Triggering Emotions

Hey guys, I'm curious. ( I already have in my head how I want to do this with my Alien Abduction game).
But I'm curious, when you're making, lets say a Single Player game.

What's the best ways you've found that can trigger peoples emotions to make them really feel
the story you are presenting to them. Besides the the norm of Jump Scares, which are becoming old now.

Lets say, you have a medieval era game, and you have to I don't know, rescue a princess from a despot.
What would you, your self use to trigger peoples emotions in lets say, a battle ridden village. Aside from the environment art it's self, what would you actually do to trigger all the senses of the player? Well besides smell and taste lol. Because I've noticed, Hollywood can do this quite good sometimes, but I'm not exactly sure what it is that's triggering the emotions, all i can really do is take a Wild Guess as to what it is that's specifically triggering the emotions of sorrow and sadness for what happened to this said village or person.

I know it has to deal with building a solid connection between the viewer and the story. But I don't know what it is, because not every movie can do it to me. Some movies, believe it or not, I don't cry, but tears do water my eyes and hold my self from crying haha, but it's something no worse than I saw in a previous movie that I didn't even flex an emotion towards.

I hope I am making sense?

 

Develop character based story telling. Get the player to invest emotionally in the other characters before taking them away.

Play "Life is Strange" if you have not already. That game does a good job with some of the emotional elements.

 

One of the best examples for me is "Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons".

Throughout the game the characters don't even speak. The story is really told through the mechanics of the game. Once you get to the end of the game, it becomes quite moving.

If you haven't played it yet, you should. It's a pretty short one, but it's high quality.

 

I'm yet to play a game that triggers emotions like best movies or books.

Maybe becuse games are so violence oriented, everything seems expendable and not real. A blood splat quad and a death animation means the npc have run its course, its purpose was that you read a text for a quest; an enemy that shares the same model as other 50 instances, dies with a couple of hits, it was just a obstacle with no identity, its not even controversial that you made him explode into pieces just to get a potion. Its hard to feel empathy, lol.

To answer your question, I think you need the player to invest time into all character's story. And their story must be really engaging somehow, by using all tools in your power.
If a book can do it in a written context, games should too. The problem is that games are expected to be more about instant visual and audio reward.

 

Music, sounds and writing. Drop subtle hints of the story everywhere, without telling anything outright.

And no, hollywood usually isn't good at this kind of things. Attempts to bring atmosphere "holly-wood style" usually results in farce (see call of duty games).
When game tries to show you something "horryfying" and you realize that it does that with the purpose of making you feel something, the illusion shatters, and the only reaction you have a facepalm or cringe. Bioware games were quite bad at "cinematic standoff in a cutscene".

I'd suggest to check out Shadowrun Returns, Planescape: Torment, System Shock and maybe Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne.

Oh yeah. Definitely, that on too. it is pretty much a masterpiece. 3..5 hours long total.

Could never get into "life is strange"... can't stand the setting. Writing I saw was mediocre at best.

 

Thanks for all the replies guys.

I'll check out these games when I have the time. Are any of these like 60 dollar games? Because I can't afford that right now lol.

But yeah if I book can do it, I'm sure there's a way to make the player engage in the same fashion, but doing it is pretty hard as mentioned above, audio and visuals are what people get rewarded to them.

Sometimes I wonder if somebody like Markiplier really does show real emotions when he plays games, because it seems realistic, but yet, he does get paid to do this kind of stuff. So is he really showing real emotion towards the game? The game SOMA I'm talking about specifically actually. It makes him make hard choices, whether or not he should kill the npc or not, because it's a conscious mind inside it, but still, doesn't even know it's a robot, etc.

 

My guess would be, probably not, with games like fnaf and the like. I dunno about SOMA though.
Then again, I don't really care for the Markiplierpewdipiejacksepticeye type of videos in general anyways.

Most of the games listed here are in the 15 - 20 dollar range, and most were on sale on steam last week. The first episode of life is strange is only $5.

 

Make the bad guys bad. Look up the isis videos do something like that where they are lining up the villagers one by one and killing them and tossing the bodies in the river (if you include women children and puppies people are going to love to hate them).

 

Games should cost around $15 each, depending on your region and availability of sales. Instead of Shadowrun Returns, I'd actually recommend Shadowrun Dragonfall, since this one is the best in the series. Torment and System shock are old titles, which are available on gog and they should be fairly inexpensive.

