How to let the gamer have emotions from game? ....More data!

You didn't object.

 

And? What's your argument? Also when you watch a movie and you cry out your eyes, you still know that it's not real. It's a movie. Also when you read a book and your heart-rate rises as the tension, you still read a book.

Making you having emotions have nothing to do with the medium.
We can have these things because of the suspension of disbelief. Having emotional response to something usually is not about the amount of things (not in the sense of data), it's about the presentation and the knowledge how to manipulate emotions in people. But it already has been discussed on this thread, I really don't know why I'm replying...

 

Why I didn't object?

 

In movie, you cry when you see the picture. But many authored events happened before you see the picture. You already build up the relationship of the charactor. Then when the picture of the charactor shows up, you are touched.
Without these precedent events, you won't feel anything about the picture.

In game, you can't control authored events. If nonlinear, you can't make sure when the gamer will see the picture. Don't use ideas from watching movies to design games.

 

Do you have your own idea?

 

ROFL. Okay then.

 

Why you have this feeling?

You can write down what is positive and what is negative.

 

Do you design a mechanic that the gamer can go back to the past through a time tunnel?

 

@hongwaixuexi Im not designing any mechanic right now except trying to fix last glitchs from my first game honestly.

Maybe like this:
The Player can Time Travel using one of the Portals the Aliens has in the City.
But first he needs to discover this Portals.

 

Because the point that shifting human values (varying data) provokes emotion doesn't sell well, I try to figure out the reason.

I think there are two types of emotions.
One type of emotion is the emotion tirggerd by changing important human values.
The other type of emotion is the emotion triggered by Holloywood stories.

I wll explain why pursing 2nd type emotion is a disaster to indie developers.

 

Why emotion driven games are so hard to be succesful?


Journey is one of susccesful emotion driven game.

In this artcile "
Leading By Emotion"
(https://gamasutra.com/blogs/SandeChen/20150526/244315/Leading_By_Emotion.php)

I prefer to the comment made by Ben Sly (https://gamasutra.com/blogs/BenSly/933371/):
I would say that the reason why emotion-focused development is not so prevalent in games as compared to film is because games are designed for a much longer play time than other forms of media.

If you take a look at Journey and (to a lesser extent) the rest of Jenova Chen's games, they are hand-crafted from start to finish to deliver a specific emotional experience and succeed wonderfully in doing so. They are also very short, linear, and mechanically shallow.

A laser-precision focus on the emotional impact of a mechanically simple game that takes at most a few hours and is not designed to be replayable is far more affordable than managing that for the average game.

That laser-precision focus is important, because while perfectly nailing an appeal to emotions is perhaps the most effective thing you can do in any artistic medium, failing just one can turn the rest of the entire work's emotional appeal into a joke.

If you screw up the gameplay, you have a boring part of the game; if you screw up aesthetics, you get an ugly object; if you screw up an emotional appeal, then the player's going to be jolted out of the experience and start looking at the rest of the game's emotional content as a transparent attempt to manipulate them. The bigger a game is, the more chances there are to screw one emotional moment up that screws up the rest of the emotional moments of the game.

And it's not just that there's more chances to screw them up, it's also that they're far harder to effectively reuse. Visceral experiences lose their emotional weight with repeated exposure, especially when the player has firm control over when and how they're presented. In a short game, you can keep up a constant stream of novelty. In a long one, you're going to have to rely on content that fares better with reuse; that's generally gameplay-driven content that has player progression and/or rearranges the content to make for a different challenge. Throwing both visceral and reusable content together synergistically can get pretty messy, so even in most games that try to use both there's often an audible *clunk* as they shift from one content style to another.

Because of these factors, I would say that emotion-driven development tends to favor a significantly different type of game than what most developers and players are aiming for. That's not a bad thing; I found Journey to be a very interesting game because of its atypical focus and what that focus let it do. But there are good reasons why short, directed, linear artistic games are kept distinct from longer, more mechanical and player-driven ones. Personally, I'd love to see the two styles blended together effectively, where the game mechanics of the latter themselves strongly evoke the directed artistic ideas of the former - but that's really damned hard to do.

