INTRO

For anyone that’s been following us for some time, I’m sure have come to know the team’s fascination with storytelling in games; and our goals to broaden the emotional spectrum within them. Normally when one thinks about games and all the emotions ever formed from playing them; It gets hard counting pass five, (empowerment, rage, love, laughter, fear). If we’re talking about a mainstream game, then we barely touch the ones I listed.

This post I wanna go a bit in-depth, Breaking down a bit of narrative formation and technique. Like molecular gastronomy, we must make practical use of emotions and manipulation

THE BRAIN

Before talking about game design, we have to talk about the human mind. This will included a lot of neurology and philosophy, but we’ll eventually come back to video games. Just a quick look at how the mind works to give you a basic understanding of how immersion in games is created.

It’s very easy to think that what makes up yourself is a fixed entity that is not possible to change. When one consider the extensions of his or herself, ( arms, legs etc) you have a very firm picture of what is ‘you’ and that it is something set in stone. The reality is quite the opposite; what you consider as yourself malleable; There a few examples of this that shows this bit a more in detail. They start of by setting up a rubber hand on a table, and then ask the subject to put his real hand next to it. A screen is then put up in-between to block the subjects view from the real hand, making him only see the rubber hand. The rubber hand and the real one is now continuously stroked in the same place and manner. After a while the subject will feel as if the rubber hand is his own. This impression can be tested by taking a hammer and quickly hitting the rubber hand with it. The subject will then pull back their real hand, as if it were the target. This unconscious reflex confirms that the subject really believes the hand to be his own. The rubber hand changes the brains body perception, to the extent that even the unconscious action of pulling away from danger is based upon this new sense of self. This is called a feedback loop, by creating the feeling stroke and seeing where the stroke is being made.

Its amazingly strange and bemusing that see this in our everyday experiences;We’re in this changeable self. We tend to believe that we perceive reality as is. But really, what we perceive through our senses. A vast collection of quantum waves gathering and process, so forth and so on.

“How can a three-pound mass of jelly that you can hold in your palm imagine angels, contemplate the meaning of infinity, and even question its own place in the cosmos? Especially awe inspiring is the fact that any single brain, including yours, is made up of atoms that were forged in the hearts of countless, far-flung stars billions of years ago. These particles drifted for eons and light-years until gravity and change brought them together here, now. These atoms now form a conglomerate- your brain- that can not only ponder the very stars that gave it birth but can also think about its own ability to think and wonder about its own ability to wonder. With the arrival of humans, it has been said, the universe has suddenly become conscious of itself. This, truly, it the greatest mystery of all.” -

Vilayanur s. Ramachandran


BACK TO VIDEO GAMES

So, you ask….. What the hell does this have to do with video games? The answer is simple, video games provide the same kind of feedback-loop. It does this in the same sort of mixture between the rubber hand trick. Now, it is other forms of media that do this in part too, and its mostly referred as presence. But what makes our young and beautiful media so great, is films and literature can’t create the same type of feedback loop. A movie or book can only send one signal. Its just sending you whatever it contains, and you’re unable to respond or influence its future output. Some say this is why games could never be art. ( but I’ll save that for some other time ). This is what makes games possibly the best medium EVER.

Great examples of this at work are horror games which are really simplistic to create in terms of mood. We’ve all heard countless talks about how games should strive to achieve emotions like other media. However, when it comes to feelings of fear or terror, video games take the cake.




A film or book wants or sometimes needs time to build a sense of place and connection, much of which can be hard to pull off effectively. But why should we be tied down but the limitations of such a small emotional field. Laughter, sadness, love, empowerment (without the guns), and all other emotions should be able to used to the strength of video games. Some say other emotions simply don’t come so easy and require a more complex design. I’m also not saying this is impossible; games like Ico, Another World, and Journey showed us this. Journey for me, was amazingly profound and spiritual. This was due to the feeling of being alone, and at some point meeting another lost or helpful player. I don’t want to drag this out much more.

Part 2 coming ……

day

Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception

A review and exploration.

The brain, Aldous Huxley asserts, is like a reducing valve, filtering out great masses of unnecessary experiences, creating a unified, simple experience of the world. Although Huxley’s Doors of Perception is based around his experience of the consumption of the psychedelic drug mescaline, the wealth of wisdom within the book stretches far beyond that of speculation…

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The WWF Roster Sings If You Only Knew

Them!

I am SO HYPED for the Animaniacs reboot, espedially these two! While not have grown up with these cartoons as a lot of it‘s fans did, I discovered them in my late teens and love them just as much! I have wanted to draw them for years but, HOLY FRICK, these two are so incredibly hard to draw for me! I think I still don‘t fully get Brains anatomy. Pinky turned out good tho!

//Animaniacs Season 2 Spoilers

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Well, that certainly took long enough. I finally finished season 2. And I have a couple of things to say about it. First of all, THE WARNERS ACTUALLY LEGITEMATELY FUCKING DIE EPISODE 2 THE FUCK?!?!? I COULDN’T EVEN BELIEVE MY EYES WHEN I SAW THAT SCENE

Second of all, BRINKY WAS BEING FUELED SO FUCKING MUCH THIS SEASON LIKE DID Y’ALL NOTICE THAT

Lastly, and in all seriousness, this season was really damn good, like maybe even better than season 1. It had a lot of insanely good jokes. Can’t wait for season 3 when the warners parody the angsty ao3 fanfics in the fandom

The present you gave me