Late
last year, film critic Roger Ebert engaged in a lengthy online debate
with his readership concerning video games as a legitimate art form.
His overall conclusion was "Video games by their nature require player
choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and
literature, which requires authorial control". On the opening day of
this year's GDC, Katherine Isbister PhD and Nicole Lazzaro of XEODesign
Inc. hosted a workshop aimed at helping game designers and their teams
understand how to have authorial control over player choices.
Specifically the emotions that these choices create.
The
session began with Nicole Lazzaro asking the audience to do a small
exercise in which they were to pretend a hundred dollar bill was on the
floor somewhere and everyone was to try and search for it. After a
minute of half-hearted searching from most and some ham-fisted antics
from a few, she then informed them that there was in fact a real
hundred dollar bill somewhere in the room to be found. Another minute
of much more enthused searching still led to no one any richer when the
audience was then asked to reach into the back pocket of the person to
the immediate right and soon the hundred dollar bill was in the hands
of a Swedish woman.
The
purpose of the exercise was to show how a concrete goal and reward
incited more genuine emotion from the group in eagerness and excitement
than the nebulous request to pretend there was a hundred dollars. Here
it became clear that the focus on creating emotions in games is not
from increased reliance on non-interactive narrative scenes but from
recognizing what gameplay mechanics and design lead to what specific
emotion and the ways in which to identify, categorize, and eventually
accurately predict the emotions the player will feel from the game.
Face Perception And The Four Keys
XEODesign
is a company responsible for Player Experience research and design
services for games and consumer creativity products. One of the key
components of Player Experience research is observation of the player's
emotions through facial expressions and gestures. To demonstrate what
emotions to look for in a player, the audience was each given convex,
wide-angle view mirror to try and enact the four basic emotions that
can be discerned through facial expressions alone; fear, surprise,
sadness and amusement (curiosity and disgust are also in this group but
were not practiced).
After
the crash-course in face perception the audience was then told about
"the four keys" to unlocking and manipulating the hearts of all gamers:
Easy Fun, Serious Fun, People Fun, Hard Fun.
Easy Fun
is linked to curiosity. Usually typified by a sense of exploration and
non-constrictive goals. Ambiguity, sandbox gameplay, roleplaying and
fantasy all typically fall under this definition. Exploration in the Myst series and the sandbox sections of the Grand Theft Auto series were given as examples.
Serious Fun,
also referred to as Altered States, is described as meant for players
who "play for internal sensations such as excitement or relief from
their thoughts and feelings."
People Fun is about amusement and refers to the social aspect of gaming. Whether online or with friends in the room, the feelings of schadenfreude (German word for deriving pleasure from the misfortune of others) and/or naches (Yiddish word for pride from the accomplishment of a child or mentee) are the most common sources for the amusement.
Lastly, Hard Fun. This should lead to the ultimate gaming emotion, Fiero (An Italian word that means the feeling of personal triumph over adversity; it's also the name of a Pontiac sports car).
Halo offers a mix of both Hard and Easy Fun.
Most games should strive for a mix of these emotions. Halo
as an example offers Hard Fun in the form of visceral combat sequences
and quality A.I. It also offers Easy Fun in the form of it's
environments and art direction. The oversized moon in the sky and the
horizon which reaches upward creates a surreal image that invites
exploration and invokes curiosity and wonder giving a secondary
emotional motivation to continue playing.
What's
important to work on is balance. Too much Easy Fun can lead the player
to feel disbelief in the game, too much Hard Fun can lead to
disinterest. The balance of difficulty needed to allow a player to feel
Fiero is a fine one. However extreme challenge is not the only way to
feel a sort of gaming euphoria, power ups and increasing abilities are
an example where a player can feel like they've overcome an obstacle
without actually needing to put in much effort.
Characters, Body And Emotion
Katherine Isbister
Katherine
Isbister took over at this point to discuss characters and their
relation to a player's emotion. Most character designs are based on the
primitive emotional response of "Will it kill me, or help me?" and "Can
I kick its ass?". To illustrate this point she showed clips from Nintendogs as an example of an immediate friendly response to character, and then a giant menacing dragon from Final Fantasy XII as an example of an obvious foe. It also most likely can kill you.
What
triggers these immediate emotional categorizations are usually visual
cues from body language. This a part of what Katherine described as
surface social effects. Beyond this and needed for more complex
emotions is the need to recognize who the player is, such as their
culture and gender. Unlike the universal nature of the facial
expressions that were studied earlier, body language can vary greatly
from region to region and knowing what can be misconstrued during the
localization process. She also discussed how voice work has become an
expected part of almost every game now and how it's emotional potential
is well known. What needs to be worked on and what developers need to
be aware of, is how to use voice in relation to body language and
facial expressions.
Her
final point was to "create emergent social effects and the feeling of
vibrant emotional life and connection to the player through the use of
social roles and other social dynamics." What this really boiled down
to was understanding the classic character archetypes (mentor/mentee,
sidekick/comic relief, arch nemesis etc.), their use in story and how
to play with the expectations the player would naturally have of them.
Art As Better Business
Interestingly
though the purpose of the workshop was to help developers to know their
audience and how to create an emotionally satisfying game experience,
the motivation for doing this is not the pursuit of artistic legitimacy
but actually to increase the audience and sales of all games. Put a
love story into Halo and you incorporate a whole new demographic.
With
the arrival of the next generation consoles, the possibilities of a
deeper, richer emotional experience becomes possible, and developers
need to be aware of how to ensure the player experiences the range of
emotions intended. Hopefully the works of XEOdesign and their workshops
will allow developers to realize their potential.
