TheSlider wrote:
I did say much more, not superior although this is debatable as anyone can get anything from any other medium as well. In any medium, "Getting the authors intention" is not necessary to appreciate anything or to feel anything. You can disagree as much as you like, it won't make it any less true. Also, objective interpretations is not what you're looking for when experiencing any medium. You want to get something personal from it and talk about it with others, expand and share.
We can't measure the quantity and quality of emotional output. I believe that the only way to get more out of a work of art or fiction is for the work to be better, at least for you.
I agree that the author's intention isn't the only thing that matters. Gamers can exchange their own personal experiences of different events, instead of discussing interpretations of identical scenes from the film.
However, I believe the author's intention will color the experiences and interpretations, assuming the author knows his craft. Destructive Entertainment seem to be good at what they do - they've got fantastic PR machine for one! If their message is that murder is entertainment and pure fun with no introspection required, that will influence the game design.
So again, author does not have the final say, but he influences it.
You didn't get my point (or read through ?). I expressed and talked all the way about emotions and emotions only. Not authors intentions but what you might get from running this game and why we can't feel these "bad" emotions in other mass shooting games when it should/could be the case. Watching the trailer was enough for me to start feeling terrible, so i wonder, could it be possible while playing and actively shooting to feel this too ?
Games that try to tackle these subjects like Spec Ops, do it by intention and narrative but what if you as a player could "get it" by interaction ?
Sorry if I didn't express it well, but I agree with you. Hatred might be a great tool for introspection, emotions and so on. I will not play it because it's way beyond my comfort zone.
I speak against it because it seems to try to intentionally avoid all that. Again, 'pure entertainment' without 'any fake philosophy'. If the player isn't entertained but instead becomes introspective, the developers have failed their own stated goals! Will they try to patch the game to remove bugs like accidental feelings of compassion?
I hope the devs have a point and I'm not misinterpreting them. It seems dire.
Can you think of a way to convey the emotions I talked about like loathing, disgust or even remorse in a game like Call of Duty for example ?
How could devs make us players feel bad for pulling the trigger on so much npcs ?
No, CoD can't do this. However, I believe the author's intention will affect the player's subjective information, so that when a developer doesn't care, various mechanical choices make it more likely for the player to not care either.
In other words, Hatred as is will do a worse job than the hypothetical Hatred that embraced the goal of exploring human emotions.
IJI is a simple game where violence was framed in such a way that the player was encouraged to feel remorse. Enemies grew afraid, you found their journals, etc.
Self-loathing and self-disgust I can't remember having seen. More often, a villain is painted as one by destroying something the player is encouraged to feel an emotional connection towards. Destroying the Companion Cube is kinda like that, but the box didn't really bring forth any emotions in me, so it didn't work in my case.