Features

Four Ways to Use Symbols to Add
Emotional Depth to Games

Symbol Type #1: Symbol of a Character ’s Condition or Change in Condition

This use of symbols is what I call a scene-deepening technique, because you use it in a specific scene and might never use the same symbol again. Its use can be either visual or verbal, meaning that there must be either something visual on screen or something said by one of the characters that reflects what an on-screen character is going through emotionally.

Example #1:Visual.
In a particular episode of Star Trek: Voyager, Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) finds herself in an extended battle with the captain of a rogue Federation ship. The captain and crew of that ship are killing harmless aliens in order to use the chemicals in the aliens’ bodies to propel their ship. But Janeway herself becomes so obsessed with stopping the rogue captain at any cost that she crosses the bounds of ethics and good judgment and imperils her crew. This conflict generates a series of arguments with Chakotay (Robert Beltran), her first officer.

A metal plaque with the words “U.S.S. Voyager” falls off of Voyager’s bulkhead during the battle with the rogue ship. This plaque is a symbol that the spiritual core of Voyager — including the moral codes of the Federation, the Starfleet tradition of honor and humanity, and the moral center of the people who uphold these codes and traditions — has been damaged. It’s a symbol of Janeway’s and Chakotay’s conditions or changes in condition.

The plaque falling off of the bulkhead affects us emotionally. If viewers make only an intellectual connection between the plaque and the abandoned Federation values, then the writer hasn’t been artful enough in his or her creation of the symbol.

Example #2:Visual.
The 1957 war film Bridge on the River Kwai won many Academy Awards and still stands up as a masterpiece. Alec Guinness plays Colonel Nicholson, who commands a group of British soldiers captured by the Japanese and forced to work as slaves in a POW camp in Burma. I won’t reiterate the convoluted plot, but in short, due to his ego, Nicholson has his men help the Japanese build a strong and beautiful bridge. In effect, he has helped the enemy. But, near the end of the film, during a battle at the bridge, he has a powerful revelation, and says, “What have I done?”

At that exact moment, he reaches up and touches his commander’s cap. This is a symbol of the character’s condition or change of condition. His touching the cap is a symbol of his changing back to becoming what he once was — an honorable British soldier.

An explosion goes off nearby that knocks him to the ground, wounded by shrapnel. When he stands up, his cap lies on the ground, but he’s too dazed to notice immediately. He reaches for the top of his head and realizes that the cap is gone. He then bends down and picks it up off the ground. His reaching toward his head for the cap, and then his picking it up off the ground, again is the same kind of symbol, signifying that he’s become the honorable man he once was.

He puts his conversion into immediate action. As he dies from the shrapnel wound, he directs his fall onto a dynamite detonator, which in turn blows up the bridge he had so painstakingly built. As was the case with the Voyager example, most people in the audience wouldn’t consciously notice this element. And yet it would still contribute to the depth of the audience’s emotional experi-ence. It’s a strange moment for a writer when he or she realizes that a great deal of writing involves trying to create emotional effects that no one will consciously perceive, perhaps ever.

Example #3:Verbal.
P erhaps you saw the provocative film American Beauty, in which Wes Bentley plays Ricky Fitts, a teen without fear of social pressures, who has an honest appreciation for the beauty all around him. He seems, in some ways, to be enlightened.

Contradicting his supposed enlighten-ment is the fact that he sells drugs, is completely emotionally detached, and is fascinated by death. In fact, his veneer of serenity is what I call a “mask,” or a false front. (Masks, in all their various forms, are very sophisticated character-deepening techniques.)

At a certain point in the film, Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) drops in on Ricky to buy some dope — in particular the really potent stuff that he’d smoked with Ricky a few nights earlier. Ricky pulls out a bag of dope and explains that it’s “. . . top of the line. It’s called G-13. Genetically engineered by the U.S. gov-ernment. Extremely potent. But a com-pletely mellow high, no paranoia.”

LESTER: “Is this what we smoked last night?”

RICKY: “This is all I ever smoke.”

Why is this a verbal symbol of a char-acter’s condition or change of condition?

Because Ricky, unknowingly, has just described himself. Ricky had been a passionate young man, until his father, as punishment, had him committed to a mental institution for two years, where he was heavily drugged. This experience broke his spirit. So Ricky himself has been government-engineered, and his fake serenity (his mask) is that of a “completely mellow high.” But like all chemical highs, the effects aren’t real.

Example #4:Verbal.
Sometimes, in the television business, you need to write a sample script just to show that you can adapt your writing style to different shows. I recently wrote a sample X-Files script. In the story, Mulder no longer fits in professionally with Scully and Doggett. He had always been driven in his paranormal quests by the search for the truth about his missing sister. But, with that case solved last season, he no longer has a dream or ambition to push him forward.

In the middle of a conversation with Scully, Doggett, and Skinner, Mulder notices Skinner’s office clock. Checking it against his own watch, he says, “Is that clock right?”

No one responds to the question — the conversation merely proceeds. (Quite frequently, in dialogue, not every statement or question gets a response.) Why the throwaway line about the clock? It’s a symbol of Mulder’s condition or change in condition. In this case, it symbolizes that he’s out of sync, or out of step, with all the others. In effect, his time has passed. Will anyone reading the script consciously note that line of dialogue?

Unlikely, any more than they would note Wes Bentley’s line in American Beauty about the government-engineered pot. As with the other examples, the symbol operates outside of the audience’s conscious awareness.

Game example.
In the game ICO, a boy in a faraway land helps lead a beautiful girl with mystical powers out of a towering castle where both are trapped. He bravely overcomes many terrifying obstacles in his journey, which is more focused on freeing the girl than himself.

Near the very end, he gets a magical sword that crackles with a kind of spiritual electricity. This is a symbol of the boy’s condition or change in condition. It symbolizes that he’s attained a level of power; the demonic creatures that once attacked him now flee him and the sword. And it symbolizes that he now belongs with the girl, for the electricity that the sword exudes looks exactly like the mystical energy that the girl can wield when she needs to, and which has the same magical abilities.

Since the boy uses the sword to accomplish his final tasks, this is what I call a usable symbol. It serves double duty by both working to deepen the emotional experience and also playing a role in gameplay.

Hypothetical game example #1
Let’s say we have a sword-and-sorcery game in which, during a fight to save some villagers, the wisest and most beloved village elder is killed. The villagers are stunned. A cloud could pass in front of the sun at that point, throwing a shad-ow over the village (during either a cinematic sequence or gameplay). The shadow would symbolize the villagers’ sadness — and perhaps yours as well, if you had found the old man endearing (and you would have, if the character was rich enough and the dialogue was compelling).

Hypothetical game example #2
After great effort and many struggles and bat-tles, you have attained the highest rank a warrior can attain. At that moment, an eagle flies diagonally overhead in the sky. It’s a symbol of your lofty achievement. It’s important to reiterate here that it doesn’t matter if no one consciously notices the impact of these symbols. They deepen the experience nonetheless.

______________________________________________________

Symbol Type #2

join | contact us | advertise | write | my profile
news | features | companies | jobs | resumes | education | product guide | projects | store



Copyright © 2003 CMP Media LLC

privacy policy | terms of service