Creating Emotion in Games: The Craft and Art of Emotioneering

There are at least 1,500 distinct techniques a writer can use to make these five areas of storytelling either (1) interesting or (2) deep, thus creating ten categories in all. All techniques for creating emotion in films and TV fall into one of the ten categories.

For instance, why even have a climax in your story? It's because it makes plots more interesting.

Why is it usually important to care about the lead character, and sometimes other characters as well? Same reason: It makes the plot more interesting if we do.

When it comes to games, as you'll see, there are not ten but rather 32 categories of techniques that you can use to emotionally engage a player.

The line had to be drawn somewhat arbitrarily. For instance, one could keep extending the list of categories to include such elements as lighting, sound design, animation, music, level design, and so on. After all, these can be used to enhance the breadth and depth of emotion in a game as well. However, these get into specialized areas or involve gameplay issues that exceed the scope of this book.

So, please understand that a line had to be drawn. Now, let's get into the techniques.