صحيفة سودان بيزنس الاقتصادية صحيفة سودان بيزنس الاقتصادية
What is empathy? This is a special property of a person to perceive the feelings and emotions of other people, animals and even inanimate objects. We imagine ourselves in the place of another and try to understand what he would feel, or rather, that we would feel in his place and internally experience all the emotions received. The usual phrase “I understand you” has a huge psychological meaning, you mean “I can stand in your place and can feel the same as you” and a small trusting connection appears between people, which is so important when communicating. As I wrote above, this applies even to objects and, perhaps, many remember their childhood and how they were attached to their toys, even realizing that these are just things. It is thanks to this property of empathy, artists, writers, directors, composers and developers of computer games create their masterpieces and touch the strings of our soul. But first of all, we are still interested in video games and why a bunch of pixels on the screen can cause us emotions and empathy.
Once in childhood, I had a book with fairy tales g.X. Andersen and at the beginning of her was the biography of the author, among which I found an interesting story.
Once Andersen walked along the city street. When he walked past his mother with a child who played with his toys, she told her child that this master was the one who wrote fairy tales that she tells him every night. Among all his toys were just a cube and a tin soldier on one leg, but the baby grabbed a soldier, caught up with a storyteller and gave him his toy.
Sometimes a reward for your work is more valuable than any money.
In fact, no matter how this would not want the Hatyam video games, a person does not associate himself with men on a monitor and even the smallest child is able to distinguish a real person and computer, so we can without regret with packs of enemies in a shooter and not experience guilt. This is how empathy works, but there are loopholes who cannot change something radically, but give us the opportunity to worry about the characters.
The first and most important rule is that the hero of the game is as similar as possible to a person. No one will sympathize with an alien, who has ten tentacles, two heads and the whole body in mucus, therefore, if the hero is not a person, they try to make him as anthropomorphic as possible, and in the case of animals – add the facial expressions and emotions of people.
Our anthropomorphic and not very friends who gave https://wizebets.co.uk/ the maximum resemblance to people
The second and no less important rule is that the hero is like a person internally. Often you can meet with criticism, they say the characters are too flat and uninteresting, and this is exactly the case when the developers were too lazy and did not humanize as they should. So that we can recognize the pixels in the behavior of the pixels on the screen of something native, we can tell the story of the character, reveal his character through dialogs or behavior, but not through the sleeves, but so that all this was logical, of course and the player did not recall the phrases of Stanislavsky. If the player does not fully understand the character, then he will not worry about him. One of the best representatives in this regard is Valkyrie Profile, taking the fallen warriors and watching their last minutes of life, it is difficult to remain indifferent, but this is the work of Valkyrie.
Valkyria Chronicles 3. A great example of how to make games with a large number of worked out and interesting characters.
When a subtle connection appeared between the player and the character, it can be strengthened. There is no stronger friendship between people than the one that allowed them to go through all the difficulties together, there is no love more than the one that was tested many times. And here the point is not at all in the number of murdered mobs and bosses, the won kingdoms and the buildup of the character, but in heavy elections, tragedies, difficult relationships. Everything is on a more emotional level here. The standard moral dilemma about what is more important, one person or many acquires a completely different shade when one is your friend, whom you want to save with all your might, and many are close people who may die in the storm. A standard bet and a threw coin is a common thing, but only until you know later that a coin with two eagles, and the loser consciously gives freedom to the winner in return for his. Or a dilemma about whether to give a person to die happy, having concealed the truth from him, and he can show him the sad truth, behind which he was chasing so many years? All these cases are just an example of emotional trials that you are going through, the connection is stronger, and the player experiences all the feelings that the hero could experience. And when the main character also changes his character (which is quite rare in games) under the influence of external reasons, then “synchronization” occurs much better. Of the examples, I can only recall that the Final Fantasy VIII, when the ever -sullen and not particularly initiative young man turned into a decisive leader and Valkyria Chronicles 3, there is a young genius and tactics losing over and over again a more experienced enemy, subsequently realizing that his attitude towards his detachment was in the fundamentally incorrect.
