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These days gaming is about more than just having fun, it’s more than just a form of entertainment to just pass are few hours on a Sunday afternoon. In many aspects, as things have improved rapidly over the past few years, its become a form of art, combining realistic graphics, Hollywood style story lines that can create more emotion than some of the things that we see on the silver screen today. Gaming is more than stirring up good old fun, fun is still there in many forms, but now, gaming is much more involved with many emotions.
Fear, sadness, happiness, love. All these can now be found in the huge criteria that games now cover. It just goes to show how far gaming has come in such a short space of time. Only 15 years ago we were still playing on the likes of 2D plat formers which only had addiction of the game play to keep you coming back, and that’s about the only other feeling they gave you, apart from feeling sick with the strange colours that use to keep flashing on the screen.
With gaming now being able to bring us so many different emotions, is it really better than what we were playing back then? Have all these new emotions really taken the ‘gaming’ out of gaming?
Gaming use to be about having a blast on a game to relieve some of the tension, it wasn’t about following a carefully set out story line, it was just about getting the points, finishing that level, completing this game as fast as you could. Back then it was simple, you just basically played. But there wasnt much in form of emotion there, you didnt feel like you do with games to today, so gaming now, for me, is much better than it ever was.
These days its much more complex. Its now about levelling up your characters, finishing the games to get the good ending over the bad ending, making sure that the story line goes through properly and that you do rescue the girl/boy/world. Emotions are much more used with this, the plots pull on the nerves of your head, in one case you want to be doing the right things, helping people, but on another case you want to show the evil streak of yours, show that you do have that nasty edge to you. Games can now bring out more emotions in you than things that happen in your real everyday life.
This will continue to become more and more apparent as the technology becomes more improved too, you only have to look at the current crop of games that are out now to realise how close gaming is becoming to mimic real life events. As graphics become better things look more real. As developers create more realistic AI the more realistic opponents we have to face. The more real all these separate areas are improved, the more real our emotions will begin to feel, and that is a scary thought.
Already we are able to feel fear when we play the likes of Silent Hill. With the atmosphere that these games are able to create, with the intimidating sounds that echoed through every room that you walk through, with the way you see the graphics of the game bring hideous monsters alive which are hell bent on killing you its hard not to be scared, its only natural.
The same goes for all the other types of games out there. We already have the ultra realistic games of Pro Evo and GT3. These games are already able to send the adrenaline pumping around your body as the big occasion rises. Think about it, you have just come first in the races to get you to the F1 polyphony final, your there, the engines are revving up, your in the middle of the pack, engine torqued, you want this race, you just worked so hard for it, you not letting go now. As the light turns green your heart is revved up, pumping faster and faster….And then you go, thumb smacks down on X as you ram the others off the road and speed up into first. All very dramatic, until you hit the ramp and stop dead, you’re heart sinks, and now you sad, angry with yourself for being so stupid as they leave you for dust.
That’s just one example though, look at Pro Evo, has any other game had you jumping up and down shouting at the TV anymore than this? Have you screamed and shouted out loud as you score the winning goal for the World Cup final on 90 minutes having been down 3-1 at half time? I haven’t, I have only got these emotions as the games have become more improved in there game play and looks over the recent years.
But these examples are only of the game play and so on, what about these games with the story lines, the games that seem to have everything. FF games are a perfect example for this. You know what your going to get in terms of a story from FF, its much better than most of the films that comes out these days, and this is all credit to Square and the gaming industry. There are not many games or films out there that have action, sadness, love and laughter all rapped up into one game that really makes a story line worthy of an Oscar or two. And that’s what the latest FF is all about. FF10 brings this new form of excellent story telling even further forward to the millennium. You can’t help but feel apart of it.
And that people, is what gaming is now all about, being part of the occasion that’s playing on your screen. FF10 does this perfect by how the games unfolds and interacts with you, you want to be part of it, you want to be in the team and do the right things, you want to become Yunas friend, and you want Tidus to do well. You cant help but keep trying to hope that you can do this right, and hope that Tidus will not say something stupid that another person may not like. You don’t want to do the wrong things, you feel responsible for him.
The same can be said for many of the other games out there, as soon as you start to play some of them you just feel apart of it, and you begin to think and feel like the character would, whether it be scared and wanting to run like hell away from the beast that is chasing you wanting to take your head, or whether it be excitement as you run into the penalty box and shoot the ball into the far right hand corner with the crowd cheering and chanting your name. You may never get this in real life, gaming is becoming the perfect second best.
Gaming has never been so good as it is now. Things are become more realistic in the way they tell there stories or go about there business. Developers have the kits to bring worlds to us that we once thought we would never see, they can bring us the places we never thought we would be able to go to.
They have the knack to bring us the emotions that we want, and like, and feel.
