There are many things that videogames do well: action, fantastic elements, immersive environments…these are all things that seem to get better with each passing year. However, there is an element of games that seems, for the most part, to be lacking. This lacking element is integral to every other medium’s storytelling and entertainment. And that missing aspect is, quite simply, emotion.

It’s not a hard thing to understand why film and books have a much easier time connecting emotionally with people than videogames do. Movie, literature, television—hell, even radio—are all passive mediums. Beyond entering a theatre, turning a page or pressing a button, those mediums don’t require much input from the user. This passivity also makes it easier for the mediums to give us signals and inputs as to what emotionally we should be feeling at any given moment (wow, we’ve got a real Noam Chomsky/Marshall McLuhan thing going on here, don’t we?).

Videogames on the other hand are both blessed and cursed by their own design. The interactivity of videogames can be a refreshing change from sitting in a dark theatre and watching actors interact. But, generally speaking, most videogames have the player as either an almost messianic-like superman (in the Nietzsche sense, not a tights-and-fearing-Kryptonite sense) who is almost an army of one against millions or as a disembodied, godlike figure. And these perspectives can be problematic when trying to convey emotions.

In the case of the superman, which is usually found in first-person shooters, the character is separated from those around him, even his allies. He is stronger, faster and a better shooter than them. His allies also tend to be generic in appearance and without any real character, or if they do have a personality, they tend to be set in one archetype or another from which they will almost never waver. A romance might be tacked on, or a revenge background given to the superman. Yet, neither of these emotional cues will really motivate the player. In the case of the romantic ally (think Alyx from Half-Life 2), they are usually on a pre-determined course that might have a few plot twists, but will never really have any input from the player. The revenge background (family relative murdered, revenge upon someone who oppressed the player earlier in life, etc.) is also lacking in any real motivation. It makes for moderately interesting cutscenes at the beginning and end, but really doesn’t have much impact on the game itself, other than maybe the type of enemy you’ll be facing.

The disembodied, godlike perspective has an emotional disconnect inherently built into it. While the FPS allows the player to “experience” the world through an individual’s perspective, there is really no connection between the godlike perspective and anything we go through in life, and therefore it’s very hard to connect emotionally through it. This detachment means that you are willing to throw wave after wave of tanks and infantry against an enemy, uncaring for the hundreds of lives you would be sacrificing if the game were real. On the more personal scale, in RPG’s such as Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights, there are some attempts to tell emotional stories through interaction with the NPC’s, especially those in the party. However, it is hard to believe the romance between your character and the elf mage in your party when you are viewing it from a height of thirty or forty in-game feet.

So, has any game gotten close to emotional connection with the player? Some people might argue that Half-Life 2 had a strong sense of emotion; in my opinion those people would be wrong. HL2 had a great sense of atmosphere, but in the end you were still a superman racing through superhuman battles, not really relating to anyone you met. The romance with Alyx was a nice touch and well done, but was still so passive. You could never acknowledge your feelings towards her one way or the other. It was little more than middle-act fumblings from romantic comedy movies, where the two lovebirds you knew were going to hook up at the end kept getting separated by circumstance.

Basically, what I’m getting at is that designers need to add a human element. Stop using archetypes and start creating personalities that the player is genuinely interested in interacting with. Perhaps in a GTA-style game the player comes across a racist, and has the option of calling the NPC on it or not…and whether he does or doesn’t has an effect on the remainder of the story. Or in games such as HL2, have the player actually able to interact with the romantic interest (no, not necessarily that kind of interaction you filthy pervert). Let the player decide the course of the relationship from “just friends” to “let’s make out over here before we go kill some enemies”. With those basic emotional connections made, it could quickly become a snowball effect; soon games would not just be measured on how well they create dust motes in the air, but also how well the player feels he or she’s connected to the world the designers made.

Of course, on the other hand, when it comes to the godlike strategy games, emotional connection may not be such a good thing, especially when waging a war. You want to have fun slaughtering the enemy with your own dying troops (at least until EA’s Hague2K7 comes out). But maybe the designers could still allow a little bit of consequences to be shown. Perhaps in the player’s “home base” a small graveyard is formed when your units start dying. Think about all the RTS games you’ve played…how big would your graveyards have been?

The Monsignor