There are many ways that game designers can create an emotional connection with the player. Some methods, such as cutscenes and musical selections, are more readily identifiable choices than others. This post will discuss some of these direct and subtle approaches that game designers incorporate to get the player on their side with emotional investment.
Cutscenes
Games are an art, and one of the most common methods to express that artisan flare is through cutscenes or voice-acted dialogue. In the 3DS JRPG Bravely Default, a cutscene early in the game’s plot grips the player and illustrates themes of emotional grays. Edea, daughter of the game’s sinister emperor, meets the old innkeeper Karl. In this scene, Karl mournfully looks over his town on a moonlit night because earlier that day, his son died in battle while trying to protect this homeland from the empire from which Edea descends. This dialogue creates no enemies, but elicits woeful sorrow; it illustrates the tragedies that the empire is erupting upon the land and the many noble people it is sadly claiming. Confronting this darker side of her homeland, Edea endures a personal crisis; she does not know what to trust anymore: her history or her present experiences. The emotional weight of this scene not only propels the plot by encouraging Edea to fight the empire, but also recruits the player to similarly combat the evils of the empire. Art often incorporates an emphasis on emotionality to reach beauty, but this cutscene goes further by also driving the plot and upcoming gameplay.
Music
Although not physical, music has a tangible effect on the player’s experiences. There are some iconic scores that instantly play in one’s mind when their names are mentioned, such as Super Mario 64’s Dire Dire Docks score, The Legend of Zelda Wind Waker’s Ocean theme, and Pokémon Emerald’s Battle Frontier Brain music. These three tracks serve a variety of purposes: introduce a wondrous ambiance, instill a sense of adventure, and energize the player for a battle, respectively. They also take hold of the player and create a sense of added realism in the game. The high octane psychological thriller Thumper would not engage its players without its lucid alignment of musical intensity to level progression and difficulty. Video game music serves a surface level purpose, such as creating a desired feeling, but they also serve a deeper purpose of pulling the player in and getting the player onboard with the action. They create a sense of connection between the game’s events and the player so that flow states can exist where the player gets lost in the game experience. This complete sense of envelopment with the game represents music’s power to emotionally invest its players.
Enabling the player’s sense of adventure
Transitioning to the subtler methods to emotionally invest players, games can instill an inherent sense of adventure to recruit players. To create the original Legend of Zelda, Shigeru Miyamoto envisioned the game to recount a sense of wonder and exploration that he experienced as a child while exploring caves near his home. He wanted to share this intrinsically exhilarating feeling with players, and did so with The Legend of Zelda’s map and dungeons. The game’s map is exceedingly large, especially for the time at which the game was published, and hidden dungeons only multiply its breadth. This almost overwhelming sense of possibilities would be too daunting to challenge without the player’s innate sense of adventure. Players want to search, fight, and discover - those are inherently satisfying actions. The game’s large map and many areas to scour capitalizes on such motivations by enabling the player’s childlike desires to explore. This exploration gives the player a subtle feeling of competence, a sense that they can master this land. The player subsequently uncovers more and more of the land, driving to see all that Hyrule has to offer. By tapping its player’s given motives to adventure, The Legend of Zelda recruits players on its journey and earns their emotional investment.
Pivotal plot moments
There are often moment in well crafted games where everything shifts, and causes players’ awareness of their emotional investment. These highly memorable moments redefine the game’s objectives, the player’s feelings toward characters, or the game’s overall themes and meanings. Fire Emblem Fates rests upon this pivotal moment in Chapter 7 where the player must choose who to support: the harsh family that kidnapped and raised him/her, or the kind yet unfamiliar birth family he/she never knew. This one decision initiates a branching path from which the player cannot reverse. The decision bears weight, and the situation’s pressure is undeniable. This choice also challenges the player’s philosophy; what does the player value more: safe familiarity or risky righteousness. Once this terrible choice is made, the player must burden its repercussions, such as eventually fighting the siblings that raised the protagonist or combating the siblings who are related to the protagonist by birth. There is no right or wrong decision in this scenario, but to reduce cognitive dissonance, the player accepts his/her choice and embraces it. The player strives to make the most of his/her decision, whatever that decision is. To reduce cognitive dissonance, attitudes fit the behavior of choosing a side in this pivotal plot moment, resulting in emotional investment to that decision and subsequent gameplay.
Losing oneself in the gameplay
As the subtlest, yet most influential method to achieve emotional investment, games can have such satisfying and engaging gameplay players cannot ignore each moment’s tension. Imagine this scene: Super Smash Bros. Wii U, final destination, no items, two stock, friend versus friend. With these few parameters, players instantly understand the weight of the situation. Competition peaks because the player fights their own friend in a harsh battle of skill. Cognitive resources are fully devoted to the gameplay, and emotional connections naturally follow. Smash Bros.’s gameplay is inherently enjoyable enough to enrapture the player during the entire match. Time slips away and other life events are forgotten; all that matters is the battle at hand.
Similarly, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe’s silky smooth framerate offers a nonstop focus on gameplay. Once again, the core mechanics of the game enable a flow state in the player. Items of lightning strikes and blue shells are received with visceral shouts, while a close victory feels sweeter than a crisp apple pie. Each race feels charged with tension, and players lean in from their link to the emotionally rousing gameplay.
Mario Tennis Aces, admittedly, is a very short game. Its story campaign can be completed in a few short hours and offers no intimate connection to the player on an emotional level. Despite the simplistic story and writing, each battle fully invests the player. Every second in every round matters, thus requiring the player’s complete engagement. Once again, emotional engagement follows cognitive engagement as players become more and more interwoven with the match’s action. Games do not need dramatic cutscenes, epic monologues, or shaking scores to emotionally shake their players. If the core gameplay is stimulating, engaging, and exciting, players can become attached to a game even with a watered down plot.
Conclusion
Emotional investment is pivotal in games. It changes an ok gaming experience into an intense, enjoyable commitment between the game and the player. When game designers craft their work to enable these emotional connections to gameplay, such gameplay is better savored and remembered. I still recall my shock in first seeing the Viridian City gym leader in Pokémon Red and Blue, my sorrow with reading Mipha’s lost diary in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and my rush of earning a high score in Pac-Man Championship Edition. These indispensable moments are what elevate art to a higher standard, and are what games can be constructed to foster.
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