Emotioneering in Reality-Based Games Versus Fantasy and Sci-Fi Games

Since I began brainstorming these three game case studies by mentally springboarding off of pictures containing fantasy elements, the game stories followed in kind. But never believe that Emotioneering techniques apply only to games that involve fantasy or science fiction.

If you comb back through the book, you'll see that it is populated with numerous examples of hypothetical games based in WWII, the American Revolution, a Desert Storm kind of war, a SWAT team, and a present-day police department, as well as with a film noir-style detective.

These choices were intentional, designed to show the wide range of games to which Emotioneering techniques can be applied. My game design and writing consultancy, The Freeman Group, and I are regularly called to work on games that are completely reality-based, as well as fantasy games and sci-fi games.^[1]

^[1] Emotioneering is also useful for games of every type. I know this from personal experience. I and my team have applied Emotioneering techniques to RTS (real-time strategy) games, action-adventure games, first-person shooters, platformers, fighting games, driving games, adventure games, and online games.

Let's take a look at ways Emotioneering techniques can be stacked in order to, as the definition of "Emotioneering" states, move the player through an interlocking sequence of emotional experiences.