There is a moment during the almost three hour-long Giant Bombcast: Game of the Year Edition when Jeff Gerstmann is expostulating on his choice of
Grand Theft Auto 4 as his pick for GotY, where he describes a character that so closely resembled someone he knows -- and the associated memories of that person, and presumably the eventual fate of that person -- that he broke down a little and cried. "And games don't do that," he adds quietly.
It is the continuing viewpoint among those who don't play video games that games are not art. Among the reasons they cite for this stance, valid or not, is that a game could never make the player cry, because it lacks any sort of emotional depth. Obviously, this is an extremely facile argument, and can be attacked on a number of fronts, but let's examine it from the opposite angle. Can we envision a game that
could make us, any of us, cry? What would it need to do to accomplish that?
When we get emotional during a movie, or while watching a television show, or reading a book, or even listening to a song, there is a powerful feeling of resonance that occurs within us. We make the association between ourselves and the character(s) of the story to such an extent that their struggles become ours, and their feelings are congruent with our feelings. Even when this doesn't happen, many of us are empathic enough to share the emotions of the characters through mere exposure, and our memories of similar times are evoked. Sometimes this bonding happens quickly, for those of us whose passions lie close to the surface, and sometimes it takes a very long time to pull out that one specific trigger that brings everything crashing down around us.
For this exchange to take place, we must be committed to the moment. We should have no other stimuli vying for our attention, and we should ideally be as physically receptive as possible. This means a relaxed posture, and a goal-less state -- the only thing we should want is for the story to roll over us and do its work.
With all the above-mentioned media, that is a fairly reasonable state to achieve, except for one: the video game. One of the chiefest attributes of any game is the challenge it presents to the player: to win. Nearly every moment spent in play is in the service of reaching the goal. This is exactly opposite the attitude required for emotional resonance. This is the biggest obstacle a game would need to surmount in order to have the desired effect -- it must battle against its own nature.
We play games to beat them. We don't watch movies to conquer them. Right from the outset, there is a conflict of interest. Movies and video games are designed to do completely different things to us, so it's unfair to even make the comparison. It's certainly possible to find yourself invested in a game's story and want to know what happens next, but at some point you'll be called upon to actually play, and then the spell is broken. That fragile state of being that finds you passively focused on the events of the tale being told is shattered in an instant when you're required to pick up the controls and take action. It's no wonder that games have a difficult time getting to us emotionally; that's not what they're meant to do.
Wings Of Prey
UDK - The Ball
UDK - Whizzle
Unreal Development Kit
Find Your Own Way Home
Operation Flashpoint: Skirmish DLC
Mytheon: The Dominion of Hades
Mytheon: The Shattered Isle
Mytheon: Colchis
What victory isn't sweeter after nearly being defeated? What triumph isn't greater because of the sacrifice of comrades?
Winning is merely part of the game play experience. Good games help you experience a range of emotions before handing you the trophy. Good games do make you cry.Posted at 2:58PM on Jun 24th 2009 by Xerloq