Creating Emotion in Games: The Craft and Art of Emotioneering

Give Your Game a Theme^[1]

^[1] The word theme can mean many things. Two ways it has been used in this book are:

• A subject central to the story, explored from many points of view, with no conclusion made about the subject

• A subject central to the story, explored from many points of view, with a conclusion finally made about the subject

Clarifications, instructions, and examples of how to do this were covered in Chapter 2.17, "Plot Deepening Techniques," and Chapter 2.21, "First-Person Deepening Techniques."

What's your story about? Let's say we are were doing a Buffy the Vampire Slayer game.^[2] The game could offer many rich themes.

^[2] I know that the TV series is off the air. Hopefully, you'll have caught at least an episode or two in syndication. I pick her for this example because the show, during its history, explored a wealth of themes.

For example, Buffy's a human who can do superhuman feats. She possesses powers that most people don't. What if power is our theme? If so, then we'd explore that through the various missions and side missions.

• Does one of her friends attain power that consumes her (the friend) and causes her to do evil? (This was done in the series.)

• Does Buffy find that she can have the power to overcome demons… but lack the power to fix the relationship of two friends of hers whose love is on the rocks? (The idea here is that one can be powerful in one realm but not another.)

• What if Buffy confronts Tanya, another slayer gone bad? What if Tanya offers strong incentives for Buffy to become evil as well (at least for a time). For instance, maybe by becoming evil for a period, Buffy can get some temporary abilities that would allow her to hopefully defeat the big boss at the end of the game?

In short, the game could be used to delve into the theme of various kinds of power, as well as the positive and negative sides of power.

The theme would need to be explored in the plot, the subplots, the characters, and maybe even the gameplay itself. We could explore it in gameplay by, on one hand, giving Buffy some special abilities that would be magnified when she's doing evil, while, on the other hand, giving her rewards for not doing evil. Let me explain:

Combining this idea with the concept of Karma from the previous chapter when Buffy gains power in terms of special abilities (by doing evil for a short period), she loses power (influence) over her friends, who desert her, and whom she needs on her side to defeat whatever or whoever is the game's dangerous boss. So, when she gains one kind of power in gameplay (heightened abilities), she loses power in other forms of gameplay (her friends no longer fight alongside her).^[3]

^[3] Would this exploration of power be Idea Mapping or Multiple Viewpoints? If it's an interesting intellectual exercise, it's Idea Mapping and it's a Plot Deepening Technique. If it causes the player to wrestle with moral and emotional issues, it's Multiple Viewpoints and it's a First-Person Deepening Technique. For an extensive discussion of these issues, see Chapter 2.21, "First-Person Deepening Techniques."