Hypothetical Game Case Study: Post-Apocalyptic America Game

For example, you're a swaggering gunslinger in a post-Apocalyptic America. It's survival of the fittest, but there are people in need and in danger: a group of innocents who are hiding in mountain caves, terrorized by the thugs who roam the landscape. They could use your help but will you choose to give it?

There are incentives to help them. Initially, the incentives are mostly internal, moral ones (if you're leaning that way while playing the game, which you might not be). Down the line there are more tangible rewards, although you don't know that yet.

But there are also incentives to not help them, such as dangers to you. Perhaps if you help, you'll miss out on riches, weapons, excitement, and so on. (Chapter 2.20, "First-Person Character Arc Techniques," offers more detail on balancing incentives.)

Let's say you're thrown together with, or periodically run into, a sexy, headstrong woman named Kira (an NPC). She's all heart, with her courage directed toward helping those who need protection.

Periodically you join forces, but at other times you pursue your own agenda.

She could exhibit all those layers of feelings toward you that Princess Leia felt toward Han Solo in Star Wars Episode IV.

NPC Toward Player Relationship Deepening is part of Emotioneering because when a character has mixed feelings toward you, it resembles life itself, and thus is emotionally engaging. I'm sure there are people who have various layers of feelings toward you, just as there are people toward whom you have different feelings simultaneously.

In the example, the types of feelings Kira exhibits toward you might depend on your actions and other choices which means the game would have to keep track of (or "flag") the choices you make, so these can govern Kira's actions and dialogue around you.



Creating Emotion in Games. The Craft and Art of Emotioneering
Creating Emotion in Games: The Craft and Art of Emotioneering
ISBN: 1592730078
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 394

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