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[letsap]

Not a mention for Chapter 1 of Mother 3, or the Mother series in general?

[Paint by Numbers]

Not a mention for Chapter 1 of Mother 3, or the Mother series in general?

There was! Same phrasing, even.

I can't believe no one has mentioned Mother 3!

[Xion]

I've never cried because of a game. Come to think of it, I've never cried because of any fictional story or event.

Yes, we are brothers in the League of the Unfeeling.


I honestly can't imagine crying because of anything besides like...the death or great injury of myself or someone near to me (yes, I will cry at my own funeral.), or me being a jerk. The last time I cried was several years ago and it was because I was a jerk. I have felt like I could maybe be able to cry while reading books before, but I would have had to try really hard to make anything come of it. Never for a game or movie. I kind of imagine the people who cry during movies or games are the same people who would cry at the death of their favorite actor or musician, or at some great disaster they're witnessing on tv.

I think asking why x doesn't make people cry is kind of silly because x will probably make someone somewhere cry, and people cry at varied enough things that some people will probably watch straight-faced all like 'meh' and others would be bawling their eyes out. It's kind of like how scary games don't always scare everyone, but not due to some fault of the game but just because some people don't scare easily.

[Pedrosanchau]

I think the most important thing to make someone cry with a creative wwork is "involvement".

So the question how can i make someone "go into" my story?

-Personal involvement: story can resonate into a person. Some people can be touched by a story because it remind them theirs

-Fear: why is seinen much better than shonen? because hero can die. how can you be involve in a story if it always finish by "everybody is alive and happy" too predictible. if you fear anything can happen it's much better. "a song of ice and fire" is great cause of that thing

-long storytelling. movie can't moved me. too short. i can go in the story and feel the character are near me. I hate yuna but after 40 hours of game when you learn she's going to her death...ugh!!!! I would never had care at the beginning of the game.

-Art. it's here video games can learn from cinema. a good sound at the right moment, a perfect point of view and it's awesome. Is the final battle of MGS3 could have been so beautiful with a sonic-like music or a mario-like staging? Is the story of silent hill 2 would have been so awesome if the director hadn't left 30 seconds with nothing showy, just to let you make understand the atrocity?

Just give why you can be involved in a game? (instead of gameplay, which is here for me just to make the emotion go smoother) i think it'll bring good ideas for emotional games

[superflat]

Quite a few have brought me close, a couple have made me shed a tear.  Not usually because they're sad, just because of what awesome pieces of art they are.  Films and books do it to me too.  I'm a big softie...

[Squiggly_P]

I've never even come close to crying in a game. I don't think I'm a heartless bastard or anything, I just haven't gotten involved in a game in that way. I have a few thoughts about it, tho, cause I find the idea of weeping over a game interesting. I'd like to see it happen, but I think games have certain elements that need to be removed of changed in order to get people that involved.

1) Game Over. You don't see too many movies where the main character dies or loses, then the movie resets and lets him try again. That new flick from Duncan Jones actually does this, tho, which is interesting. As a player I think this one element is one of the main reasons that games are emotionally neutered for most people. It's hard to feel bad about a character dying if you can just try again.

2) Victory Conditions. In a game you are usually set a task you have to complete, then given another task to complete, etc. Your goal is to complete the task or you lose. Losing means you die or start over, etc. In a movie the main character is given a series of tasks to complete, but often they fail to complete those tasks. The bad guy gets away, the girlfriend dies, the bomb goes off, etc. Then you follow the main character as he struggles to overcome the odds, but often he fails a lot along the way and things don't generally go right for him. In a game, the only way to move forward most of the time is to do everything right and not fail. I think games need to become more creative in how they deal with losing scenarios in games. We need to deal with loss in ways other than restarting the level.

3) Writing. Games in general have really shallow plots and really poorly developed characters, and those characters generally spout some of the worst dialogue I've ever heard. It's hard to cry over the death of a badly acted character in some cheesy little B-Movie, so it's hard to do the same for characters like that in a game.

4) Cheese. The films I am least likely to bring tissues to are the ones that deal with alien invasions, monsters, car chases, explosions, death rays, over-the-top Bond-style villains and anything where the sound track largely consists of techno or rock music. So looking at games, there's a pretty small percentage that don't deal in at least some of that stuff. It's hard to become emotionally attached to things that are totally unrelatable and unrealistic. I don't mean unrealistic in the sense that things need to look photoreal, but rather in the sense that aliens don't normally invade and I don't often go on a gun-crazy rampage killing off demons spawned from a portal to hell.

5) Consequences. The other points sort of touch on it, but again, you can't become emotionally attached to something if you can bring it back or if you can fix your problem really easily. I can get shot in the face in a game and then eat a chili-dog or find a medical kit and restore myself to full health instantly.

6) Linearity. My sidekick dies. I try again doing something different. My sidekick dies. I try again. Maybe I can give them some better armor and kill this boss faster this time. My sidekick dies. The sidekick can't survive the scene. The developers want me to feel bad about that, but it's just going to piss me off knowing that if the game had let me, I probably would have been able to prevent my sidekick from dying, or never even had to worry about it. Instead of feeling sad, I feel anger and frustration for having my sidekick stolen from me for nothing more than a dumb plot twist in a story that I was kind of into, but not that much.

Bottom line, games tend to find a fun mechanic or two and then stick with them for the duration of the game. Generally, you can compare most games to action movies. I didn't cry at any point in the films Die Hard or Terminator 2. I did cry when I saw Grave of the Fireflies. I cried at Breakfast at Tiffany's. I cried at Schindler's List. A number of Disney / Pixar films have had me on the verge. People cry at dramas, not action films. You can't spend 40 hours shooting generic bad guys in the face and then have some side-character die and expect anyone to care.

People have mentioned FF7, and that always bugged me. I played that game largely because people were telling me how emotional it was and all that. I finally got to that part and after the cinematic I was blown away by how mediocre the story and that character had been. I totally didn't care at all. It's possible that it was because I had spent hours and hours fighting everything from goofy looking flower monsters to anthropomorphic buildings at that point and spent maybe ten minutes reading about the love I was supposed to feel for this clump of pixels. It could be because I was expecting it, since it was years after it had come out that I played it. I dunno. That scene really underwhelmed me.

I think the most emotionally involved I've ever been in a game would be either FF9 with Vivi's story (the rest of that game was pretty stupid) or Shadow of the Colossus, which had a great ending. The best part about SotC's ending was that it had multiple parts and actually had you doing stuff up to a certain point. Possibly the best ending I've ever seen in a game. It came nowhere near making me cry, tho.

Sorry it's so long...

[ninto]

I've never cried over a game, but I've definitely argued when my team mates do stupid stuff in games. Mostly halo. >_<

[BomberTREE]

Sonic adventure 2 battle, Goodbye Chao.





I was young, I loved all my little fighters, but one day, I had to let him go.
 

[Zecks]

speaking of mgs, the bro hug bump in mgs2 is the best thing ever

[s0]

I'm remembering the utter shock at the end of killer7.

Bewilderment is more like it.

But yeah Killer7 is great.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i've cried at the end of at least 14 games that i can think of -- the first was probably ys3 for the snes, the ending is great:

[mirosurabu]

An 8-year old girl cried because of my game. The game was just way too hard.

Is my game art?



(not fiction)

[Supermini_man]

Sonic adventure 2 battle, Goodbye Chao.





I was young, I loved all my little fighters, but one day, I had to let him go.
 

You reminded that I also cried here, it's so sad. 

[antymattar]

An 8-year old girl cried because of my game. The game was just way too hard.

Is my game art?



(not fiction)

Yes it is- Bad art.