| (Pages: 1, 2) | |
BANNED Posts: 455 Joined: 29 Oct 2009     | |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1238 Joined: 5 Feb 2009     | The woman's an idiot. I will care about the "princess" in the book if the book is WELL WRITTEN and gives me a reason why I should care, one that I can relate to. Same goes for games. I will care about what happens to my team in CoD 4 because I can relate to them, but I won't care what happens to my stupid idiotic cousin in GTA4 because he's an idiot. How stupid can she be? Seriously? |
Beat Writer  Posts: 133 Joined: 7 May 2009   |
She will fail. On topic, it's a shame really i just don't care much about this kind of news anymore i'm simply not surprized in the slightest. It's like hearing that fox news is fear mongering again, only last week they had a story about how kittens give you aids and i just didn't care less and went on to continue having sex with kittens. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1947 Joined: 25 May 2009     |
Cpt Price And this woman is clearly wrong. People can get equally attatched to characters from any medium. She, (as you say she is a baroness i assume she is in the house of lords),like many in the house of lords are out of touch with this kind of thing. The head of the house of lords information committee on 'youth culture' admitted this to me himself. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1131 Joined: 22 Sep 2009     | Who the hell ever got emotionally attached to Rapunzel? Or any other fairytale character? I care more about characters in video games, even dimwitted Princesses who get themselves locked away in castles, because at least they're my objective. I have some sense of attachment to them. And at least video game characters can sometimes break the cliche, like Zelda/Shiek. I really get sick of people judging things that they don't understand or that they haven't experienced for themselves. It's condescending, and it shows they aren't well-versed in the subject to make a valid judgement. It becomes more about bashing for one's own sake and self-promotion than actually making a bloody point. |
Anonymous Source Posts: 6 Joined: 16 Jul 2009  | Not emotionally attached... |
Paperboy  Posts: 12 Joined: 7 Aug 2009     | When I played GTA 4 and was given the option to either kill someone or let them live, the first time I played it I always let them live, simply because I felt bad otherwise. And if a character is with me throughout a game, especially if they've been helping me a lot, and they die at some point, I always want vengence. Games can get to your emotions, and you can become very attached to their characters. |
Paperboy  Posts: 46 Joined: 10 Sep 2008    | it simply depends on how pathetic the character is however it also works the opposite if a character is well developed and not as useless as a ... very useless thing then i care about them alot i was very sad when dogmeat got killed also a little for Sarah Lyons too and i always care about the main character because of course its me and i care about me and many other gamers care about me ... well themselves anyway |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2180 Joined: 5 May 2008    | Apparently: "When you're reading about someone else saving someone, you care about the person their saving. But when You yourself are risking your life to save someone, it's quite obvious that you don't care about the person you're saving." Makes perfect sense... If you have recently had multiple lobotomies. |
Press Junketeer  Posts: 468 Joined: 30 Sep 2008  | For all HL2 fans. Remember this? Possibly because he reminded me a little of Morgan Freeman. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1330 Joined: 11 May 2009    | they say these things and nod because they have no idea what there talking about, as they are not gamers. that is all there is to it. |
Muckraker Posts: 337 Joined: 28 Oct 2009  |
It is many of our personal experiences that those who are not gamers are very quick to decry anything potentially good about games, and claim they are of no real use. This is a perfect example. Games, if done well, can make you more attached to characters in the game than eny other media ever could, because you are in their world. You interract with them, you change the world around them and yourself, and you can choose to fight to protect them. Like the citizens in Half-Life 2. They are so eager to follow the One Free Man that they can't sit still for more than a few seconds without following you once again, and despite as annoying as it is, even these copy-pasted characters tug at my heart-stings again because they are trying their best to keep you alive. Then there's Aeris/Aerith from Final Fantasy 7. Oh, and all your AI partners in Left 4 Dead. Okay, they're annoying, they can get in the way, they do things you don't want them to, and yet they heal you with their medkits and pills even though their own health could be even lower than yours is. You really don't want to see those guys die. They're annoying, but they're trying to help. In fact, I played the L4D2 demo for the first time, we were a short distance from the last safe house in the demo, we were all on low health, but Nick was on his 'third strike' and was killed. I actually caught myself saying "Nick, no!" under my voice. I'm not kidding. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 2153 Joined: 4 Jun 2008   | In certain games and for certain gamers this would be accurate (I personally could not care less about pretty much all of my allies in Halo 3) but this is largely determined by a) the type of game it is and b) who is playing it. If you have a casual gamer playing a simple and straight foward shooter then it goes without saying that they may sympathise less with the characters because, frankly, what is there to sympathise with? If you have a more avid player in a deep, narrative driven RPG then you might find a level of connection and empathy that surpasses some books. Like I said, I didn't care about the red shirt marines in Halo but I was saddened greatly when I'd grown attached to both him and Reznov over the course of the game and that moment came as a great shock to me. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1766 Joined: 2 Jul 2008    |
