"You Will Cry In Front Of Your Game"

Here is a game that made me tear up recently...

http://www.rit.edu/~jhb4598/jblog/archives/000341.php3

Its a flash game with a weird subject:you are a psychiatrist to emotionally disturbed toys.You try various therapies to help them work whatever trauma has them in its grip.Its a facinating simulation,and I felt compelled to help these little critters out.I have a friend who is a child psychiatrist,and I can imagine this is a lot like her work.

I managed to cure them all...and I felt true happiness seeing them waddle out of the ward after sharing their pains.And,as you too will discover,these things have suffered.

hey i have a better idea
HOW ABOUT A MOUSE/KEYBOARD combo for playing FPS games

I've been saying this for a while; the next big evolutionary step in games will come when we have a mainstream game thats a tearjerker, and doesn't have much shooting (look away now dognose). I don't think its been managed with the consistency or naturalism with which its done in cinema or theatre or books etc.

To answer your question Chris... no, it's not the answer. The answer is better writing. Frankly, games had better writing before the dawn of 3D engines and I already experienced deep emotions. I got pretty choked up when Spirit sacrificed herself in Wing Commander.

A lot of games are falling deeper into the Uncanny Valley with their push towards more life-like graphics. It's actually hurting the experience more so. The closer you try to mirror reality the easier it is to see the flaws. I think the answer is 1. better writing in games (develop interesting stories with characters gamers really care about) and 2. develop a unique artistic style that stays away from the Uncanny Valley.

Eventually, by Unreal Engine 4 or 5.0 we can try to make characters appear life like.

EA's thing has always been "our games will make you cry". What games are out that I have an emotional attachment to?

HL2: Dog
Fallout1/2: My NPCs
Brothers in Arms: My NPCs (even though they come back at the end of the mission)
LucasArts: anything graphic adventure

What does EA make? Sports, The Sims.

Aha, The Sims. I almost forgot about that game. The sims2 wasnt really an EA game, its a Maxis game (ask anyone who worked on it). Whats the last game the EA made that created such an emotional bond with the user? Alice? Road Rash? Harry Potter? Catwoman? I'm drawing a blank, and I'm not trying to troll or be the typical internet dork who criticizes everything.

This is silly... You know the last time I cried "In front of my game"? SNES. Freaking FFVI...

It wasn't for the graphics, and it wasn't for the special effects. It was because I just got done being told a great story. A great story in 16-Bits. I could care less what the characters looked like. Some of the most intense gaming experiences I've ever had were in the full glory of ASCII. Good ole' mudding. Shaking at the keyboard before a large quest battle... Silly? Maybe, but few games have done that to me.

It's comments like these that make me lament for the days of sprites and technical limitation. Seems like they had a better grip on fun and story telling then, and less a grip on cashing in.

I cant remember what season it was, but at the end of one of the seasons of X-files, they made it look like Mulder died, and I thought the series was over....

I didnt bawl my eyes out, but I shed a few tears and generally moped around for the next couple hours.

They need better writing indeed.Making you upset when a cool NPC gets killed off makes you appreciate destroying the boss-monster that did it more.A full pallette is nice,but you need a real artist using the brush to get these responses.

Ummmm I could say I'd prefer to laugh and cheer and have fun in front of my games as opposed to crying and getting depressed in front of them, but then I might start sounding like my mother, who likes to come over and open my drapes to let sunlight in, thinking lack of exposure to photons contributes to my depression.

BTW I've now been brainwashed into believing I can't be happy anywhere unless the general area is 72 degrees F, my Mom has to be there to make any and all conditions just right, and also no one ever gets skin cancer from exposure to sunlight.

Hi Mom!

People don't want to cry while playing a game, they want daily life (bullshit) drama that they can gossip about to their friends (read: The Sims). That's pretty much the only thing that is consistently popular in modern mainstream media (in books, tv shows, movies etc.). It really doesn't matter if the people are real or not, as long as they convey emotion and are affected by their environment, you can set up drama. Better graphics has nothing to do with it.

EA needs to take a lesson from "Finding Nemo". That was probably the most successful movie in getting the audience to care and relate to the characters, and they were fricken fish. FISH! Saying that they looked like real fish is bullcrap. Fish don't talk, they don't have mouths that move like they are talking, and most of us have never seen sea fish anyway. They were real because they had style and emotion was put into them.

See also "Monkey Island 1". Guybrush and LeChuck and everybody there was alive with style, even in the crappy resolution and floppy disks. The characters had all sorts of facial animations (that were probably 5 pixels deep). Again, STYLE is what makes things emotional.

... I cried at the end of Unreal II when the chicks dies, and the hero looks into the depths of the universe looking for answers..

No, I really did.

I remember some promotional material from Sierra talking about how some poor lady broke into tears watching the intro to Kings Quest IV and how the graphics were finally so lifelike that people could experience true emotion through games.

Uh, yeah. If I cried during Kings Quest IV it was because I was trying to play it on an 8086 and the computer was too slow to get away from the freaking ogre. :(

When John Romero tried to make me his bitch, I cried a little bit.

Gameplay > Graphics any day of the week.

When will these people learn? :(

I am going to cry with joy in front of DNF.

Ok, I admit I felt likeing crying after seeing the D-Day scene in Saving Private Ryan. But for Call of Duty the only thing I was thinking was "this is awesome, more please!". I don't think that having the dead bodies lying in pools of blood look more realistic is going to change my reaction.

I played Zelda3 as a kid, and almost cried. At the end, when the music is going, and it's showing everybody in the game, and Link goes and puts the Master Sword away, and is walking down the garden path, and the leaves and flowers are flowing down around him...that was beautiful. Especially to a 10 year old.

Daikatana!!!!!

I don't think I've ever cried from a game but certain things definitely drew me in. Wing Commander 3 and 4 were great for this. Ultima 7 and 7 part 2. Starcraft.

I agree that getting players to identify with characters is the path to having an emotional response to a game, but I think its more likely a function of great writing and storytelling then "realistic" graphics. Kotor has OK graphics but that's probably the only game that comes to mind where I felt sad (no crying) when characters died. why, Zannzabaar, why did you have to kill Mission, poor Missiion

I think level 4 of Ikaruga made me cry at one point.

EA's already there baby, I broke down a few times during the BF2 demo alone...

Games that make you emo? News at 11

I keep looking for Krazy Ken in that quote and I can't find his name. :(

I have never cried at a EA game. I HAVE cried playing ICO, Zelda, and some rpgs. EA will NEVER make a game that pulls any sort of emotional tugs. They don't know how. They never will.
You have to have a soul to do that. EA will never understand beauty, subtlety, and emotion. All they know is money and how to exploit the general population with shiny ads.

Brothers In Arms
Beyond Good and Evil
Prince (Sands)
etc.

If you're looking for a major publisher positioned to deliver "emotion in games" at least get a UBISOFT person to tell some quote for the article.

I mean that article is just shit when you see some EA rep saying that. I t just does not make any sense.

Yeah, Ghost Recon's graphics are a serious quantum leap from today's games. They just look so much better.

I think gamers will cry at the prices but not at the games.

European head of Electronic Arts, the world's biggest video games publisher. "You will cry in front of your game."

Erm, millions already are crying because BF2 is fucking full of bugs. Youve found a way to acheive that already EA, we dont need buggy next-gen console games to do it!