I Want to Cry

Overused, but come on. Best crying picture ever.

Sorry to disappoint, but this isn’t a NVGR blog about how some terrible harlot broke my heart again. Nothing of the sort has happened. So let’s clarify that title right off the bat: I do not currently feel any desire to cry (I’m actually rather great today, thanks for asking!). Instead, I feel a strong desire to find things that can make me cry.

I want those things to be video games.

For the tough and manly, the Marcus Fenixes among us, such nonsense is simply unacceptable. And, yeah, I get that. You want to fill the giant metal boots of Master Chief just to see dudes to die in quick succession. No problem. I’m just asking for a little more.

It all comes down to eliciting an emotional response, whether it is happiness (which games, by default, should do), sympathy, anger (hopefully not at the game mechanics), etc. I chose to write this blog about crying simply because it’s so rare for me, especially at the hands of a video game. So far, only Metal Gear Solid 4 has succeeded for me, and by the gods, that game turned me into a weeping mess. It was not pretty. I’m sure when I play the game for a third time, it will happen all over again. I’ll fight it, but I also won’t kid myself. It’ll get me good.

The reason that this is so important to me is that I believe that video games have perhaps the greatest potential of any entertainment medium to create the strongest emotional responses. We have longer experiences with the characters and interactivity—both great assets in the generation of emotional responses. So why does it seem so difficult for developers to make their games connect emotionally with players?

Don’t Tell Me What to Do


Yikes.

I’m sorry Dom, but I don’t give a damn about your wife. It might be insensitive to say, but your sadness means nothing to me. It’s not your fault, though; it is the fault of your makers. See, those who created you and your now lifeless corpse of a wife gave me absolutely no reason to give half a shit about your fight to save her.

And that’s exactly the problem: just because Dom cares about her wife doesn’t mean that the player does. Without some sort of compelling reason, we’re not going to shed a tear just because the game tells us to. We’re smarter than that. You can’t tell us to feel something—you have to make us feel it.

It’s even worse when a character on-screen starts crying. Nope, sorry generic RPG girl, but your tears are only making me giggle. Yet it’s the same sort of situation: we’re told by the character’s tears that he or she is sad, but what motivation do we have to feel that way? We’re not just going to cry by association—crying isn’t contagious like yawning (but, hey, yawning is certainly something that scenes like this bring about.)

On a related note: Otacon’s many cries in Metal Gear Solid 4 are the opposite of the right way to do emotion. Having a weeping, poorly acted mess of a character is not the way to make us feel emotional about a story, no matter if you think it fits into his personality. Unless your writing has the strength to make us do the same thing, (which Metal Gear Solid 4 does indeed do a couple of times), then we’re just going to laugh. At you, not with you.

Gimme One Reason

One reason, if it is compelling, is more than enough to make us connect emotionally to the story or characters. In some of my storytelling articles, I’ve mentioned moments that allowed me to do this. One of which was the Jenny couch scene in The Darkness. By giving me a moment that showed me (not told me) something worth fighting for, I had a reason to care.

It’s a matter of Show, Don’t Tell. It’s the oldest rule in the book, yet (especially for a visual medium) it’s something that video games tend to really miss the mark on. Of course, I don’t think any more than 1% of the games in existence today set out to create any sort of emotional atmosphere in the game whatsoever. But for those that do, at least put some effort into it.

Despite the fact that crying isn’t exactly an enjoyable experience, I think it’s important that some games set out to inflict this sort of pain upon its players. Only one video game in my life has made me cry; I think now’s the perfect time for games to change that. Not every game needs to have emotional content (if playing ExciteBots makes me teary, something’s truly wrong in the world), but I’d like to see a few more of them try.


And, hey, if they fail, I’ll just ridicule them. Fun for everyone! Look at me mocking him!