Today was a pretty interesting day at GDC, enough so that I felt it deserved a blog post. I’ve actually got a 4 part post in the works concerning story in games, but I won’t start posting it until after GDC (if I ever finish it. At least I know the first part will get posted).

Anyway, the first part of the day that I found interesting (from a story in games / blogging perspective anyway) was the visit with other bloggers at the IGDA group gathering. I think this was less attended that it might have been (it was opposite the Experimental Gameplay Sessions) but still a lot of very interesting people (and some bloggers that I would really like to read). I learned there are a few lurkers on my blog (hi guys ;)) but I also got some advice on how to improve commenting on the blog (thanks to some advice from The Zen Of Design). I may implement these, I may not. I haven’t decided.

After this gathering, I got into a discussion with a blogger (I’m sorry, I forgot who) and Isaac about emotion in games and creating emotion in games. Now, I’m firmly of the opinion that you can “create” emotion in games in the same way that you can “create” emotion in other story telling mediums; through empathy for “believable,” or at least identifiable characters, or through some other tried and true camera techniques for creating various visions of characters and situations. Now, whether or not this has actually been done well so far, and should be researched more is a much longer blog post than I’d really like to make tonight, but Isaac made some great points about emotions not necessarily being the common ones we think of; e.g. happy, sad, love, hate, scared. That common response to simple playing, like being relaxed or having fun, can be considered emotional response. It’s something I found interesting enough that it bared mentioning.

The last interesting part of the day (again, in terms of blogging subjects), was Chris Hecker’s acceptance speech for his community contribution award from the IGDA. I thought that it was extremely interesting that Chris was talking about connection and emotion being more powerful in games than any other medium, and to re-enforce this, the fact that Shadow of the Colossus gained a great deal of the awards at the GDCAs this year. I think that all of this should definitely show that the industry is really ripe for more games that really “create” emotions other than fear, adrenaline, and a general feeling of fun. I think it’s about time that things started picking up, and that writers really started figuring out just what makes a game story tick, so that we can begin manipulating it to our emotional advantage.

Edit:  Links added.  It is more bloggy now.