PCG Article Do you enjoy being sad and crying? (PCG article)

[ZedClampet]

Cute indie games keep trying to make me cry, and I choose to blame Pixar

I've noticed in user reviews that people love it when they are sad, which completely baffles me. "(spoiler alert) Your mom dies! It's so awesome. I cried for an hour!" What the actual hell? Why did you enjoy that?

I can understand enjoying something that makes you so happy that you cry, like perhaps the lovable loser "getting the girl" in the end. That makes sense to me. But pointless grief? I don't get it. And this has become incredibly popular.

It's cheap. It sucks. Stop doing it.

That's my opinion. What's yours?

 

[Colif]

I have one Pixar movie that makes me too happy ... I don't cope with being too happy, can't think straight.
Wall E makes me too happy... its a good movie.

I don't watch movies much so I don't really know their other movies enough to comment.

I generally don't enjoy being sad, it sounds like a contradiction really.

 

[mainer]

I hate crying or even being sad; it does suck. I avoid any entertainment media (games/movies/books) whose sole focus is to elicit those types of feelings. I don't need that in my life.

From a gaming perspective (and this is from mainly RPG experience), I think if a game's story is strong enough to elicit a range of emotions for the player throughout the game it can lead to a greater suspension of belief that you're part of the story and not playing a game. But sadness shouldn't be the focus. The key to a good story is balance. You want to throw in a sad or poignant moment, balance that out with some humorous ones. A player also has to know, and feel, for the characters within a game, otherwise, they just won't care.

One scene that always comes to mind when I think of sadness in a game, is the choice you have to make in Mass Effect as to whether you save Ashley or Kaiden. They were my friends, yet I had to make a choice as to who lived or died. It's still a tough choice for me. But it wasn't the focus of the game.

that people love it when they are sad, which completely baffles me. "(spoiler alert) Your mom dies! It's so awesome. I cried for an hour!" What the actual hell? Why did you enjoy that?

That reminded me of a girl I briefly dated back when I was in my mid-20s. She and her sister coerced me into watching Terms of Endearment. I made it about halfway through and left. I am not sitting there for 2 hours watching a movie about a woman dying of cancer. But gods, those girls enjoyed crying. Unfathomable to me.

 

[Ryzengang]

I hate crying or even being sad; it does suck. I avoid any entertainment media (games/movies/books) whose sole focus is to elicit those types of feelings. I don't need that in my life.

From a gaming perspective (and this is from mainly RPG experience), I think if a game's story is strong enough to elicit a range of emotions for the player throughout the game it can lead to a greater suspension of belief that you're part of the story and not playing a game. But sadness shouldn't be the focus. The key to a good story is balance. You want to throw in a sad or poignant moment, balance that out with some humorous ones. A player also has to know, and feel, for the characters within a game, otherwise, they just won't care.

One scene that always comes to mind when I think of sadness in a game, is the choice you have to make in Mass Effect as to whether you save Ashley or Kaiden. They were my friends, yet I had to make a choice as to who lived or died. It's still a tough choice for me. But it wasn't the focus of the game.


That reminded me of a girl I briefly dated back when I was in my mid-20s. She and her sister coerced me into watching Terms of Endearment. I made it about halfway through and left. I am not sitting there for 2 hours watching a movie about a woman dying of cancer. But gods, those girls enjoyed crying. Unfathomable to me.

Yea, this is a good representation of how I feel as well (also mostly focused on RPGs since it's my favorite genre and they tend to be story-driven). I'm fine with emotional scenes within a larger story, but I'm not there for a sob story. For example, I was pretty moved in The Witcher 3 when Vesemir dies, but the overall goal of the game isn't to make you sad. Balance is really important for me. Drawn out sad stories are just straight up depressing, really.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Cute indie games keep trying to make me cry, and I choose to blame Pixar

I've noticed in user reviews that people love it when they are sad, which completely baffles me. "(spoiler alert) Your mom dies! It's so awesome. I cried for an hour!" What the actual hell? Why did you enjoy that?

