Indies of the Round Table #3

The Rampant Coyote blog brings us the third installment of their indie RPG Q&A roundtable, this time discussing the topic of emotions in gaming.

Vince D. Weller, Iron Tower Studio (“Age of Decadence”):
I think it goes without saying that emotions are very important in RPGs. These emotions should range from “Oh my god! Will you look at the graphics! They are breathtakingly amazing!” or “AHHH! I’m blind! Turn the fucking bloom off!”

How to achieve it, how to bring the player to this emotional state is the real question. There are different methods and professional techniques. While I hope you understand that I can’t share professional secrets with you, here is a tip: get rid of most designers – they are a useless scum anyway – and replace them with graphics artists. Your game can become a huge success with one or less designers, but it simply won’t do well if you have less 100 artists.

Jason Compton, Planewalker Games (“The Broken Hourglass”):
Yes, we’re certainly looking to evoke emotional responses. There are a number of reasons to play a game through to completion (and then come back and play it again), including dogged determination, curiosity about “what’s behind the next corner?”, new rules exploits to try, and so forth… but one of the most enduring reasons are characters that players enjoy interacting with and responding to.

We’re using a number of devices to that end. We put the PC in a situation where they have to make a crucial decision early on which should provoke an emotional response. We give joinable NPCs a range of motivations and priorities, ways to explore their own stories and in some cases romantic entanglements.

I’m not sure there’s any particular emotion we’re actively *avoiding*. The real trick is to avoid harping too much on emotional themes of despair and loss. Finding a way to pace humor, friendship, and romance in the midst of death and destruction is hard enough in linear media, considerably moreso when the pace and the sequence of the story are to some extent controlled by the player’s whim. So we’ll see how well it all works out.

Looks like Vince leaned on the sarcasm button again.