 

Why emotion driven game can't provoke emotions like movies do?

Author:
Robert Lockhart is the Creative Director of Important Little Games, which is working on Codemancer. (https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/author/BobbyLockhart/887479/)

In this article "Emotion in Single-Player Games" (https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/RobLockhart/20161004/282611/Emotion_in_SinglePlayer_Games.php)

This post was inspired by several talks Jenova Chen has given over the years, all dealing with evoking deep emotion through games. Jenova thinks this is one of the biggest obstacles in the way of mainstream acceptance of games as an art form. I would tend to agree.

Further, I think there is a ranking to the difficulty in evoking certain emotions with a single-player game.

Easy:

• Lust
• Fear
• Disgust
• Boredom

Medium:

• Awe
• Curiosity
• Pride & Shame
• Frustration

Hard:

• Grief
• Serenity
• Remorse
• Humor

Impossible?:

• Jealousy
• Trust
• Contempt
• Pity
• Love

‘Easy’ emotions are basically stimulus response. They are reactive, not introspective.

The medium emotions are still fairly standard for games. Pride, shame, and frustration are natural consequences of struggling towards a goal and finally accomplishing it.

 

One real example.

Mata Haggis who made a speech about "Narrative Experience First" at 2016 GDC and get very positive reviews for this speech. He published two games: Fragments of Him( 2016, emotion driven type) and Winkeltje ( 2019, business simulation, more data) . Winkeltje is more popular with higher positve reviews.

In Fragments of Him you experience the lives of four people connected by love and a tragic accident. You walk alongside Will on his last morning and discover the meaning of his final thoughts. With Mary, Will’s grandmother, you learn about his childhood, their conflict, and how they ultimately reconciled some of their differences. Sarah was Will’s girlfriend and first love. She tells us how she found a deeper understanding of herself during their time together. And finally, Harry is Will’s partner when the accident happens. Can Harry ever accept the loss?

Winkeltje is a game about building, decorating and running a small shop in the days of old. You will deal with the day-to-day business as the shop owner while you unlock new things that will help you run a lucrative enterprise.

As the shopkeeper of your very own shop you are in charge of buying, selling, and making a profit. Items can be bought from passing traders or delivered at a fee. Items can be placed on displays in order to sell them to customers. When you are ready, you can open your shop to start the day and let customers in. Customers will buy what you have on display if it matches what they are looking for. If you don't provide what a customer wants in time, they will be sad and leave. A day of shopkeeping can be stressful but rewarding!

His GDC talk used 200-page ppt.



Games link:
https://store.steampowered.com/search/?developer=Sassybot

 

If love emotion is so hard to feel in game, why the player can marry NPC in Star Valley?

I will talk the pratical topic: build up artifical emotion.

In this long article ,"A Better Narrative using OCC Emotional Model" (https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Riz...etter_Narrative_using_OCC_Emotional_Model.php)
Rizky Winanda (gamasutra.com/blogs/author/RizkyWinanda/982676/) shows the solution on how to turn narrative into game data.

In my opinion, the narrative is considered great when it triggers emotional effect to the player. To make it happens, the character in the game must possess emotion itself and delivers correctly to the player so they could feel the character’s emotion in order to create empathy towards the character. The first step in creating a great narrative is to know more about emotion, explore how many are they and how to elicit them. There are many concepts about emotion that we can use, but i’ll use OCC model because it describes how the emotion created in a structural way which makes it easier to understand.

In OCC, it is said that a person can trigger an emotion by doing an appraisal towards event, action, or object. In a simple way, it goes like this: When an event happens to a person, he/she will appraise that event whether it is pleased or not then give a consequence to others or himself/herself. Afterwards, the effect from the other side will be recognized as desirable or not desirable. If it gives consequences to him/her, the consequence will give a prospect relevant to the person’s goal or not. After that consecutive appraisal, a person will elicit emotion according to the appraisal result.

