However, it isn't impossible to be touched by a game. Many people refer to Shadow of the Colossus as being responsible for inducing feelings of regret, or even shame. Players talk about Jason Rohrer's Passage as a title that surprises with its depth, and lingers on well after its termination. In fact, Rohrer seems to be about as close as the industry has come in producing a genuine emotional auteur, though it's difficult to actually consider him as being part of the industry.

It seems the key to carving out an emotional state is through simplicity. In Passage, the player inhabits a crude, pixelated landscape, with the only movement options being up, down, and to the right; traveling to the left, or "backward" is impossible. The game cannot be more than a few minutes long from beginning to end, yet it bears such power that a longer duration would only dilute its strength. There is no dialogue, no explanation, no fanfare, and at the finish, if you've been paying attention, if you've been focused and aware, you cannot help but feel something.

Shadow of the Colossus is a good deal more sophisticated in virtually every way, yet it too is simple by comparison with its cousins on store shelves across the world. You really only have one goal, and that's accomplished by murdering the colossi one by one. Where other games might turn your victories into scenes of triumph and glory, the primary feeling garnered by killing a colossus is sadness. Is the price of your love worth taking these majestic creatures from the world? That's the simple question the game asks of you, and you would be a cold-hearted creature indeed to not feel some remorse during the playing of the game.

So if simplicity is the way to the player's heart, is there no hope for sophisticated games? Can't we have a complex, fast-moving game with a wide range of outcomes and goals, a plethora of weapons and functions and abilities, a cast of hundreds, and a multi-branching narrative filled with flawed, interesting characters who say and do fascinating things, that can still make us cry? Maybe the answer is "no". Maybe in all that thinking and movement and sheer doing, we lose the essence of simple being. Maybe all this video game action is simply distracting us from the still, quiet core of grief that lies within us. Maybe that's what games are for. And if that's true -- if games are here to prevent us from feeling sadness -- is that good, or bad?