The sound of feeling

There is an ongoing debate in the gaming industry about the mediums ability to be viewed as an art form. One of the cornerstones of the debate is how games convey emotions. Games are struggling to invoke a whole pallet of feelings. They excel in expressing competitiveness, violence/excitement and accomplishment but they seldom express sexuality, love and spirituality and when games try to go there, like Mass Effect 1 famous “sex scene” it’s most likely to start a heated debate.

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Shooting people in the head are “normal” game mechanics that hardly raises an eyebrow but a kiss and a tender touch from a love interest is viewed as adult gaming that must be kept away from children.  The “violence” versus “sex” debate has been going on in the film industry for many years, but it’s only recently the gaming industry have been part of that discussion a sign of the gaming industry trying to express other emotions.

Gaming as an art form is still very young compared to books and movies but recently there has been evidence that games are coming of age and try to go in new directions, instead of copying the way movies are telling stories and express emotion. Flower being one example.

But in one respect I find that gaming could learn more from movies and that is in the use of music and the way it helps express emotions. Games have a tradition of mostly using epic orchestral scores in the likes of John Williams and some have turned into gaming classics like the Halo score.  But what if games dared to use piano pieces similar to the soundtrack from The Hours by Philip Glass, a jazz inspired soundtrack like Angelo Badalamenti's Twin Peaks or even a musical soundtrack like the one from Moulin Rouge?

I came to think of this while I was playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Every time I come by one of the guys playing the guitar:



I stop and listen to their tune and that little piece of music puts me in a mood that a not even the most lifelike graphics can achieve.

I think there is a huge potential in using a broader range of music in videogames in order to explore the possibilities of invoking all kinds of emotions in the player.

We have seen some great examples; Bioshock wouldn’t be as powerful in creating an atmosphere without the use of 50’s songs, driving a stolen car without being caught by the police in the Grand Theft Auto IV are truly epic when it’s done to a Genesis song. The Vangelis inspired soundtrack to Mass Effect and Jesper Kyd’s soundtrack to Assassins Creed 2 are wonderful examples of gaming soundtracks that shy away from the traditional orchestral scores that we are so accustomed to.

My hope is that more people in the gaming industry will understand how music can take a hold on my gaming heart and bring my emotions to new and unexplored heights.

Note:
After I wrote this I found the post "Dial me up some emotions" on the “Brainy Gamer” on the same topic. A recommended read!

The beauty of "man made hell"

Games set in a post-apocalyptic environment have been present since the mid 80s. Fallout 3 is one of the latest examples. It’s a bit weird how much fun you can have roaming around in world devastated by nuclear holocaust and your next door neighbor has turned into mutants. The ever present sound of the Geiger counter when you get near nuclear radiation never stops to raise my heartbeat. I love the Fallout series and have spent many hours looting bottle caps, talking to megalomaniacs and shooting mutated dogs that wanted a piece of my pretty legs.

But up until now I’ve never really truly been afraid in post-apocalyptic game world. The 50s setting in Fallout made the whole world seem bit “silly”, kitsch and “tongue in cheek”. The genuine scares I got from time to time when the super mutants ran after me, wasn’t enough to make the impression that the world truly was a “man made hell”.

Enter S.T.A.L.K.E.R Shadow of Chernobyl, a game set in the wake of the real world accident of the nuclear disaster of Chernobyl. The game is from 2007 and I’ve wanted to play the game since release, but my computer anno 2007 couldn’t run it. The game has been in and out of my mind for the past 3 years, but after it was mentioned in an article in February edition of Edge magazine, I decided to buy it and give it a try on my new laptop.

A now I truly understand what it is to wander around in a “man made hell”, and trust me it’s no walk in the park.

The S.T.A.L.K.E.R game world is a not cheery place with posters of nuclear families and robots inspired from sci-fi movies from the 50s. It’s a gloomy, dark and depressing place where you almost can smell and taste the radiation in the air even the Geiger counter is silent.

I won’t go into great detail about the game mechanics but the developer didn’t want you to fell like a super hero on a killing rampage in world full of mutants. Instead you’re a very fragile human being, and in order to survive a good use of wits is needed alongside your guns. Planning is the key to success a careless move and your most likely to end up dead by a single bullet to the head.

I had a really hard time in the beginning and was almost ready to give up. The game is truly merciless and after lot of console FPS gaming my playing style has adapted to a run and gun style. A couple of bullets normally don’t hurt you that much, but S.T.A.L.K.E.R is more in the likes of Thief series where you lurk around in the shadows waiting for the right time to strike. And the inventory had me yelling at the screen. I’m so used to be able to loot and carry everything I want but S.T.A.L.K.E.R won’t let me do that. You’re no American hero.

And that may be the reason I loved the game so much and the why the atmosphere is so dreadful. You are playing a lonely human being trying to survive in a game world based on a truly horrific real world event. From time to time I stop and look around on the environment and play with the thought that this could be a real place, where real people worked and lived but it was all lost when a human error made the place into a “man made hell”.  And the game mechanics won’t let me play a gamers game but forces me to act and think like a real life person would.

In some weird way the game is playing with me and my emotion. Even if I try really hard it won’t let me slip into the comfort zone of “I’m just playing a game” and the result is a truly terrific gaming experience that makes me feel a bit guilty because I take great pleasure in enjoying a game world based on a real “man made hell”.