GamerNode: Columns - Can Games Make Us Feel?

Can Games Make Us Feel?

Everyone, at some point, has been in a pretty dark place, mentally. Whether it's just one of those days where you miss the bus only to have a second one splash muddy water all over your new shoes, or the day someone you loved left the realm of the living, we're all old friends with sorrow.

Videogames tend to be our escape from the mundane, and more commonly, emotionally difficult aspects of life. Have an argument with your folks, jump online on Halo 3, shoot seven hells out of the opposing team, and feel better, or simply delve into the world of Grim Fandango and forget anything exists outside the Land of the Dead. But do videogames represent the sorrow we experience throughout the course of our slow journey towards the afterlife?

Almost everyone I've ever spoken to was horrendously upset when Aerith died in Final Fantasy VII. To have such a crucial character die to the lead antagonist was horrifying - I assumed because she was the female lead, she wouldn't die, and her death caught me off guard. As someone who was yet to hit their teenage years, it was a traumatising experience, but definitely a new one. I didn't bat an eyelid when Bambi's mother died, nor did I care too much about Pocahontas (the ridiculous Disney representation, not the Native American feminist icon).

So why are games capable of making me, and possibly some of you, feel anger, sadness and fear? Is there some verisimilitude in the emotionally-charged situations we find ourselves in when playing certain games, or are we simply forcing ourselves to feel something that isn't reality?

When I returned to the world of Bioshock's Rapture last week, I felt fear, and fury. I would jump at splicers sneaking up behind me (playing on minimum volume negates the creepy whispering, but also mutes the footsteps that clue you in to an enemy's approach on your location), and then turn on them, gunning them down in fury. Yet, at the same time I felt emotionally torn at the concept of killing people who were, essentially, Christians who had become addicted to drugs to help them escape an environment where religion was banned. Corpses were strung up like Christ himself in several places, and it was not uncommon to hear a splicer sing "Jesus loves me, this I know, because the Lord God tells me so" before going completely bananas and trying to melt my face off.

Play through Grim Fandango and try not to think of death, because it's fairly difficult. You're surrounded by characters paying homage to the skeletal visage of the Mexican Day of the Dead festival, and you live in the underworld. It really does ram home the "what comes after" effect, far more than watching your recently-severed head roll across the floor to lie at the feet of a turret in Team Fortress 2. Games like TF2 and Halo 3 do a lot to instil feelings of what comes after death by showing your corpse on screen, as life goes on. But while that may make us angry and recklessly vengeful when we next spawn, is it possible it could also make us think about those we know in the military, currently doing their best not to get shot?

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