 

A reveal of information is emotionally equivalent to change.
Players feel INSIGHT when they receive a new piece of information that causes many old pieces of information to suddenly make sense.

"Bioshock" used fragmented narration. You have to collect pieces to know the truth. Every piece is collected, a piece of information is revealed. A reveal of information is emotionally equivalent to change. And also Players feel INSIGHT when they receive a new piece of information that causes many old pieces of information to suddenly make sense.

I think fragmented narration is a good tool to represent story, because it's obscure and creates suspension.

 

I don't know why fragmented narrative is very few talked in game design, but I think it's a very gool way to represent story for data heavy game.

Data + Sherlock·Holmes = Emotional Data

data heavy game + fragmented narrative = good game

 

Not true. They use spreadsheets to wirte data first. Or you can give one example who create mechanics first.

 

I added many new contents about game emotions. Why no one comment?

 

I didnt read all in deep because im working. Ive found interesting the NO hollywood approach for indie games, given me some insight about why im stuck with one prototype inside a city, besides graphical work that its exhausting. So right now im thinking about Npcs. In old school games like Ultima 7, you can ask many many questions to one single npc, about his job, or questions based on what the npc its telling you. That survived the test of time and now its in many games. Ive found awesome to play a game where every npc its unique and has that depth. Not just to give you some quest to pass the in game time or progression or change. The npc itself as a virtual life going to sleep inside the game while you as a player are out. This kind of game i found amazing to pursue. I didnt understand the npc you post and i honestly dont have too much time to read articles right now, but i can assure you if you put that in practice your game will go well.

 

Pleaase put affection bar !!!

View attachment 492026 [/QUOTE]

 

I think it's complex to build different npcs with depth.

 

About finding ways to produce emotions in game on another person, that maybe works for netflix. But games like Ultima 7 for example has all the lore included to be a game you can play forever. The Avatar as Sherlock Holmes in Britain! Golden era of Garriot and games to me. So, your Sherlock Holmes approach sounds good to me.

 

I agree.

 

Npc dialogues if you have 30 npcs and you put that diagram and a more complete one like Ultima 7, then you will reach , if you write 50 pieces of information per npc, 1500 pieces of information. You really need to know what you are doing. Ive tried to write some dialogs and failed miserably. You start repeating the same emotion and it gets boring. Thats why AAA games has full time writer?

 

About fragmented narrative, yes please.

 

Several months ago, I want to mimic dialogues from Fallout 3 - New Vegas, and I failed, because it is very complext at that time. Maybe I will try some time later.

 

Lets excercise NPC dialog:

Npc Daiana, location: Tavern.
Welcome stranger. I have chicken today. You can rent a room if you want.

Player options: Chicken - Room - Goodbye

Player clicks or touch Room:

Daiana: A room will cost you 5 gold per night per people. (The player its not alone, has a party of 2).

Player touch: Chicken

Daiana: Chicken its my specality. All people in this City loves it. It will cost you 2 gold.

Player options:

This City - Speciality - Good bye.

Player touch: Speciality.

Daiana: Oh, i remind im out of an herb i need. Would you mind to take one to me from the forrest? I can give you free meal and room.

Player options: yes - no - goodbye.

OK. Now, thats a single npc and with little little depth still.

So maybe to work with ONE complex depth npc first and when its reeeally deep repeat for 30 or 50 or 100 (warning: this will take seriously amount of time and effort to do alone). But yes, was done already and can be done again.

 

Maybe try playing Ultima 7.

 

OK. Thanks.

 

Do you read the book? Dialogue is not my strength, so I can't finsih reading the book and I don't like it.

The over 300 distinct Emotioneering techniques in this book include (to name but a few): ways to give emotional depth to an NPC (non-player character), even if the NPC has just one line of dialogue; techniques to bond a player to a game's NPCs; and techniques to transform a game into an intense emotional journey. In a warm and crystal-clear style, Mr. Freeman provides examples which demonstrate exactly how to apply the techniques. He also shows how some of these techniques were utilized in, and contributed greatly to the success of such games as "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City"; "Deus Ex"; and "Thief" I & II, among others.

