SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - Has the "magic" gone?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kpt. Lehmann

Quote:

Originally Posted by Twelvefield

I don't play SHIII exclusively to other games, or even as much as other games, but I'm not bored of it. Rather the opposite, sometimes it gets too intense for me, and I have to put it down for a while. I guess I am sensitive. I had an unforgettable encounter with a night convoy pyrotechnic display. I got pretty upset when I was bombed by allied planes in my home harbor, and I was shaken up when my sub took half an hour to sink past crush depth. These last two events were the result of some nicely written mods, so definitely the modders have added some legs to the SHIII game.

I hope you are watching gouldjg's work on a new damage model in the mod workshop... looks to be very intense and in my opinion more reflective of a real sub crew... IMMERSION!

I hope you are doing well Twelvefield sir!

I am doing well if one of the biggest stressors in my life is video games!

And yes, I am looking forward to the new damage models. For me, the biggest flaw with RUB 1.44 right now is that it doesn't incorporate the mods that will be coming out in the next month!

Some time ago, I remember being advised of a top-level gaming studio convention where the topic of conversation was on how to get gamers more emotionally involved with video games. The reasoning was that graphics and special effects are about to equal what you would see in movies, and once the public gets used to that, they would become bored with games.

I don't know if I really agree with that idea, but it set the stage for the idea of creating emotional responses in video games.

You can probably come up with your own examples, but at the outset, one of the easiest emotional key sets to press would be shock/fear/dread. There's any number of memorable shocking moments -- Half Life and Alien vs. Predator (the original games, and to a lesser extent the sequels) come to mind.

Humor is also a fairly easy mark to hit, as in the Leisure Suit Larry games, or Serious Sam, or any of those great old LucasArts adventures.

What game developers want, though, is for you to become so totally invested in your game character that you feel what the character feels. Most first person shooters don't give you much of this, nobody weeps for the families of the soldiers in BF2. Still, there's exceptions: when Gordon Freeman looks into his locker at work and sees the picture of his infant child, it provides a strong impetus to get through hell, if only to see his family again (which doesn't happen at the end of the game - a truly disappointing ending!)

The Sims is, I feel, one of those games that's getting to the forefront of linking emotion to games, although EA doesn't seem to be above linking emotions to commercial items -- more on that in a bit. Especially Sims 2, where the characters have defined life spans, it's a bit of a shock to see the character that you've spent so much time on get old and frail, and approach death.

Brothers In Arms is another game that intentionally tries to make the player identify with the characters. The developers were explicit about that -- they wanted us to feel big emotions when one of the squad gets killed. It almost works, as the game is based on real people's experience in real-world locations -- but if they get killed in one mission, they get resurrected in the next.

Call of Duty, on the other hand, doesn't really seem to make a lot of use out of the characters -- they all seem more or less interchangeable -- but some of the action set-pieces are so vivid, you get a real visceral sense of the horror of war.

In any case, one goal of game studios is to make a game that's more emotionally compelling. Why do this? Games that pack an emotional charge tend to sell well, and people will generate a lot of word-of-mouth buzz about the game. Presumably, a game where you become emotionally involved would provide a more satisfying gaming experience.

And then there's "branding". Branding, in short, is the advertising trick of replacing the form and function of a product with a generated emotion. For instance, you could advertise that Car A has 20 more horespower and 5 inches more legroom than car B, or you could just say that driving Car A is like riding a magic carpet to the Land Of Beautiful People Who Like You And Only You A Lot, which should make you very very happy indeed.

If you can link a powerful, positive emotion to your product, then people will tend to associate that emotion with the product. You don't see ads telling us what Coca-Cola tastes like (although there were those taste-test promotions, but those still didn't tell you how the product tasted, only that one product was better than the other), you see ads showing how happy people become when they are with the product.

Back to the Sims: EA and other major studios are being actively courted by advertising agencies who want to capitalize on the high level of emotion that games generate. If the positive emotion is there, it's a simple effort to link products to that emotion. In the Sims games, you could buy virtual Pepsi and a virtual Big Mac. In more and more sports games, the "fake" advertising signs are becoming real. The in-game music is created by real-life chart-topping bands, who in turn are under contract to a record label, who are in turn are owned by a giant company like Coke.

So, it's interesting that SHIII (for me, at least), has the power to generate some heavy emotional content. A lot of it has to do with the suspense that happens with the game -- it's open-ended enough so that you can't predict exactly what will happen next. As well, I feel that the gamer that gets the most out of SHIII is the one that is willing to employ a large amount of imagination.

If you treat SHIII like Quake U-Boat, you're liable to to come away unimpressed -- the visuals and effects only go so far. But if you can get into the head of the kaleun (interestingly, the most powerful and interesting character in the game is never seen nor heard from), then SHIII will send you on some really great voyages.