10-04T04:03:39","date_gmt":"2016-10-04T04:03:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bobbylox.com\/blog\/?p=164"},"modified":"2022-03-09T19:57:47","modified_gmt":"2022-03-10T01:57:47","slug":"emotion-in-single-player-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bobbylox.com\/blog\/emotion-in-single-player-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Emotion in Single-Player Games"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This post was inspired by several talks Jenova Chen has given over the years, all dealing with evoking deep emotion through games. \u00a0Jenova thinks this is one of the biggest obstacles in the way of mainstream acceptance of games as an art form. \u00a0I would tend to agree.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Further, I think there is a ranking to the difficulty in evoking certain emotions with a single-player game, we play in our consoles and TVs, and if you have a big TV, is better to get a TV mount, which is an option for the <a href=\"https:\/\/eagletvmounting.com\/home-theater-installation-atlanta-ga\/\">best for home theatre atlanta<\/a> you can find for this purpose. \u00a0This may hold true for narratives, in general, but I wouldn\u2019t make that claim without a lot of further research and thought. \u00a0In interactive experiences, I think these are reasonable assertions about emotion. \u00a0This is not meant to be a judgement on the value of these emotions, only on how difficult they are to produce in a single player game.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Easy:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lust<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fear<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Disgust<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Boredom<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Medium:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Awe<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Curiosity<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pride &amp; Shame<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Frustration<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hard:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Grief<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Serenity<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Remorse<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Humor<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Impossible?:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jealousy<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Trust<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Contempt<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pity<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Love<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2018Easy\u2019 emotions are basically stimulus response. \u00a0They are reactive, not introspective. \u00a0For humans, evoking these emotions is a simple matter of providing the right stimulus. \u00a0To stimulate Disgust, you give the player something gross &#8212; something which human evolution has taught us to avoid, but not to fear. \u00a0To stimulate fear, we create an apparent threat. \u00a0From an evolutionary perspective, it should be obvious why titillation is the easiest of all. \u00a0Boredom requires only redundancy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We see these primal emotions most often in combination with others. \u00a0The slasher film has a long history of combining fear and lust and disgust all in one work. \u00a0You might think of suspense as a combination of fear and boredom, so there is some complexity to be found even amongst the simplest feelings.<\/span><\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 1930px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/zUSNS1NxFyQ\/maxresdefault.jpg\" alt=\"A disgusting and scary zombie.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fear and Disgust are often found together, such as in &#8220;The Brookhaven Experiment&#8221; by Phosphor Games.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The emotions in the \u2018Easy\u2019 category seem to be very raw animal emotions. \u00a0These are the emotions necessary for survival (and propagation) even outside of any kind of society. \u00a0On the other end of the spectrum are emotions which require a sentient being to relate to, or something that is nearly indistinguishable from sentient. \u00a0That\u2019s why I think they may be borderline impossible: \u00a0In a narrative one can empathize with a main character who is experiencing an emotion. \u00a0In an interactive setting, that main character is you. \u00a0In a multiplayer game, you can relate to the other players with any of these emotions. \u00a0In a single-player experience, who do you have to relate to but the game itself? \u00a0The whole array forms a spectrum from the most \u2018internal\u2019 emotions, to the most \u2018external.\u2019<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The medium emotions are still fairly standard for games. \u00a0Pride, shame, and frustration are natural consequences of struggling towards a goal and finally accomplishing it. \u00a0Creating pride, shame, and frustration is therefore mostly a matter of balancing. \u00a0Balancing is a challenging subject, but a largely mechanical one &#8211; it is expected that a game will be balanced.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Awe is a product of craftsmanship and of scale. \u00a0Craftsmanship, too, has come to be expected among games with large budgets. \u00a0Curiosity can be driven either by narrative or by gameplay. \u00a0In both cases, it&#8217;s a matter of providing an incomplete picture of something. \u00a0More specifically, it must be something the player <em>cares<\/em> about. \u00a0Life has taught all of us that most information is incomplete, but it only becomes compelling if we have an interest in knowing the whole story. \u00a0Curiosity is a function of engagement.<\/span><\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 1010px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/bobbylox.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/bioshock-rapture-city1.jpg\" alt=\"Bioshock's Rapture\" width=\"1000\" height=\"475\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Just as a church&#8217;s cramped Narthex often opens into a vaulted Nave, games use a contrast between closed and open spaces to create a feeling of awe.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Games are just beginning to tap into the \u2018Hard\u2019 category of emotions. You might argue that there has been humor in digital games almost since the beginning, but until fairly recently the humor in games has been borrowed from other media. \u00a0Games were funny because they had jokes, or situational humor, just like theater or motion pictures. \u00a0Only recently have games found their own form of humor. \u00a0Games like QWOP and Octodad are prime examples.<\/p>\n<p>Grief comes once the player has formed a true attachment to\u00a0something or someone. \u00a0Some people seem to be more susceptible to a feeling of grief than others. \u00a0Some players reported a twinge of grief when they were forced to destroy their companion cube in Valve&#8217;s <em>Portal <\/em>(a great example of a bond created by gameplay rather than narrative). \u00a0Remorse is a deep regret, and regrets are hard to form when players can always reload or replay a game. \u00a0Serenity (which is often confused for boredom, even by those experiencing it) was considered so undesirable that it was actively shunned by game creators &#8212; perhaps because our industry was still, on some level, in thrall to the arcade paradigm.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 1110px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/bobbylox.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/l2_orig.png\" alt=\"Two stars soar over an ethereal environment.\" width=\"1100\" height=\"618\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">&#8220;Gemini &#8211; A Journey of Two Stars&#8221; is a game that produces serenity through simple but dynamic gameplay and a relaxed visual style.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>As I continue to make games, I plan to bring out the lens of emotion as much as I can, and to combine emotional resonances in novel harmonic ways. \u00a0Game design is so often governed by\u00a0interesting <em>effects<\/em>, I think it&#8217;s time we spent more of our time on interesting <em>affects<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">~<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/bobbylox\">Robert Lockhart<\/a> is the Creative Director of Important Little Games, which is working on <a href=\"http:\/\/codemancergame.com\">Codemancer<\/a>, a Game that teaches Programming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This post was inspired by several talks Jenova Chen has given over the years, all dealing with evoking deep emotion through games. \u00a0Jenova thinks this is one of the biggest obstacles in the way of mainstream acceptance of games as an art form. \u00a0I would tend to agree. Further, I think there is a ranking [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"slim_seo":{"title":"Emotion in Single-Player Games - Bobby Lockhart","description":"This post was inspired by several talks Jenova Chen has given over the years, all dealing with evoking deep emotion through games. \u00a0Jenova thinks this is one of"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobbylox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobbylox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobbylox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobbylox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobbylox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bobbylox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":295,"href":"https:\/\/bobbylox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions\/295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bobbylox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobbylox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bobbylox.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}