Creating Emotion in Games, Part 2 -- Finishing the Intro

Last time in Part 1, I covered the first part of the introduction to Creating Emotion in Games, which sets up a sales pitch for "why invest in games storytelling?", introduces the author's concept of Emotioneering™, and explains some of the difficulties that professional writers from other media have when transitioning to games writing. Today, we're going to wrap up that introduction with a few miscellaneous sections that make their way in, completing the pitch and setting the stage for the actual techniques to come.

When Game Designers Write

Just as in the previous week, Freeman devotes a lengthy amount of time to discussing the issues that screenwriters face in games writing, he turns around and makes some points about the problems that game designers face when attempting to write. This chapter (Chapter 1.5) isn't quite as lovingly detailed as the previous one, and largely boils down to making some points about how many people deeply underestimate how layered screenwriting is, how a single scene pulls a lot of weight in several different categories.

It's very true! I think this is particularly an aspect that was underappreciated back in the day, when it came to writing, and it's something that atmospheric games began to explore more and more, in the years afterwards. While attempts have sometimes been clumsy, games are working a lot harder at building the layers of narrative necessary to be engaging. This chapter is also a good hint towards the techniques that the book is going to emphasize--the author is big into layering, and in avoiding single-purpose scenes/lines/characters.

A Few Odds and Ends

Chapters 1.6 and 1.7 are very, very brisk one-page chapters that talk about the scope of Emotioneering™ and set some expectations. The main points established here: 

• Writing isn't just about dialogue, it's about developing a plot with thematic dynamics and emotional beats, techniques that are larger than in-the-moment lines
• The best games writing and narrative design work will be unnoticed and subtle, building up emotional attachment without calling attention to itself

They're good points, and always worth keeping in mind.

Deep and Interesting: the Core Thesis

Chapter 1.9 is only two and a half pages, but it provides some of the most crucial insight into the following pages. Here, we get an illustration of what feels like the core concept behind Freeman's mindset: the twin axes of "deep" and "interesting". From the description in this chapter, "deep" means that something is layered, sometimes in unexpected ways, while "interesting" has to do with the breadth of their appeal, the ways that they are interesting to engage in. Based on some of the examples given, "interesting" also seems to have a lot to do with the execution of a concept, where "deep" has to do with the substance of things in the story, the foundation that the creativity of the interesting is built on.

In screenwriting, he identifies five areas that can be made deep or interesting: dialogue, characters, relationships between characters, scenes, and plots. He explains that because each of these can have techniques that make them deep or interesting, there are ten total categories of techniques to add emotion to elements of stories. This is also the root of his 32 Emotioneering™ categories: while it's not quite as neat and tidy, we can start to see some of the same patterns emerge if we look through the Table of Contents at the chapter titles, such as "NPC Deepening Techniques" or "Plot Interesting Techniques".

Based on these chapter titles, it looks like the following elements are identified:

• NPCs
• Dialogue
• Groups
• NPC-and-NPC relationship/chemistry
• NPC arcs
• Player-NPC relationships/chemistry
• Emotionally-complex moments
• Plots
• World
• Roles
• First-Person perspective
• Character complexity
• Symbols
• Agency
• Motivation
• Cohesion
• "True-to-life" (?)
• Player demographics
• Story elements
• Gameplay and mechanics
• Cinematics

...okay, that's actually a bit messier than I was expecting. While it starts out with the same familiar pattern (an Interesting and a Deepening technique for a given element), it actually kinda goes off the rails into whatever categories seem pertinent. While I'd like it to be more systematic, there's still a lot I like here, especially the promise of exploring agency and mechanical integration.

Furthermore, the idea of identifying various techniques that can be used to build up an impactful narrative is the best way to teach this topic: there's no such thing as a magical formula that can produce a great story, but if you build up a utility belt of techniques that can be used to move your audience in different ways, you'll be able to make that story land successfully.

A Sneak Peek Ahead

In Part 3, we're going to kick things off by trying to cover four techniques at once! (If this winds up being a bit too much, I'll probably tone it down in future posts.)

• NPC Interesting Techniques
• NPC Deepening Techniques
• Dialogue Interesting Techniques
• Dialogue Deepening Techniques