The gaming industry, is the true Emotion Engine
Fear, sadness, happiness, love. All these can now be found in the huge criteria that games now cover. It just goes to show how far gaming has come in such a short space of time. Only 15 years ago we were still playing on the likes of 2D plat formers which only had addiction of the game play to keep you coming back, and that’s about the only other feeling they gave you, apart from feeling sick with the strange colours that use to keep flashing on the screen.
With gaming now being able to bring us so many different emotions, is it really better than what we were playing back then? Have all these new emotions really taken the ‘gaming’ out of gaming?
Gaming use to be about having a blast on a game to relieve some of the tension, it wasn’t about following a carefully set out story line, it was just about getting the points, finishing that level, completing this game as fast as you could. Back then it was simple, you just basically played. But there wasnt much in form of emotion there, you didnt feel like you do with games to today, so gaming now, for me, is much better than it ever was.
These days its much more complex. Its now about levelling up your characters, finishing the games to get the good ending over the bad ending, making sure that the story line goes through properly and that you do rescue the girl/boy/world. Emotions are much more used with this, the plots pull on the nerves of your head, in one case you want to be doing the right things, helping people, but on another case you want to show the evil streak of yours, show that you do have that nasty edge to you. Games can now bring out more emotions in you than things that happen in your real everyday life.
This will continue to become more and more apparent as the technology becomes more improved too, you only have to look at the current crop of games that are out now to realise how close gaming is becoming to mimic real life events. As graphics become better things look more real. As developers create more realistic AI the more realistic opponents we have to face. The more real all these separate areas are improved, the more real our emotions will begin to feel, and that is a scary thought.
Already we are able to feel fear when we play the likes of Silent Hill. With the atmosphere that these games are able to create, with the intimidating sounds that echoed through every room that you walk through, with the way you see the graphics of the game bring hideous monsters alive which are hell bent on killing you its hard not to be scared, its only natural.
The same goes for all the other types of games out there. We already have the ultra realistic games of Pro Evo and GT3. These games are already able to send the adrenaline pumping around your body as the big occasion rises. Think about it, you have just come first in the races to get you to the F1 polyphony final, your there, the engines are revving up, your in the middle of the pack, engine torqued, you want this race, you just worked so hard for it, you not letting go now. As the light turns green your heart is revved up, pumping faster and faster….And then you go, thumb smacks down on X as you ram the others off the road and speed up into first. All very dramatic, until you hit the ramp and stop dead, you’re heart sinks, and now you sad, angry with yourself for being so stupid as they leave you for dust.
That’s just one example though, look at Pro Evo, has any other game had you jumping up and down shouting at the TV anymore than this? Have you screamed and shouted out loud as you score the winning goal for the World Cup final on 90 minutes having been down 3-1 at half time? I haven’t, I have only got these emotions as the games have become more improved in there game play and looks over the recent years.
But these examples are only of the game play and so on, what about these games with the story lines, the games that seem to have everything. FF games are a perfect example for this. You know what your going to get in terms of a story from FF, its much better than most of the films that comes out these days, and this is all credit to Square and the gaming industry. There are not many games or films out there that have action, sadness, love and laughter all rapped up into one game that really makes a story line worthy of an Oscar or two. And that’s what the latest FF is all about. FF10 brings this new form of excellent story telling even further forward to the millennium. You can’t help but feel apart of it.
And that people, is what gaming is now all about, being part of the occasion that’s playing on your screen. FF10 does this perfect by how the games unfolds and interacts with you, you want to be part of it, you want to be in the team and do the right things, you want to become Yunas friend, and you want Tidus to do well. You cant help but keep trying to hope that you can do this right, and hope that Tidus will not say something stupid that another person may not like. You don’t want to do the wrong things, you feel responsible for him.
The same can be said for many of the other games out there, as soon as you start to play some of them you just feel apart of it, and you begin to think and feel like the character would, whether it be scared and wanting to run like hell away from the beast that is chasing you wanting to take your head, or whether it be excitement as you run into the penalty box and shoot the ball into the far right hand corner with the crowd cheering and chanting your name. You may never get this in real life, gaming is becoming the perfect second best.
Gaming has never been so good as it is now. Things are become more realistic in the way they tell there stories or go about there business. Developers have the kits to bring worlds to us that we once thought we would never see, they can bring us the places we never thought we would be able to go to.
They have the knack to bring us the emotions that we want, and like, and feel.
The gaming industry, is the true Emotion Engine
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Congrats on the win Pro Evo!
Weldone on your first GAD win as Notable mate, you deserve it.
----------------
I agree with you that the emotion engine does run in particular games, firstly MGS 2, the quiality of the story line and sound never made me look away from the screen, I felt I was in there a part of the game, the adrenaline was running sky high because I din't know what was gonna happen next, this is where the cut scenes came in, many people didn't like the extra long cut scenes but I watched everyone of them because I became intrigued in the sad and happiness parts of the game.