Are you really trying to write a 50,000 word novel by the end of this month? |
Time Lord  Posts: 9978 Joined: 13 Feb 2008    | Check my profile on Nano, there's an excerpt up already. :) |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1016 Joined: 17 Jul 2008  | And that's why it's a proven fact that over 90% of gamers are serial killers. In America alone over 70 million innocent Christens are slaughtered every year by Satan-worshiping gamers. -Fox News |
Muckraker  Posts: 276 Joined: 18 Oct 2008 | What the hell she has no idea what she's talking about. Sure there are some games that you just play for fun but there's also games with a storyline that you care about from the minor characters to the main character. |
Pulitzer Laureate  Posts: 963 Joined: 19 Mar 2009  |
Is that an actual quote or something that they would say? Because it's really hard to tell with those guys. |
Gone Gonzo  Posts: 1745 Joined: 1 May 2008     | Carlos Compare them to say... (the first book I see) Max Ride from the Maximum Ride books. If memory serves, she gets beaten and locked in a shed at one point. Big woop. Someone kills my Engineer on TF2? No-one touches my Engineer! *spins minigun* |
Infamous Scribbler  Posts: 644 Joined: 6 Aug 2008  | You aren't trying to save the princess in the book, generic twat is. You're just spectating, at least in gaming you ARE generic twat, or Mario, depending on the game. While I did find myself attached to the characters of Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (the gothic novel, not the Disney movie) or the characters in Passchendaele (The only good Canadian movie in a while) Or some animes, hell even Sgt Johnson and Eli Vance's deaths pissed me off (why do they always kill the awsome black guy? That just pisses me the fuck off and I'm WHITE) I never felt like I was the one saving the princess or fighting jerry or piloting the robot. Videogames give you that, and that's something this broad needs to get through her head. |
Pulitzer Laureate  Posts: 708 Joined: 25 Aug 2009 | For me it all depends on the characterisation and not the medium. If I read a book where a princess is involved then I'll care about her if she's well written and not just a shallow love interest to give the MC something to do. Same with a game, and there's often an added element of caring with a well written game character because her survival depends on my actions, rather than some unseen author's. |
Pulitzer Laureate  Posts: 830 Joined: 4 Oct 2007   |
This is the case when a game designer utterly fails at being a game designer. Which is sadly, often the case. Obviously, we can all say no one has played every video game ever, but I assure you a connoiseur could show her a game that would cause her to abandon her entire argument. |
Press Junketeer  Posts: 411 Joined: 15 Jul 2009 | Funny thing is that people who criticize games are most often the people who've never played one before...True I'm not deadly attached to Princess peach cuz she's hardly a likable chararcter, Zelda on the other hand goes somewhat deeper and I actually think saving is a good motive for a game. I actually dare say I find it more easy to like video game characters then characters in books because you have the impression of actually interacting with them proof: I thought "Bummer" when Gandalf died in the first Lotr book but when either Ashley or Kaiden had to die I did the mission over five times(Seriously) to have them both survive before actually wetting my eyes after choosing Kaiden over Ashley
So am I, no whoever dares to say guys don't cry I will...make you cry like a guy! |
BANNED Posts: 455 Joined: 29 Oct 2009 |
I didn't give a shit what happened to Ashley or Kaidan, because I didn't like either character. It didn't matter that I was interacting with them. A well-written and acted movie can make me care intensely about the characters, despite the lack of interaction. User was banned for: immigrants re-shaping cultures?. (Permanent) |
Beat Writer  Posts: 151 Joined: 6 Sep 2009 | I remember this one bit from Robot Chicken where Link had saved Zelda and he was expecting "tasty treats" as his reward, instead she just complained that it was here 8th time being kidnapped, gave him a few coins for his troubles and jumped out the window. It's hard to care about the spoiled brats you have to rescue in some games. |
Paperboy  Posts: 34 Joined: 25 Oct 2009   | Honestly? I read A LOT of sci-fi books. Generally medieval settings, swords and magic and the odd lusty, sex scene. (Chris Bunch is the Author if anyone is interested. Highly recommended, The Seer King trilogy). I find it incredibly easy to get attached to a character in a book such as that, especially if there is a trilogy of books that you are following over a long period of time. However, That first time I saw Aeris die... I actually smiled when Tidus and Yuna do... whatever, in the pool. The same with Zidane and Dagger, Squall and Rinoa, Locke and Celes, And that's just one series of emotion invoking games. There are hundreds more. The most emotion invoking game I can think of is Suikoden 2. If you don't care about each 108 characters in your castle by the end of the game, you have no heart. At all. |
Pulitzer Laureate  Posts: 848 Joined: 23 Jan 2009  | This seems like nothing but drivel... most people who spout this kinda stuff still think we're getting cross-eyed on 8bit mario clones. |
| (Pages: 1, 2) | |
Reply to Thread
|
|
Not registered? Sign up for a free account! |
It all comes down to how well the story and characters are written and presented. It doesn't matter if it's a book, a movie or a game. However, the writing quality in video games is very, very poor compared to books and movies, so it's harder to find compelling stories and characters in them.
I noticed something interesting in STALKER, though: I always wanted to help out stalkers who were on my side and fought with me, and I felt a bit sad whenever they died or whenever I went into a stalker camp and found everyone there dead. They are completely disposable characters with no unique personalities, but because they help you and you help them they feel important.
When some redshirt dies in a movie while assisting the hero, nobody cares. It's meaningless.