Emotional Baseline
on March 19, 2010 | Videogames, Writing | emotion in games, narrative design, storytelling
A lot of people have been asking about why they’d put the boring stuff in Heavy Rain. I think the goal is simply to lower the Emotional Baseline: most games are all about the shooting (or the action of some kind). Now there might be some more subtlety in the storyline, but it’s usually told through cinematics or non-interactive means, so every time the player does have the controller in hand, he’s always right there in the middle of the action, killing dozens, business as usual. By resetting the Emotional Baseline to a lower (mundane) level, the developers made it so that when something out of the ordinary happens, it does feel like something out of the ordinary to the player.
Or at least I think. Can somebody get me a PS3 over here ?!
It’s actually done only every single time in movies: rare are the ones that start with action right off the bat; it always begins with the hero living his ordinary, everyday life, right before the terrorists/aliens/bad guys show up.
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spiffre.eu | Virtual Estate
July 10th, 2010 on 7:45 pm[...] I installed a plug-in to track traffic on this website. Turns out somebody wandered around my Heavy Rain post after googling “heavy rain strip”. Imagine his disappointment. Oh yeah, no doubt, [...]
March 20th, 2010 on 1:15 pm
You should be right I think. I have not tested it yet (except the demo) … but the game is waiting me.
I know some PS3 which will be alone at least one month during their owners are surfing the wave somewhere in central america ;)
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March 20th, 2010 on 3:48 pm
I know man, NOT FAIR! Should have rented Julien’s…
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