As you know I recently bought ISS 2... for some reason :D
This game has suberb sound in terms of the crowd 'getting' involved in the action and it really made me shout more at the tele than I normally do in any game, because of the sound the emotions were running high, especially in those tight away games and you score at the last minute of injury time, as you would do in reality, because lets face it without the crowd theres no atmosphere and that has been well incorporated into the game.
*Gets emotional now.....*
:D
----------------
I agree with you that the emotion engine does run in particular games, firstly MGS 2, the quiality of the story line and sound never made me look away from the screen, I felt I was in there a part of the game, the adrenaline was running sky high because I din't know what was gonna happen next, this is where the cut scenes came in, many people didn't like the extra long cut scenes but I watched everyone of them because I became intrigued in the sad and happiness parts of the game.
As you know I recently bought ISS 2... for some reason :D
This game has suberb sound in terms of the crowd 'getting' involved in the action and it really made me shout more at the tele than I normally do in any game, because of the sound the emotions were running high, especially in those tight away games and you score at the last minute of injury time, as you would do in reality, because lets face it without the crowd theres no atmosphere and that has been well incorporated into the game.
*Gets emotional now.....*
:D
I'm going out on a limb here, but I don't agree!
I love games as much as the next person with spare time and a brain but I feel immensely unmoved by the attempts to evoke emotion in computer games so far. To this point I usually feel manipulated by games that are attempting to provoke an emtional response in me.
There seems to be a tendency in the game designs that have been appearing recently to mistake lots of talking for emotional content. Who among us isn't bored of Konami's constant use of lines like 'the battlefield has been the only family I have ever known, the gun was my father, my mother was a magazine round, my step-sister was a 32mm cannon..' You get the idea.
It's not always like this, you're right about genuine fear being evoked during Silent Hill 2, at least until you get used to it, and the feeling of compassion for the plight of Yorda in Ico is astonishing. There is somthing that links these examples; atmosphere. Games have always been able to make us jump in the air with celebration when we've finally beaten that goalie/enemy/stage/amorphous pink blob that's been troubling us but only recently has the technology allowed us to really _feel_ the environments.
Words are not the way forward in games, what we will see becoming the true future is feeling.
Mata
I love games as much as the next person with spare time and a brain but I feel immensely unmoved by the attempts to evoke emotion in computer games so far. To this point I usually feel manipulated by games that are attempting to provoke an emtional response in me.
There seems to be a tendency in the game designs that have been appearing recently to mistake lots of talking for emotional content. Who among us isn't bored of Konami's constant use of lines like 'the battlefield has been the only family I have ever known, the gun was my father, my mother was a magazine round, my step-sister was a 32mm cannon..' You get the idea.
It's not always like this, you're right about genuine fear being evoked during Silent Hill 2, at least until you get used to it, and the feeling of compassion for the plight of Yorda in Ico is astonishing. There is somthing that links these examples; atmosphere. Games have always been able to make us jump in the air with celebration when we've finally beaten that goalie/enemy/stage/amorphous pink blob that's been troubling us but only recently has the technology allowed us to really _feel_ the environments.
Words are not the way forward in games, what we will see becoming the true future is feeling.
Mata
Tiltawhirl wrote:
> Try playing a match against Iran on ISS2 and listen to the croud, it
> scares the hell out of me sounds like someones brought a Witch doctor
> to the stadium.
lol....when i play South American teams in Pro Evo i hear the same...freaky!!
And WELLDONE Pro! on the GAD!
> Try playing a match against Iran on ISS2 and listen to the croud, it
> scares the hell out of me sounds like someones brought a Witch doctor
> to the stadium.
lol....when i play South American teams in Pro Evo i hear the same...freaky!!
And WELLDONE Pro! on the GAD!
pOp
Best chant of TIF:
"Youre S#@* and you know you are! Youre S%*£ and you know you are!"
Excellent.
:D
"Youre S#@* and you know you are! Youre S%*£ and you know you are!"
Excellent.
:D
good post Pro, i actually did read all of it but cant think of a reply :-)
Try playing a match against Iran on ISS2 and listen to the croud, it scares the hell out of me sounds like someones brought a Witch doctor to the stadium.
ISS 2 has the best in ground atmosphere of any football game that i have ever played, you put the sound on really loud, close your eyes and you could almost be there..if you have a decent set up. Every thing about ISS 2 in the sound area is superb...all adds to the emotion of the match.
One thing I think could definitely be improved in Pro Evo (that's the game lol) is the crowd sound. The crowd was really quiet, even when you scored. I hoped this is improved in PE2 as it would really make it more atmospheric and make a great game even greater.
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