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games that make you cry

Byting back the tears.

A frequent criticism thrown at videogames by the wider entertainment world is that they can’t be considered an art form because they don’t elicit deep emotions in their players. Often this is an argument put forward by people whose knowledge of videogames extends to having once been in the same room as a Playstation 2. It’s certainly not gamers themselves, who will vociferously tell you that games can inspire many emotions in their players. They can even make them cry.

And we’re not talking about what follows the ‘blue screen of death’, either. We’re talking full-on tears. This was the topic discussed by Margaret Robertson, editor of the games magazine EDGE, at the recent Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival.

Broken Sword: The Angel of Death.

“Everybody has a little bit of their gaming history that gave them a single tear. That clutch in the throat," explained Robertson, who went on to suggest that developers need to have a better understanding of the unique and complex ways that gamers come to care about their games.

For Robertson, it’s about more than just the words on the screen - it’s finding out how to tweak the emotions that already lie within the players themselves. And this is something that, due to their interactive nature, videogames are in a unique position to achieve.

Of course, words are a pretty good place to start, and a perfect example of where you can see some of the cream of videogame narratives in action is the Broken Sword series. This long-running adventure game franchise, which was delving into Bible mysteries, the Knights Templar and Franco-American relations long before The Da Vinci Code was a glint in Dan Brown’s eye, is the brainchild of UK-based developers Revolution Studios.

Broken Sword: The Angel of Death

The series, which is due to release it’s fourth instalment, Broken Sword: The Angel of Death, later this month, is renowned for creating empathetic characters, emotive narrative and sucker punch humour, things that have been key to the success of the games.

But the drive for better storytelling and narrative in games has been picking up pace over the last couple of years, especially as the industry seeks to attract a more mainstream audience. There’s even a BAFTA for interactive writing, while The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain now lists videogames writers on their books.

If games are already making us cry, just think what they could do in the future.

Rhianna Pratchett 07 September 06

Broken Sword: The Angel of Death is out on 15 September on PC.

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