Emotional Detachment

I’m a strong enough man to say i’ve been known to cry when the occasion calls for.  In the cinema I hid behind my 3D glasses while watching Pixar’s UP, I sobbed relentlessly when Mufasa died in the lion king and I even well-up in the during the final episode of Blackadder goes forth.

So why with an interactive entertainment medium like computer games have I never been emotionally effected to any degree what so ever?

The time investment needed to complete any game with a serious and engrossing storyline is large, a time frame akin to reading any novel; a medium renowned for moving people to tears.  Even a thinly read reader like myself has been moved to tears on more than one occasion by books of various genres.

So how as an emotionally rounded human have I left been left wanting more by events deemed to be the zenith of games emotional pyramid?

I’ve listened to gamers declare they were moved to tears at by the death of Aeris Gainsborough in Final Fantasy VII.  An American gaming magazine once declared Final Fantasy VII number six in their list of “10 Most Important Game moments of the decade”, stating without it, “Aeris wouldn’t have died, and gamers wouldn’t have learned how to cry”.  Now i’m going to go out on a limb and say that if any gamer playing FF VII for the first time learned to cry thanks to the death of Aeris and Cloud laying her to rest in the Forgotten City lake have deep rooted emotional issues that should probable be looked into by a councillor.  It is true that FF VII and all other games burdened with the Final Fantasy name are grandiose time vacuums high on melodrama.  But proclaiming the emotional plot points are anything other than second-rate soap opera is disgraceful and offensive to second-rate soap operas.

Heavy Rain has all the hallmarks of an Hollywood dramatic thriller.  It has an exciting car chase, a spectacular shoot out and underpinning the whole game is a tale of revenge, chivalry, drug abuse and the limits someone will go to save a loved one.

The game is rare in that it is the only game to feature the death of one child and prolonged peril of another as the major driving force in the games story.  Its just a massive disappointment that events leading to the death of Jason Mars are plagued by finicky movement controls that lead you to direct Jason’s father and the games main protagonists Ethan endlessly around an area bumping into walls while bellowing JASON!

That being said the games fantastic music score manages provoke mild emotional attachment to ultimately unlikable characters that have few redeeming features and even fewer identifiable characteristics that a gamer can identify with.

Is it that computer games lack the voyeuristic sensation you feel when watching a west-end musical/play/opera where the emotions flow from the stage washing over you like a wave.  It isn’t that I don’t appreciate when games attempt to evoke an emotional reaction, I just feel that it is being thrust down my throat rather than being left to absorb each grain of emotion as if it’s being drip fed to me.

But maybe the biggest obstacle emotion in games has is the medium itself.  A game could have the perfect storyline to turn even the most hardcore of gamers sob like a child watching Bambi, but if the game is hampered with incomprehensive game mechanics and bewildering controls the story is only going to reach a selective audience.

So I say leave emotions to passive delivery methods where the pace and flow isn’t disrupted by poor controls and a button for shouting Jason!