I can understand enjoying something that makes you so happy that you cry, like perhaps the lovable loser "getting the girl" in the end. That makes sense to me. But pointless grief? I don't get it. And this has become incredibly popular.

It's cheap. It sucks. Stop doing it.

That's my opinion. What's yours?

In general, I agree with you. But sometimes sadness in a story adds to the experience. I've talked about RiME recently, which was an amazing game. The ending was pretty rough, but I think it made the game worth it.

 

[Frindis]

The key to a good story is balance. You want to throw in a sad or poignant moment, balance that out with some humorous ones. A player also has to know, and feel, for the characters within a game, otherwise, they just won't care.

Well said!

I seldom cry playing games and that is not because I'm a John Wayne kind of guy. It is because most of the time the sad stuff is boring as hell and feels poorly implemented or because it just isn't sad at all. Tons of sad stuff for example in Skyrim or the Fallout games, but it's just not really sad, it's just fillers. If the sad part is well implemented and has a point to the overall story then I'm all for sobbing a little. Witcher 3 had a couple of well-orchestrated scenes doing just that.

 

[Zloth]

We seem to be running surprisingly low on Doctor Who fans!

- YouTube

Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.

youtube.com

You definitely need to earn the tears, of course, and that's before AND after the incident. Abusing it is a terrible sin. The Last Remnant is an example of doing it wrong. It did a good job of earning the rights to have a main character get killed off about half way through. However, no sooner had the funeral ended, than the character's daughter appears. Surprise! She has the same skills as her mother and even looks like a younger version of her. So much so that she just about has to be a clone, even though this is a fantasy setting. Really, really cheapens the whole death scene.

But other games do it very right. Final Fantasy 7 is downright famous for it.

(And the very last episode of Babylon 5... OMG!!!)

 

[Colif]

Come on, there have only been 39 seasons of Doctor Who, you can't expect everyone to know its name.

I guess the Dr has lost an awfull lot of companions along the way. Many different emotions on play. What happened to K-9?

I am old, I prefer old who to new who. I stopped watching new about 10 years ago and judging from ratings and viewership of the last 3 seasons, I haven't missed a lot. The special effects are way better now (Cybermats don't look like vacuum cleaner attachments) but the quality of the stories has fallen off a cliff.

 

[Pifanjr]

I don't think it's quite accurate to say I get sad from watching sad media. I empathize with the sadness happening, but it's not my own sadness. I think there's a distinction in there that's important, at least for me.

I don't mind sad stuff in media though. It's like a trial run for processing emotions, something I'm not very great at, so getting some practice every so often is good.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

We seem to be running surprisingly low on Doctor Who fans!

I watched and loved it from Christopher Eccleston through Matt Smith. After that, it went downhill for me, and I lost interest. I was never a classic Doctor Who fan, though.

 

[Pifanjr]

I watched and loved it from Christopher Eccleston through Matt Smith. After that, it went downhill for me, and I lost interest. I was never a classic Doctor Who fan, though.

Peter Capaldi was very different than Matt Smith and I'm not sure if the first episodes with him were just worse or that it took time for my wife and I to get used to him, but he definitely has some amazing episodes as well.

I've only seen 3 episodes I think with Jodie Whittaker and haven't really felt the need to watch more. Perhaps if it came to a streaming service we were subscribed to we would watch it, but it wasn't good enough to spend money on it.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

I've only seen 3 episodes I think with Jodie Whittaker and haven't really felt the need to watch more. Perhaps if it came to a streaming service we were subscribed to we would watch it, but it wasn't good enough to spend money on it.

I don't have any problem with women leads, but I did have a problem with the Doctor being a woman. People say that the Doctor never had a concrete gender, but I think that's BS. The Doctor and River have a child together, and I think it's possible through the lore that he had more than one child.