Sometimes the graphics are not as important as the awareness of who is in front of you. Fantasy will draw everything itself.
With not uniform trials, you can reward the player, one of the developer trump cards is a love line, friends and family, and this is the most difficult thing in realization, because adults are also confused in relations, and to transfer them to the game so that it is captured and carried away, it seems to be a very difficult occupation. It is important here to show how important these feelings are for heroes and to reach out to the feelings that the playing playing in real life or wants to experience. This can be done gradually, as it was in Final Fantasy IX, a little, through the cat-scenes, so that it was most natural. This can be done as in Tales of Berseria, through decisive actions, constantly proving your friendship and devotion. And this can be done, constantly recalling the importance of family relations, even being on different sides of the barricade, as in Fire Emblem Fates.
Tales of berseria. One of the most emotional-saturated scenes.
One way to show that the character is alive is excessive expression, when emotions are expressed stronger than usual, and this is far from always a drawback, if the boundaries do not cross. In reality, people often hide their feelings, and to understand that a person is not always possible on his mind, therefore such a trick is a completely true solution. One of the good examples can be called Kingdom Hearts 2 and, I think, commenting on something unnecessary here, this is the situation where the rapidly expressed feelings of the characters clearly fit into the setting of the game and do not strain the player.
And in trusting, one cannot help but mention music, which in itself can break through emotions, and in the right place can cause a tear at the most seasoned player. Many people know all the great gaming composers, and the most successful use of music for all the time I consider the opera in Final Fantasy VI, which has grown into a real opera in the Great Hall. This is not some kind of soundtrack performed by the orchestra, this, his mother, opera from the old woman SNES, however, in fairness, I must say that she is quite short, but still opera.
Kingdom Hearts 2. These guys never restrain themselves when it comes to emotions.
However, far from always developers endow their protege with a deep character or strive to do it, and this is not always bad. The Dragon Quest series never followed these rules and nevertheless has a huge audience of fans who adore it. The thing is how you position the game, and DQ is primarily a fairy tale about kings, princesses, dragons and heroes, there is no place for reality, it is an adventure territory and it must be perceived just so that in general it does not prevent some of the plot and characters of such games that were expected to see Parasite Eve or Xenogears. You can add another trick of developers here when the characters are children or Chibi, which automatically gives +10 to tender. They use people’s weakness for children and, as a result of everything that has a large head and a small body, and the player at that time thinks: “Uti, what Milaha, how can it be seriously”. One of the examples are the game Ni No Kuni, and the branded animation of the Ghibli studio, where attention is paid to the smallest details, completes the matter, and it is somehow completely indecent to blame the characters in the plane of the characters and, most importantly, do not need.
It should also be mentioned that some went the other way, this primarily concerns the Japanese and their anime type. Instead of inventing a complex and memorable character every time, they use the same character template, putting on the fact that consumers will recognize them more often and easier to pour into the canvas of the narrative. This works quite where the plot itself is in the title role, and the characters are only an appendage, but a person loves diversity and even the same, not too significant thing, can just come in time with time.
Not all games need complex and multifaceted characters, sometimes you just want to be part of a fairy tale, and not to score your head with other people’s personal problems.
In conclusion, I would like to write about problems related to the character of characters and plot in video games. The audience of gamers every year becomes older and more experienced, the more game experience, the higher the requirements and the less people want to spend time passing. I will be curious to see how the game industry will try to get out of this position, when most of the ideas are already implemented, and new ones are more difficult and more difficult. At the same time, I would like to turn to the players so that you are not in attempts to play as much as possible in more games, but try to figure it out, get used to it and try to feel what the creators wanted to convey to you, otherwise even from the most interesting game, you will receive mediocre emotions.