I’m an emotional guy.
I’ll give you a moment to recover; clearly, I should be taciturn, tough, controlled, and have abs like a mogul field. That’s not really me.
I *am* an emotional guy. I’m happy with that. This evening, I was watching a crime drama called “Wire in the blood“. It’s about a psychologist who works with the police on murders, child abductions, serial sex crimes. Nasty, nasty stuff, and the shrink in question is (appropriately?) messed up as a result. Tonight, Bryn & I were watching some old episodes which, as a sort-of background to the primary stories of horribleness features a young boy who’d murdered his parents. Over the course of a couple of episodes, in fits and spurts, we got to meet this young man via his occasional meetings with Tony (the shrink), whether he was fighting with the prison/hospital staff, desperately trying to work out who he should be as an adult, or carving his real name into his arm, having been “released” with a new identity.
Apologies if this turns out to be a spoiler, but you’ll probably not be too surprised to learn that things didn’t end well. Ultimately, this young man couldn’t cope with the things he had done and took his own life.
I sat on Bryn’s sofa, crying.
…
There’s a game called Dreamfall, written by Ragnar Tørnquist and made by Funcom. It’s a sequel to “The Longest Journey”. I’m ashamed to admit, I’ve never completed “The Longest Journey” but I have finished Dreamfall. I finished it on a Friday night and, yes, I’d been drinking and yes, rather than a night out with friends I’d spent my Friday night alone with Dreamfall. But I finished Dreamfall that night and it made me cry. Like a (drunken) baby. If you haven’t played it and you have any interest in adventure gaming, do give it a shot. For more info, take a look at Rock Paper Shotgun’s coverage, although be aware that Mr. Walker is (justifiably!) unbiased.
…
Why would I bring these things up? Principally because it’s not something I’ve got from WoW, not as yet at least. Sure, there have been the occasional quests where there’s been a faint twanging of heartstrings. The horrible story about Malygos and Keristraza, and others. Please don’t think me heartless, but none of these had quite the same effect at the time, no matter how unpleasant the story in retrospect. In the case of Keristraza, I don’t think I really grasped the horror until the second time I played those quests.
Of course, I can’t (and don’t) necessarily expect the same level of emotional involvement from a massively multiplayer game as I might hope for from a single-player game. Naturally, the opportunity to write specifically and singularly offers the writers of a single-player game greater opportunity to grab me by the heartstrings. That said, I *am* emotionally involved in Warcraft, with the members of my guild, with my in-game friends. I care about my characters, in a peculiar way I haven’t entirely internalised yet. The hooks exist, to make me laugh, cry, sad, happy, exhausted, exhilarated.
Perhaps this is just one of the tradeoffs of MMO play. In return for the opportunity to bond with, play with and experience content with others, we willingly give up on the idea of storylines or NPC characterisations which are sufficiently complex to provoke a response. Perhaps these things exist in game, and I’ve managed to skip or ignore them. Perhaps they exist for many players, but just didn’t quite do it for me. I don’t know.
I do know that in pretty much any form of entertainment I consume or interact with, something that makes me cry is generally something I consider a bit special. Not because I’m desperately emo and want to spend my evening sobbing — quite the opposite. An MMO which could provide storylines which allowed me to share feelings with friends (delight, despair, horror, hope and beyond) in addition to the now-standard dungeons and raids could be the last MMO I ever played.