In my opinion, Jodie Whittaker should have been a spinoff character, and they should have kept the Doctor male. They could have manipulated things to somehow bring out another female Timelord if they wanted to.

 

[Zloth]

Getting waaaaay off topic here, but I can't resist...

Yeah, the very first Capaldi episodes weren't very good. For some reason, right after seeing all (?) of the Doctor's regenerations, she's suddenly freaking out about him regenerating!? But they settle down and get good. There're still some stinkers, but every season has those.

Wittaker's got somewhat worse, but not nearly as bad as so many people seem to be screaming about. The Flux season seemed pretty good. It could have used much better villains, but they weren't all that terribly important to the story.

The series has hinted at Timelords changing gender with regenerations for a pretty long time. It might even have been hinted at back in the old series, but I can't remember when off hand. They're already changing their ages most of the time, which means completely rebuilding the entire skeleton! Swapping genders seems a lot easier to me than a big age change. (But why do they sometimes regenerate with teeth that already have fillings? )

The Doctor definitely has kids. Which ones the Doctor is a father to and which a mother, we don't know.

I don't think River had any kids at all?

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Getting waaaaay off topic here, but I can't resist...

Yeah, the very first Capaldi episodes weren't very good. For some reason, right after seeing all (?) of the Doctor's regenerations, she's suddenly freaking out about him regenerating!? But they settle down and get good. There're still some stinkers, but every season has those.

Wittaker's got somewhat worse, but not nearly as bad as so many people seem to be screaming about. The Flux season seemed pretty good. It could have used much better villains, but they weren't all that terribly important to the story.

The series has hinted at Timelords changing gender with regenerations for a pretty long time. It might even have been hinted at back in the old series, but I can't remember when off hand. They're already changing their ages most of the time, which means completely rebuilding the entire skeleton! Swapping genders seems a lot easier to me than a big age change. (But why do they sometimes regenerate with teeth that already have fillings? )

The Doctor definitely has kids. Which ones the Doctor is a father to and which a mother, we don't know.

I don't think River had any kids at all?

I thought Clara was River's child

 

[Zloth]

I thought Clara was River's child

Not as far as I know. There're a lot of Claras out there, saving the Doctor at some point in each one's life, all with different parents but I don't think any were River.

Come to think of it, she must have caused a lot of confusion, being born to parents that look nothing like her.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Not as far as I know. There're a lot of Claras out there, saving the Doctor at some point in each one's life, all with different parents but I don't think any were River.

Come to think of it, she must have caused a lot of confusion, being born to parents that look nothing like her.

Just rechecked, and it was just someone's theory, which was more than likely not right.

 

[redmark_]

I don't think it's quite accurate to say I get sad from watching sad media. I empathize with the sadness happening, but it's not my own sadness. I think there's a distinction in there that's important, at least for me.

I don't mind sad stuff in media though. It's like a trial run for processing emotions, something I'm not very great at, so getting some practice every so often is good.

for me in general, it's becoming a bit cliche, from Pixar to influence in games,

but having sadness as a core goal in a game/story probably works best in visual novels mainly, but that's just an opinion...

But feeling a whole range of emotion in a story/game, is an experience that is fine for me, as long as it isn't all about drowning in sadness and negative emotions. 🤔

 

[Pifanjr]

The only media that truly makes me sad is the news.

 

[Colif]

It seems its unclear: https://slate.com/culture/2013/05/w...me-lord-river-song-the-doctor-s-daughter.html

Nice there are some things left they haven't revealed. We didn't need to know the origin story.

I don't watch the news, why do i need to know about a bunch of things I can't do anything about?

 

[Shodan_]

Well I don't enjoy being sad or crying but I hugely respect video games who bring me there and there are only two of them I can easily recall.

The intro of Ori and the Blind Forest is brutally sad.
The intro of Homeworld with Adagio for Strings when the mothership leaves the dock and everything. It is so ridiculously grandiose it brings me to tears every dang time.