 

No, i dont read this books. I use my memory from the many games ive played and leaved me something that pass the test of time.

What part you didnt liked more?

 

The book made dialogues more complex. Daiana will say different words based on her trait. The book gave 4 traits to NPC. NPC's words comply with her trait.

 

Please. Convince me in 1 line to go to a journey as a player. Lets see:

npc dialog: dude, play this game please. Emotions now!!

Player: quit.

You are contradicting yourself. Lets put many data in game BUT i dont like dialogs. So...what data are you talking about? Rain fx? A earthquake in the middle of the game or a 1500 items inventory with 800 subsystems to level magic?

 

[/QUOTE]

Like this! Thanks

 

Its too complex.

 

Have you seen Tony's asset Love/Hate?

 

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/ai/love-hate-33063

Lets see !

 

I don't know whether "put affection bar" is only about affection bar.


Affection Bar: love at right side; hate at left side.

Let’s see what every emotion means to this affection bar.

For example, you are in a situation with other players where you got one thousand gil without doing anything (pleased, consequences for other and desirable for other) – later on will be referred to ‘one thousand gil’ event. Obviously the NPC will deliver happy emotion for you, right? So it will increase the point of affection bar automatically right?

You wrong. Life isn’t that simple, dude.

If the NPC likes us, surely he will be happy for our fortune. On the contrary, if the NPC hates us, he will resent to our condition. It means the emotion produced by NPC depends on his affection bar. If it has quite an amount, he will be happy for us and vice versa. However, the event won’t add or decrease his affection bar. So he won’t add more love or hate to us.

However, what if we just meet him for the first time with his affection bar in a neutral state? Surely, we can make him not to elicit any emotion to us, but it would be boring. It would not represent people emotion in real life. You see, not every people are kind. Some people like to see other people in a desperate situation for no particular reason. Then, how to create this in a game?

To make the function enabled in a game, we need another attribute of NPC beside affection bar. I called it egoist value. It represents how strong an NPC would forsake the right of humanity moral value in his every behavior/emotion for his own benefit. Going back to one thousand gil event, If NPC egoist value is quite low, he will be happy for us (he keeps his right morality, happy for other’s fortune even though he doesn’t get a return). On the contrary, if his egoist value is high enough then he will resent to us (he ignores his right morality in order to fulfill his own jealousy and acknowledge his desire). Egoist value has another function, but I will tell it later when it is used.

Now we already finish one route of appraisal (pleased/displeased, consequences for other, desirable for other). Let’s see another route of appraisal in undesirable term which will produce either gloating or pity emotion.

 

Love Hate sounds good to try for my little prototype in future! Thanks @Teila , i think will instantly add less robotic feeling to some Make Human characters im using. Price sounds fair too.

 

Thanks so much!

 

Does affection bar play a big role in game?

 

It depends on the type of game.

 

So called affection bars have been around for a while. Often they are called reputation or something else, but the entire point is to measure the responses/actions between a player and an npc. Early ones often were between merchant npcs and players, increasing the chance a haggle would work for the player. More the npc dude liked you, the bigger the discount.

We now see them in many games, especially more complex story driven visual novels..which sometimes border on a game with actual attraction/reputation mechanics.

I think the trend now is to make NPCs more believable, and the world more living as opposed to the old days when you had npcs standing around with question marks above their heads or barking out the same thing over and over.

 

I don't know if it's important or not, but seems fun to code.

 

So, you can do the "keyframes" of this game like this, page by page for 100 npcs with all his responses
and based on his emotional state or the things the player can do or cannot do. (quests for example).
Then you can add more complexity.

What will happen if in this little world, for example an Invasion from Orcs (or whatever) it's coming.
Then every NPC will have -50% emotional state.

One of the Player quest can be to take all the population to a higher emotional state, stopping the war.

So, yes, "affection bar", IMO, can be a very important and super powerfull
system or mechanic or tool.