Shin megami tensei: Nocturn is PS2 title that was never ported to PC. That one is grindy, but has crazy atmosphere, despite not having that much text in it.

 

Make the players feel underestimated, that makes them prove otherwise. Make characters brush player off as nobody, they can prove they are the one. Make characters hint their troubles but not ask help, so you can surprise them. Make quests/challenges/enemies bigger, badder and scarier.
Of course music and sound is as important, but also use silence to build it up.

 

That's one good way to make the game suck, though.

Because scene like this is like a big message in the sky saying "You must hate THIS guy in particular!" with arrow pointing at someone.

This kind of move always feel cheap. Fallout 4 tried to do something similar, and it didn't work. Nobody could take the story seriously.

 

Shadowrun Dragonfall seems pretty interesting, might have a check at it.

 

Play heavily with the mood elements. Music, setting, lighting. These can go a long way without ever explicitly giving the player story details.

Give the player something they are responsible for, and must protect. Let them spend hours with it. Then take it away, preferably at the players choice.

 

Good points....
I wish it was easy to use audio frequencies that the player can't hear but the brain can still hear them, to trigger emotional responses without reasoning to why they would feel bad when normally they wouldn't.

I'm sure that's illegal though, at least in USA, etc.

 

Illegal, highly unethical, unscientific and unreliable.

There are a million things you can do within human perception limits. Play in that space.

 

For me it's 40% writing and fleshing out characters, 30% graphic tones, 20% gameplay intensity and 10% music/sounds.
About graphic tones: it doesn't really matter what style graphics are in; it matters what colors are used, which are prevailing, which colors mean some character emotions, color movement on screen (animations too), etc. Oh, and that part automatically becomes 0 if colors throughout the game don't change according to feelings that should appear at that time.

Making non-serious game can trigger emotions as well Making user laugh is good. Actually, pointing a big arrow into a person and naming him bad(especially if it's absurd) is a valid way to make user laugh in middle of dialogue.

1. Think about users health for a bit. It can cause anger, headache, make user tired... Do you want your own children to play such games? Do you want to play such games?
2. Most headphones/speakers don't support that range of frequencies anyway.
3. Most audio compressions don't support that range of frequencies. You're making your game bigger in size and harder to download.

 

Really good points I think. I think lighting has the utmost importance though. Lighting can make or break a game depending on what kind of game you are making. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule as any other.

And I didn't realize them frequencies could do that, I haven't ever researched them only have heard they existed.
I wouldn't try to intentionally do that to somebody (harm them). I just thought it could trigger a response that would otherwise not be possible. (Make them feel the sorrow of the death of a character or something). Just so they can feel the expression. I didn't realize it could actually cause headaches, and other things. Thanks for telling me that.

 

Mice that get constant high-frequency wave become more restless and aggressive inside a cage. I've seen some researches on that. Also there are mouse repellants based on that principle.
Some people who hear it get very angry and mad on those sounds. Personally known one who couldn't stand high-pitched power stabilizer's sound (barely hearable for me - somewhere on edge of hearing frequency). Generally it won't create anything other than annoyance and other bad feelings (as in feelings game dev must avoid to not lose gamer).

 

Yes, but if the story tries to be serious, the only reaction you get is facepalm.

Speaking of stories...

Shadow warrior is a good example of story being well done in a shooter. Game has origins of an absurd/comedy shooter, however, it becomes darker and more serious towards the end. And it works.

 

Is facepalm an emotion? I think it is...

 

whole design process of journey and as I found out, alot of useful information regarding emotions in video games

And please don't just go and watch other video games, play them yourself, because that will tell you more about it and makes it easier to dissect how they did the emotional impact.
And then there are other media worth looking into, as example books, since even though they are not directly interactive, there is tons of experience and material on human emotions in them. Same goes for things like videos on youtube...you want to know what spooks people?makes them uncomfortable etc.? watch the stuff that you wouldn't want to see, watch alien conspiracy videos, look at the kind of music they are using, what image effects, what psychological tricks , watch their words etc. or monster videos...mystery videos...ghost videos I think you get the point.
Heck I remember reading an interview with the people who made doom (i think 2nd) and how they were researching real life accidents and all kinds of gruesome material that probably leaves quite a trauma, just to make the monsters as gruesome as possible (and their flesh and skin as believable as possible)